Dr Noah Wilson-Rich
1The Best Bees Company, Boston, United States, 2Urban Bee Lab, Boston, United States
Biography:
Noah Wilson-Rich, PhD is the author of over 20 scientific publications, including The Bee: A Natural History by Princeton / Oxford University Press. Noah has been a lecturer, researcher, or full-time faculty member in the biology departments of Tufts University, Northeastern University, Simmons University, MIT, and Harvard University. He is the founder of The Best Bees Company and affiliated non-profit Urban Bee Lab. Noah has given three TEDx talks on bee research with over 3 million views. Presently, as CEO and Chief Scientific Officer of Best Bees, Noah and his team of over 100 scientific beekeepers sell beekeeping and biodiversity services to generate research funds into bee disease, nutritional ecology, and biodiversity monitoring. Some current scientific projects include leveraging the vast network of research beehives across home gardens, business roofs, and institutional campuses throughout the United States to advance innovation projects using eDNA, remote sensing, AI, and blockchain. Results from these projects have led to incredible advancements in bee health, including the capability to eradicate Varroa mites from managed beehives without using any pesticides.
Abstract:
Honey bees (Apis mellifera) provide essential ecosystem services such as crop and plant pollination. Honey bee colonies are experiencing unsustainable losses every year due to numerous stressors. The aim of this study is to understand why honey bee colonies are experiencing such high levels of colony loss compared to other regions where honey bee colonies are thriving. Here, we applied a Blue Vs Red Zone indicator for bee health based on colony survival rates. We selected two locations for study: Ithaca, NY (healthy Blue Zone) and Boston, MA (unhealthy Red Zone). We measured five factors of bee health: Nutrition, bacterial and fungal microbiome, viruses load, parasitic Varroa destructor levels, and pathogenic Nosema sp. infections. We devised the “habitat hypothesis” as the main explanation of the differences in bee health. This hypothesis asserts that honey bee colonies perform better, are healthier, and have higher over-wintering rates in habitats where plant species diversity is higher and more abundant. Recent research shows that bees with better nutrition are more likely to recover from stressors like Varroa infestations, Nosema infections, and viral diseases. Genetic DNA metabarcoding of honey analysis showed there is significant difference (p<0.05) in the plant species richness between Boston and Ithaca, with Boston having a greater number of plant species but also a higher number of Varroa mite levels. First, there was a significant difference (p<0.001) in Varroa mite levels between the two locations. Second, there were notable qualitative differences between the plant species in Ithaca vs Boston, perhaps notably with four species of moss (Bryophyta) found only in Ithaca honeyDNA samples. These findings support the habitat hypothesis by confirming the negative effect of Varroa destructor as the primary negative pressure on colony survival, and the beneficial factor of increased species richness of pollinator plants on bee health as the leading hypothesis for what is driving positive pollinator health, performance, and fitness. More research is needed to understand the scope of bee health relating to the habitat hypothesis in terms of specific plant species and bee health and pollinator health overall.