news from the lab 2016

Bern, 06. Honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies are complex societies, in which work is not distributed by a central power. How tasks are allocated among workers is still poorly understood. A research team from the Swiss Bee Research Center at Agroscope and the Institute of Bee Health at the University of Bern (both Switzerland), discovered that young adults influence this process by promoting older individuals to perform duties outside the hive, which shortens their life expectancy.

From never seen before X-ray images of honey bee combs, a research team from Agroscope and the Institute of Bee Health at the University of Bern (both Switzerland) could study how honey is produced. The team used computer tomography to measure sugar concentration in the wax cells, without disturbing the sensitive mechanisms of the colony.

Male honey bees, called drones, can be affected by two neonicotinoid insecticides by reducing male honey bee lifespan and number of living sperm. Both insecticides are currently partially banned in Europe. Researchers from Bern, Switzerland, together with partners from Thailand and Germany, call for more thorough environmental risk assessments of these neonicotinoids.

Media releases, information for representatives of the media Media Relations (E) Colonies of the Eastern honey bee, the original host of parasitic Varroa destructor mites, survive infestations that are fatal to Western honey bees.

A project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation has found that Swiss farmers enjoy greater levels of job satisfaction than their counterparts in industrialised agricultural systems. What impact do agricultural systems have on job satisfaction among farmers? This is the question that Agroscope researchers have been investigating with funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation.

As hybrid plants provide a very high agricultural yield for only one generation, new hybrid seeds need to be produced and used every year. However, natural cloning via seeds might enable the efficiency of such plants to be passed on unchanged. For the first time in experi-ments, researchers from the University of Zurich have now demonstrated that this nearly 80-year-old idea actually works.

The citizens of Lausanne may provide some insight into the causes of obesity. The extra weight carried by people living in the working-class neighborhoods of the western side of the city defies the usual explanations, and urbanism may have something to do with it. We are not all equal when it comes to obesity.