A Clean Bee of Health

This micrograph - magnified 220 times - shows the trachea, or windpipe, of a honeybee infested with mites.  The little bugs interfere with the bee's breathing - possibly suffocating their host.

There are some bees, though, that are genetically resistant to mites.  Their defense mechanism appears to be a fastidious attention to grooming.  All honeybees, to a greater or less degree, clean themselves using their legs like a fine-tooth comb.

Recent research from the U.S. Department of Agriculture has confirmed that resistant bees are clean-freaks compared to those bees more vulnerable to mites. 

Using an eyelash tied to the end of a small stick, researchers, Robert Danka and Jose Villa, placed a single mite on a bee's thorax and then observed the bee's behavior in a glass-enclosed hive.

After watching some 500 infected honeybees each for seven minutes, the scientists found that resistant bees were not only more persistent with their grooming, they were also more sensitive to where the pest was on their body. 

-- LiveScience Staff

Credit: Lilia De Guzman