Honey Bee Research

There are several reasons why honey bees are perhaps one of the most studied insects (probably next to Drosophila in terms of amount of money spent and number of papers published).

• Honey bees play a critical role in agriculture.  The most important role honey bees play is actually not honey production, but pollination.  The value of crops that require pollination by honey bees, in the United States alone, is estimated to be around $24 billion each year and commercial bee pollination was valued around $10 billion annually.  There is also a trend to consume more bee-pollinated crops (such as fruits and vegetables), making honey bees more and more important in agriculture.  Honey bees also produce honey and beeswax, which are valued at $285 million in US annually.  Besides that bees also produce pollen, propolis, royal jelly, and bee venom that are playing increasing roles in health food and alternative medicine.  Bee stings are routinely used for treatment of arthritis, multiple sclerosis and other auto-immune diseases. 

• Honey bees are studied extensively, also because they are fascinating organisms.  Bees have captured mankind's attention since as early as Aristotle.  Not only because they produce honey and honey is the earliest sweetener human beings have found, but because of their industriousness (working to their death), selflessness (producing honey for humans and dying to defend their home), and most importantly, their social organization.  Honey bees, like other social insects, show "division of labor" whereby different workers specialize on different tasks.  In some sense, the complexity of their society rivals that of our own.  Who governs their day-to-day chores?  How do workers know what to do in a city bustling with tens of thousands of individuals?  Clearly these have been the questions of humankind since long time ago, as evidenced in the Bible: "Ants are creatures of little strength, yet they store up their food in the summer...Locusts have no king, yet they advance together in ranks." [Proverbs 30: 25-27].

• Honey bees are increasingly being used as a model system to study other aspects of biology.  Besides their intricate social organization, honey bees are easily maintained, are cost effective in terms of obtaining large numbers of insects, and their genetics can be precisely controlled.  Honey bee workers take 21 days to develop from eggs to adults, this compares favorably with other insects commonly used in classrooms (such as cockroaches, grasshoppers).  Since a queen can lay as many as 1,500 eggs a day, large numbers of bees can be obtained easily.  Honey bees are probably the only insect that has "artificial insemination" technique successfully invented.  This is used extensively both commercially and in research to speed up the selection process and to control the exact genetic makeup of a colony.

Bee Research Labs Around the World

Australia

1. Dr. Denis Anderson, CSIRO
2. Dr. Ben Oldroyd, University of Sydney
3. Dr. Ryszard Maleszka, Visual Science, The Australian National University
4. Insect Vision, Navigation and "Cognition" Laboratory, The Australian National University
5. Macquarie University Dr. Ken Cheng

Austria

1. Dr. Karl Crailsheim, University of Graz, Austria

Canada

1. Simon Fraser University Bee Lab: Dr. M.L. Winston
2. University of Guelph Bee Lab: Dr. G.W. Otis | Dr. C.D. Scott-Dupree
3. University of Manitoba Dr. R. Currie
   

China

1. Institute of Apicultural Research Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, China
2. Eastern Bee Institute, Yunnan Agricultural University

England

1. Sheffield University Apiculture and Social Insect laboratory

France

1. Dr. Yves Le Conte, Institut national de la Recherche Agronomique, Centre d'Avignon

Germany

1. Freie University Berlin Prof. Dr. R. Menzel
2. Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitaet Frankfurt am Main Prof. Dr. N. Koeniger | Prof. Dr. S.D. Fuchs
3. Technische Universitaet Berlin Prof. Dr. J. Erber
4. Technische Universitaet Darmstadt Prof. Dr. W. Kaiser
5. University of Konstanz Prof. Dr. W. Kirchner

India

1. Indian Institute of Science Prof. R. Gadagkar

Israel

1. Prof. G. Bloch, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
2. Prof. A. Hefez, Tel Aviv University
3. Yaacov Lensky, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
4. The Triwaks Bee Research Center, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
5. Prof. Sharoni Shafir, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Japan

1. Honeybee Science Research Center - Tamagawa University
2. Dr. Sasaki (in Japanese)
3. University of Tokyo Prof. T. Kubo (in Japanese)

New Zealand

1. Dr. Alison Mercer, University of Otago

Norway

1. Dr. Stig W. Omholt, Agricultural University of Norway

Poland

1. Dr. Woyke, Agricultural University SGGW

Thailand

1. Dr. Siriwat Wongsiri, Chulalongkorn University

United States of America

1. Arizona State University Dr. J.H. Fewell
2. Clemson University Dr. W.M. Hood
3. Cornell University Bee Lab Dr. N. Calderone | Dr. T. D. Seeley
4. East Tennessee State University Dr. Darrell Moore
5. Kentucky State University Dr. Tom Webster
6. Michigan State University Apiculture Lab | Dr. F.C. Dyer | Dr. Z.Y. Huang
7. Mississipi State University Dr. C.H. Collison
8. North Carolina State University Dr. D.R. Tarpy
9. Ohio State University The Rothenbuhler Honey Bee Research Laboratory | Dr. B.H. Smith | Dr. J. Tew
10. Oklahoma State University Dr. C.I. Abramson
11. Oregon State University Dr. Mike Burgett
12. Penn State University Dr. Nancy Ostiguy
13. Purdue University Dr. Greg Hunt
14. Texas A&M University Dr. T. Pankiw
15. University of California (Davis) Dr. Eric Mussen | Dr. R.E. Page | Dr. C.Y.S. Peng
16. Universtiy of California (Riverside) Africanized Bees | Dr. K. Visscher
17. University of Colorado at Boulder Dr. M.D. Breed
18. University of Delaware Dr. Dewey Caron
19. University of Florida Dr. H.G. Hall
20. University of Georgia Dr. K. S. Delaplane
21. University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) Bee Lab | Bee Brain EST | Dr. S.E. Fahrbach | Dr. G.E. Robinson
22. University of Kansas Dr. D. Smith
23. University of Miami Dr. K.D. Waddington
24. University of Montana Bee Lab | Dr. J.J. Bromenshenk
25. University of Minnesota Duluth Dr. A. Rachinsky
26. Universtity of Minnesota Twin Cities Dr. M.S. Spivak
27. University of Nebraska Dr. M. Ellis
28. University of North Carolina GreensboroDr. O. Rueppell
29. University of Puerto Rico, Dr. Tugrul Giray
30. University of Tennessee Dr. J. Skinner
31. Washington State University Bee Molecular Lab | Dr. S.W. Sheppard
32. USDA Bee Lab: Baton Rouge, LA
33. USDA Bee Lab: Belt sville, MD | BeeNome
34. USDA Bee Lab: Carl Hayden, AZ
35. USDA Bee Lab: Weslaco, TX

Bee Organizations & Associations

1. American Association of Professional Apiculturists
2. International Bee Research Association
3. National Honey Board