Dr. Marla Spivak on Conquering Beekeeping Challenges (028)

Dr. Marla Spivak on Conquering Beekeeping Challenges (028)

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Introduction: Welcome to  2  Million Blossoms, the podcast, with host Dr. Kirsten Traynor.  2  Million Blossoms is dedicated to protecting all pollinators, from the solitary bee to colorful butterflies, to feisty hummingbirds, and of course, the honeybee. We bring you informative guests to awaken your understanding of the vast diversity of pollinating insects and animals worldwide. Because the more we know about pollinators, the better we can provide their habitats and protect them from disappearing forever. Sit back and listen as Kirsten and her guest share in the passion they feel for all pollinators.

Dr. Kirsten Traynor: Today I have the pleasure of speaking with a scientist I deeply admire, Dr. Marla Spivak. She's the distinguished McKnight University Professor at the University of Minnesota. I met Marla when I was first starting out in beekeeping, and attended a queen-rearing course at the University of Nebraska, which she was co-teaching with Dr. Marion Ellis. This was before colony collapse disorder. She and her longtime technician, Gary Reuter, were developing the Minnesota Hygienic queen line, working to select hygienic behavior into their stock.

In 2010, Marla received the MacArthur Genius Award for her breeding success, funds and fame that thrust her onto the national stage. She's been a resolute advocate for all bees and even has a sweat bee named after her. Marla, welcome to the show.

Dr. Marla Spivak: Thank you for having me.

Kirsten: I'm so excited we get a chance to chat.

Marla: It's always great to speak with you. Thanks.

Kirsten: You started in beekeeping before Varroa was in the United States. How did this parasite change American beekeeping?

Marla: Oh, completely. Well, I guess we had practice with tracheal mites a few years prior, with, "Oh no. There's a parasite. It's a mite. What's a mite?" Trying to treat for it. The Varroa mite, of course, and the viruses and vectors are much more deadly. It's just increased how difficult it is to keep bees alive. How expensive it is to keep bees alive. I think the whole, it's really not as fun as it used to be when you just throw bees in a box and [crosstalk].

Kirsten: Watch them explode. [laughs]

Marla: Yes.

Kirsten: What do you think we did right with the arrival of Varroa?

Marla: I don't know what we did right. [laughs] That's a tough question. I guess what we did not do was try to quarantine or eliminate a bunch of colonies. I know that that was Australia's tactic. I'm not trying to criticize them, but it's pretty harsh and, I think they realized, not effective. I think that's one thing we got right, is try to quickly adapt.

Kirsten: What do you think we could have done differently?

Marla: Instead of trying to eliminate them all with treatments, especially synthetic treatments, I think we could have maybe tried breeding. We knew quite a bit at that point. I think we could have tried some other strategies. Let the bees work things out themselves on their own a little bit. Of course, we needed all those colonies for pollination. Their movement into the U.S. is different because of these huge pollination contracts. It's not very easy to just let the bees die because then we wouldn't have the colonies to pollinate almonds, for example. I think we could have left some colonies not treated to try to select for resistance earlier.

Kirsten: Selecting for resistance, you've actually been working with commercial beekeepers, who I believe are advocating for strategies where they treat less or minimize their interventions and see how colonies cope.

Marla: Yes. I think that they're always been interested, but getting the methods to them or a way that really works is key. I have some ideas in mind. I know in Europe they're really trying this. In the UK, they seem to be fairly successful in areas of not having to treat their bees or not treat as much. I hope the future is promising. [chuckles]

Kirsten: You're hopeful that we will continue to adapt and find ways away from mite treatments on a regular basis?

Marla: Oh yes. I'm not only hopeful, I'm just -- yes, we need to. We must.

Kirsten: Varroa continues to be one of the great challenges to honeybee health, although with proper management, beekeepers can keep their mite populations in check. What do you see as the biggest challenge currently facing the beekeeping industry?

Marla: Well, I think it's still Varroa and the viruses. The reason is because, what I said, it's just so expensive and labor-intensive to keep bees alive with all these treatments that we're using. With the low prices of honey, at least in the US, and the risks and expense getting bees ready for pollination of almonds and other crops, and then pesticide exposure once they're there, it's all very difficult. I guess all researchers say the same collection of things: the mites, the pesticides, and then the forage, I think it's all of these things combined, and they're real.

They're all important. The lack of forage in many places, especially here in the Upper Midwest, it's all turning to corn and soybeans. It's pretty sad.

