![]() “We are working with the bee program at Washington State University to talk to beekeepers-especially to prominent queen breeders, and to researchers from universities and private industry-about how this committee should be organized and what needs to be in the collection,” said Danka. The other component of creating a new collection requires forming a “germplasm species committee” to decide what species and subspecies need to be collected and preserved and who will have access to particular parts of the collection. When this research is complete, it will allow honey bee germplasm to be preserved for the long term outside of living colonies. The lab has had success developing such protocols for other insect species. Their work will include creating a way to reliably revive the embryos and grow them into reproductively viable adults after storage. To help make the genebank a reality, researchers in the ARS Insect Genetics and Biochemistry Research Unit in Fargo, North Dakota, are developing better long-term storage techniques for honey bees, including cryopreservation of bee sperm and embryos. Danka is helping to shape the bee genebank. It will also provide greater access to them for other researchers without requiring our lab to spend so many resources to maintain colonies of these lines,” says entomologist Robert Danka, with the ARS Honey Bee Breeding, Genetics, and Physiology Research Unit in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. ![]() “For example, once the genebank is organized, it will ensure that the Russian honey bee and the Varroa Sensitive Hygiene lines we developed here are kept safe. The genebank can help ARS and other researchers around the country to breed better bees now and in the future. The addition of an ARS bee collection will ensure that genetically diverse honey bee germplasm will be preserved for traits such as resistance to particular pests or diseases and for pollination efficiency. These stresses have helped push commercial beekeepers to a precarious economic position, threatening their continued business sustainability. In the past three decades or so, new pathogens, pests, parasites, and pressures, such as sublethal impacts of pesticides and deficient nutrition, have increased average losses of managed honey bee colonies to more than 30 percent a year. It is part of ARS’s response to the ongoing crisis that the country’s beekeepers are facing. This year brings a new ARS germplasm collection: The National Bee Genebank in Fort Collins, Colorado. Their value to scientists, breeders, agriculture, and indeed all of us, is almost beyond measure. These collections fall into three general categories: small, individual research collections reference collections and large, national, genetic-resource collections. Like the great storehouses of the past, full of amassed treasures, the Agricultural Research Service’s germplasm collections today preserve a wealth of genetic material, which is a critical national and international resource. See Germplasm Collection Series under Additional Information. ![]() The first in our series on the vital contributions of the ARS collections that conserve our genetic wealth.
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