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Delivery Bees

Podcast

Delivery Bees

Transcript

Getting honeybees to fight fungus. I'm Bob Hirshon and this is Science Update.

Between making honey and pollinating flowers, you'd think bees were busy enough. But Ohio State University researcher Joe Kovach has given them a new job: fighting fungus. Kovach explains that gray mold is a fungus that attacks strawberries, and it starts in the flowers. Farmers can fight the fungus with something called "Trichoderma"-- another fungus that attacks the gray mold. To get the Trichoderma onto the strawberry flowers, Kovach's ingeniously enlisted the help of honeybees. He put a dish of Trichoderma spores in front of a bee hive.

Kovach:
"And as the bees exited the hive, they kind of walk through this foot bath of spores, to visit the flowers, and do what they normally do."

What they normally do is visit every flower on the farm, carrying the Trichoderma spores with them. Not only does this save the farmer from having to spray, but it delivers the spores more effectively.

Kovach:
"The bees are actually taking it right to the target, where the gray mold fungus develops. And it allows the Trichoderma to kind of get a head start."

So thanks to the bees, the flowers stay healthy, and develop into healthy strawberries.

For the American Association for the Advancement of Science, I’m Bob Hirshon.

Making Sense of the Research

Bees naturally carry pollen from flower to flower, unknowingly pollinating as they go. By helping with pollination, bees can help strawberry farmers grow bigger fruit without using additional fertilizers. This Science Update investigates another way that bees are helping to put plump, juicy strawberries on your grocer’s shelf. Bees, especially the honey bee variety, have become man's secret weapon in biological control warfare.

Biological control is, generally, man's use of a specially chosen living organism to control a particular pest. The chosen organism might be a predator, parasite, or disease, which will attack the harmful insect or invading plant. There are three main ways to use these natural enemies against unwanted pest populations. Classical biological control, or importation, involves traveling to the area from which a newly introduced pest originated and returning with some of the natural enemies that kept it from being a pest there. Augmentation is a method of increasing the population of a natural enemy. This method does not involve importing new predators; instead existing predator populations are increased. Lastly, conservation plays an important role in any biological control effort. By working to ensure the continued existence of natural predators, pest populations can be controlled.
As you read or listen to the transcript for this Science Update, and explore the websites below, keep in mind the following questions:

What type of fungus attacks strawberries?

What are farmers using to help fight these attacks?

Explain how the honeybees help distribute the Trichoderma.

What other materials may bees transport for the benefit of other plants or animals?

Can you name any other another animals that transport materials to help humans, other animals, or plants?

Going Further

To learn more about these delivery bees and Joe Kovach's research, read Bees Deliver Fungicide More Effectively Than Sprays, an article on Ohio State University's Research site.

To learn more about bees in general visit The Biology of the Honeybee, a website sponsored by Eastern Connecticut State University. Younger students will enjoy the University of Montana's Bee Alert! page. Also check out the bee games and lessons for all ages found at the Africanized Honey Bee Education Project sponsored by the University of Arizona.

For more on biological control, visit Cornell University's Biological Control website. For the latest news on biocontrol check out the University of Wisconsin's Biological Control News.

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