Kirsten: Yes. We have completely shifted our landscapes. We have vast monocultures, especially in the United States. We're moving the majority of our bees out to California at a time of year when bees in many parts of the US would probably normally not be in high pollination mode and large foraging forces. We are demanding a lot of our bees. Do you see any options for improvements to the situation? How could we lower the pressure and demands on both our beekeepers and our honeybees so that we have an opportunity to buy ourselves some breathing room?

We have a massive demand for bees in California, which at times doesn't always seem very sustainable with the number of colonies we're concentrating in one location. We all learned through Corona that bringing everybody together into one environment to exchange variants is probably not the wisest decision we could make.

Marla: Yet, if we took the almonds away, or if the crop developed some kind of disease, or if there's insufficient water in California to irrigate the almonds to keep them growing, that would be devastating to beekeepers. It'd probably be the best thing that happened to beekeepers over a long term, but devastating in the short term because many beekeepers that's how they're making their living is pollination of almonds.

Kirsten: It's how they cover their costs for the year, and then everything else is their profit.

Marla: Like I said, I don't know what the solution is. I just know that short term, anything that happens to the almonds will devastate the livelihood of many commercial beekeepers. In a generation-- they probably would not like me to say this right now, but after a generation is probably the best thing that could happen to them is to have to do more smaller operations, more sustainable. They could concentrate more on breeding. I don't know how they would make a living necessarily. It's a tough, tough nut.

Kirsten: It's one we seem to have, over time, driven ourselves into. You work very closely with commercial beekeepers, what their feeling is on the situation. Are they hopeful? Are they fearful? Are they scared for their own livelihoods? It's a very difficult migratory style of farming.

Marla: Right. I think they're thinking about now. I mean, just keeping things going day to day. It's farming so it's weather dependent, water dependent, rainfall dependent, and then pricing of honey and then pollination fees. Are they fearful for the future? Oh yes. Because one more pest, tropilaelaps, or something, could throw them again over the edge. I think beekeepers are very resilient. I think they're the most innovative and creative people that I know.

I know that with time they'll come up with really creative solutions, and they will. They will persist and the bees will persist also. I just don't know how to lead them out of this pollination cycle that we're in.

Kirsten: It's a tough course that we've sort of wrapped ourselves into. Obviously, because the commercial beekeepers are the size that they are, they are very dependent on the fees. I know honeybees are your main area of research and focus, but you've also done a lot of advocacy for bees in general. You've turned your own garden into a bee paradise, which probably first met with some strange looks from neighbors who are used to orderly green lawns. How did you reshape your landscape and how did you deal with this changing, evolving landscape in your own urban environment?

Marla: Well, I burned off the front lawn. I have to admit, I put an herbicide on it, killed it off, and then I burned it off. Then I planted a prairie. I planted all native species, seeds, and then some plugs, and then over time, more plugs. I did get some citations from the city for keeping it mowed. Then I realized, well, I put up a sign that said pollinator habitat, and all of a sudden, everybody's perception of what I was doing shifted. It was no longer neglect in a weed patch and a crazy lady. It may still be the crazy lady, but at least it's to project.

Now people come by, and in fact, they tell me, "Oh, don't cut it down for the winter. Leave it for the birds. They like the seeds." Many neighbors around me have put in habitat now. In fact, my direct neighbor next door has the same thing. Now we have a big tract of habitat, here and there, up and down the block. It's pretty fun.

Kirsten: What impact did this have on the insect diversity? Is the "plant it and they will come" true?

Marla: The number of bumble bee species that I see midsummer, and then all the other native bees. I see frogs and I see finches. I see all kinds of things now right in the front yard. Sit on the front porch and it's my own little heaven.

Kirsten: For others who are thinking of maybe losing some of their lawn and turning it into something a bit more bee-friendly, what advice and suggestions can you give them?

Marla: Put a sign up first that says "Pollinator habitat" so that your neighbors understand what you're trying to do. Then maybe you go a little bit smaller. There is some maintenance that has to happen and some weeding. There's a big seedbed of whatever in the ground under what was before you put in the habitat. Now people know a lot more about site preparation and then maintenance. I suggest you read a lot about it and maybe start small, but go for it. Most definitely go for it.

I think people should really do what they want with their own gardens, front or backyards. Just like we interior decorate our homes to suit us, I think our yards can be to suit us too. If there's people that like a lawn, that's fine. If there's people that would like a crazy, beautiful prairie, that should be fine, too. If it's a vegetable patch or art sculptures, it just makes it much more interesting to go up and down streets and see people's creative expression and who they are right in front of their houses. That's what I would really like. It's not really up to me.

