WSU starts sperm bank for honeybees

Washington State University scientists are creating the first sperm bank for honeybees as a way to strengthen bee colonies and preserve threatened species.

By Nicholas K. Geranios

The Associated Press

PULLMAN — There’s a lot of buzz at Washington State University over work to develop the first sperm bank for honeybees.

Entomologist Steve Sheppard and his crew are using liquid nitrogen to preserve semen extracted from the industrious insects that pollinate much of the nation’s food supply but face environmental threats. The goal is to preserve and improve the stock of honeybees and to prevent subspecies from extinction.

“We do that frequently with horses and cattle and chickens,” said Susan Cobey, a research associate on the project. “Finally, we have the capability to do it with bees.”

Honeybees are serious business. Washington state’s $1 billion apple crop, for instance, needs 250,000 colonies of bees each year to pollinate the orchards. California almond growers need 1 million colonies per year to pollinate their crop.

As a result, there is incentive to find ways to strengthen bee colonies.

But the problem has been storing bee sperm for the long term. One of Sheppard’s graduate students, Brandon Hopkins, came up with the solution of preserving it in liquid-nitrogen tanks on the Pullman campus. It can be preserved this way for years. The bee industry has provided funding so WSU researchers can buy the tanks and other equipment they need.

Honeybees face a lot of challenges in the modern world. They can be attacked by invasive mites, exposed to disease and pesticides, or faced with a substandard diet because of modern practices that discourage farms from planting a variety of crops. These threats can combine to cause colony-collapse disorder, in which the worker bees disappear and an entire hive is doomed, Sheppard said.

One way to fight colony collapse is to create smarter, stronger bees, he said. That’s where the work being done at WSU comes in. Scientists can use the semen to selectively breed honeybees to improve the subspecies and make it more resistant to dangers.

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