Disease-Resistant Honey Bees Thanks to Selection

18-07-17-05-04_SFF7

Honey bees are periodically subjected not just to old diseases, but also to new parasites from other regions of the world. The control methods undertaken by beekeepers are cumbersome to implement, and have not always managed to prevent sometimes significant and recurrent colony losses. Through selection work, might we obtain a honey bee that could face these threats on its own? Would its resistance be transmissible from one generation to the next, and would it have negative consequences for other desired traits? On the basis of what criteria can we simply select a resistance trait? In this project, we try to answer these questions, based on native honey bee populations (Apis mellifera mellifera) adapted to Swiss conditions.

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