Kirsten: I can fully concur. The lack of conformities always should be praised and enjoyed. You see some neighborhoods where some people are bold enough to change. Then it slowly peters into the neighboring yards as well and you see a shift in attitudes, and then it almost becomes a tourist attraction for people. We're like, "Let's go walk in that neighborhood and see what's going on."

I had a really interesting conversation with somebody who is an expert on royal families and European well-to-do. He had heard me speak on bees and how lawns are food deserts, and approached me afterwards and said, "The reason the lawn was developed, it was a little bit like silver. It was something that needed constant maintenance. The only people who could afford to have it were people who had a lot of money. It was a way of showing wealth by just having this massive expanse that produced nothing other than costs and care." We tend to pride ourselves on the perfect lawn, but lawn habitats could do much more than just be a grass area for impressing the neighbors.

Marla: I had a couple of graduate students who looked into flowering lawns and what could we seed into turf that would bloom? That you could actually mow and it would continue to bloom. White clover, Trifolium repens, of course. That's the standard in a lawn. We did surveys of just that species, and it brings in about 50 species of bees in our local area. If you start adding other low-growing flowering plants like self-heal - it's a native plant here - and creeping thyme, which is not native, and there's others, you can get a beautiful flowering lawn that bees will love. Of course, it'd be for a place where people aren't walking on it too much.

They've actually started an initiative in Minnesota. Minnesota has been an amazing place for legislative initiatives to help bees. They call it the Lawns to Legume Initiative. It's not just lawns to legumes. They offer all kinds of suggestions on how to put in pollinator habitats. From little pocket gardens to rain gardens to a bee lawn to a Meadow to boulevards, and et cetera, et cetera. It was really heartwarming to see students' research be turned into legislative initiatives.

Kirsten: Is this through the extension agents then that people can learn about it or find support for it?

Marla: No, it's a state agency. People can apply for money, particularly in underserved neighborhoods where there isn't a lot of green space, or Native American places all over the state. You apply for money. It's not a lot, but it's helpful. Then they give you help and instruction on how to get the habitat in. It can be a community project or just a private resident project. It's pretty cool.

Kirsten: I would imagine it's leading to a lot of community initiatives where you really end up with urban gardens and people getting together, and probably also for the first time, really being involved in habitat creation and what that does not just for their well-being, but for their mental health as well.

Marla: I think so. It's a really popular program. They've had to go back to the legislature several times for more funding over the years. That's exciting.

Kirsten: Do you get called in as an expert then quite often to offer ideas?

Marla: N. There are so many other experts. Spread the joy. There are so many other people that know much more about plants and maintenance and all of that stuff, so-

Kirsten: All right.

Marla: -no, I don't need to be there. [chuckles]

Kirsten: Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back.

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Kirsten: You've worked on understanding how honey bee colonies keep themselves healthy through social immunity, investigating the impacts of propolis. How did you first get interested in propolis?

Marla: Several things happened at once. I had taken a semester leave to go to Brazil and was quite impressed with propolis products for human health that you'd see in what would be a Walmart to us, so everywhere. Then the stingless bees that use so much resin in their nests. Then when I got back, there was a woman from the medical school that was studying alternative treatments for HIV. She had human brain cells in culture in the laboratory that she had inoculated with the HIV virus. They were infected with virus.

She was trying things like herbs and medicinal flora plants to see-- Like we do on our bees, supplements. She was putting these into the cell culture. It's crazy. She had a sore throat. She was from Eastern Europe herself originally, and she had a sore throat. She went to the Farmers Market. She wanted to make her own propolis tincture for herself, for her tea, and then realized, oh, she should try propolis in her cell culture. She made a tincture extract and then added it somehow to her cell culture, and it prevented the entry of the HIV into cells. It was actually active against the human HIV virus in cell culture.

Then it was like, "Wait a minute, this stuff is amazing." Then I saw a lecture by Christie-- I forget the author's name. This will be embarrassing, but from Switzerland. The guys used to work on ants. They were studying Formica ants that put globules of spruce resin into their ant mound, and the benefits it did for the ants. That's when Mike Simone-Finstrom and I looked at each other and went, "Whoa. This is what it's doing for the bees. Propolis is calling us. We got to go look at this." It was many things all at once.

Kirsten: What were your first experiments into social immunity and propolis?

Marla: They were Mike's experiments really. We had to figure out how to create a propolis envelope inside of a box. He made a tincture and painted them on first. Then he started looking at the immune system, which is what we learned from the ants. We started looking at gene expression of antimicrobial peptides, and finding that as with the ants, honeybees that have this propolis lining, their immune systems are quieter. They're not as activated because the propolis is killing off the microbes, the opportunistic and pathogenic microbes, for them.

That was a really surprising and beautiful result, but it was really Mike's thing. Everybody gives me credit, but it was Mike's baby. [chuckles]

Kirsten: Yes. Some of your students like Mike have gone on to their own full research careers. He is doing well in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. What does that do for you when you see this next generation of bee scientists?

Marla: Oh, I'm just really proud. Really, really proud of the students. So many students have come to me with, "Let me try this idea," and I'll go, "Wow. I don't know that that's going to be such a good idea." Then they persist anyway, and then they come up with these crazy, incredible results. Renata Borba did. Almost every student did this. I'm just really happy for them, and that makes me really optimistic. I plan to retire at the end of this year, knowing that they and other students from other labs are out there. Just carry on, go for it.

Kirsten: Bee research, as you just mentioned yourself, continues to advance and change. What shifts in focus and tools have you experienced?

Marla: Right now I think we're what I'm going to call under the hood a lot. We're looking at how things are either wired or genetically expressed or all the omics. We're really under the hood. I would say in many respects we're in the natural history phase of what's under the hood. Of describing what the genes are. What the sequence is. The proteomics, what they lead to. We're describing what we see without really fully understanding yet. We're getting there, but fully understanding what it all means. I really hope that we put it back together with really basic biology and natural history.

My preference is the behavioral end of it. To come up with questions about the behavior, and then peek under the hood and go, "Oh, I don't know how to look at this," but what lab is looking in this? How can we use somebody else's techniques to investigate this problem or call in a specialist to help us understand that problem? It's a roundabout way of saying that I hope that our questions begin with real-life biology questions, and then go under the hood and figure out what the mechanisms are in any way rather than just looking at mechanistic things.

Kirsten: A real tie between perhaps the genetics and the phenotypic behavior that you're seeing. Going from the field back into the lab and from the lab back into the field.

Marla: Not only the phenotype for the colony, but at the population level and the ecology, we really need the whole gamut, right?

Kirsten: It's a big shifting world, and I think there's a lot of opportunities. I think sometimes people go at problems without having potentially the bee experience of working with a hive and understanding the phenomenon they're witnessing. I think part of me, and perhaps it's because I started in beekeeping and ended up in science, always hopes for more scientists who really have a feel for the organism that they're working with. Maybe that's my own bias. I don't know. [chuckles]

Marla: Well, it's my bias too, but in different strokes, people can get into things differently. Believe in whatever works. I think it's all going to be okay.

Kirsten: You've been a mentor to many, many students over time. What have you learned from your students?

Marla: Everything. [laughter] How to be good, a better person, to how to do these particular scientific experiments, to everything. How to keep people and myself motivated and moving down a path. A lot of times what my job is is keeping them in their bowling lane. [chuckles] Just keep going. You're moving toward the gutter, get up, come on, let's go back in. I think that's one of the funnest parts of my job, is mentoring students. Now I can say it because I'm older, but young people are incredible and also creative. I just love introducing them to beekeepers or beekeeping and watching eyes light up and watching questions come out. I just think it's really fun, rewarding.

Kirsten: I concur. I have my own students for the first time. Watching them develop and see what they start with and then the challenges they face and how they deal with issues that don't work out quite the way they were expecting and how they rethink a problem, is fascinating to watch. It's a nice back-and-forth. I think we each benefit from the knowledge base of the other. They bring a lot of energy, they bring a lot of fresh ideas and new technologies, and I think that's the part that's really, really enjoyable. Over your career in bee research, what has tickled your interest most?

Marla: I think beekeepers, particularly commercial beekeepers, still fascinate me. This is a group of people that are fascinating. That have chosen to work with thousands of bee colonies for a living. Like I said earlier, they're very inventive and creative so beekeepers always fascinate me, tickle me. The bees do too, just as much. Maybe more. The tie-ins with other social insects that, oh, bees and ants for social immunity have different but similar mechanisms. Termites and all the social insects for me are everything. That's what really interests me. I was going to say, what gets me up in the morning, but that's not it. [laughter] I just wake up.

Kirsten: It's fascinating when you put that many organisms together in a very tight-knit community dealing with a lot of microbes. I'm fascinated by their ability to always, regardless of what habitat we put them into, find the resources that they need to self-medicate and to really care for themselves.

Marla: Yes. It's not only the medication but just the whole social organization. All of Tom Seeley's work, Rob Page's work, your own work on how everything is organized and self-organized, it is just a marvel. It's just so inspiring.

Kirsten: Do you think we can learn something from the bees?

Marla: Probably not. I think we should, but I don't think we can self-organize like that. I don't think humans are-- We're not quite cut out for that. We're not that social.

Kirsten: What gets in the way with humans do you think?

Marla: Oh, our egos.

Kirsten: Yes, probably. [chuckles] Our egos, our pride, our wanting to be great.

Marla: Our greed. Our greed.

Kirsten: Yes.

Marla: Well, I think ants and bees probably can be greedy too. We have robbers and slave makers, so maybe that's not it so much. It's just we are still an individual. We're still independent and not a colony or a hive mind.

Kirsten: Where do you see that we still have potential gaps that need addressing?

Marla: I think there's lots with social immunity that hasn't been looked into. For example, what about venom? Venom is so integral for ants. Are honeybees using their venom in some way or are there other antimicrobial secretions? What's in the big salivary glands that go into the thorax, for example? I don't know. I'm just coming up with stuff. I think there's a lot with Varroa resistance that we don't know about.

I'm looking at colonies that are living without treatment right now, and I am looking at all of the traits that I know, how to measure the hygienic behavior and recapping and mite infertility, and nothing is really corresponding with why these colonies live and keep the mite levels low.

There's something the bees are doing that we don't know about yet. I'm secretly happy that the bees still have some mysteries that-

Kirsten: There's still questions.

Marla: -aces up their sleeves that we don't know yet. It's opportunities for other people, but also it's nice to have the bees just be bees and not have us know everything about them.

Kirsten: The mite populations, they are managing to keep them low in these colonies.

Marla: There were not bees that I bred  per se, I kind of curated a bunch of queens from different places. A lot of them came from the USDA lab in Baton Rouge, Nepal line, the Russian line, the Hilo line from Hawaii, and bees from here and there. Sue Cobey gave me some Caucasian queens. She had back-crossed to Carniolans . You get all these queens and not all of them can survive without treatment.

I was treating-- This wasn't a survival experiment, but after a while, after selecting off the top and moving colonies away from the area that were not doing as well or mite levels rose at the end of the season, you end up with colonies that just keep the mite levels low. We're testing them in areas.... I know there's still a lot of mite pressure there. There is a commercial beekeeper close by. Even so, half the colonies are more. Keep the mite levels to a point where they don't need treatment. It doesn't really correspond with any measure I know of.

The UBO assay. I can see them. They look like the UBO, the recapping, the Harbo's mite fertility scores or infertility scores, the freeze-killed brood test. All of those, a lot of the colonies, the surviving colonies have those traits. Not all of them. They seem to be indicators that there's resistant genes. I know that because they're living and the mites are low, but I don't really understand how or why yet.

I have samples in the freezer and maybe somebody that's maybe an under-the-hood kind of person will look at the-- dip into the -80 and have a blast someday looking at mechanisms.

Kirsten: What's going on. Yes.

Marla: It was a goal of mine to see bees living without treatment before I retire. It was just a personal goal. I know that that's not really what I'm supposed to be doing here at the university. It's working on my own personal goals, but it's just really nice to open up a colony first thing in the spring and there they are, they're alive and they look healthy. They remind me of the bees that I used to see in the early '90s and '80s and '70s. I've been keeping bees a long time. Healthy bees just are a different animal, and we just haven't seen healthy bees around here in so long. Just to see them is just heartwarming.

Kirsten: We focused on a lot of things we can classify an assay, but as you say, it's the unit and it needs to function as a unit. Maybe it's not one big smoking gun of hygienic behavior this or reduced mite, but it's little parts adding up here and adding up there. Just as with intelligence or with height, it's not one marker.

Marla: Exactly. I think that's what it is. It's a whole host of things, and I don't know what they all are. I love being in places where I don't know where I am. I just think that's the most exciting place on earth. That I don't understand it is just fine with me.

Kirsten: It's very exciting you've been able to achieve the goal of seeing healthy colonies doing well on their own. That must be quite a thrill.

Marla: It really is, yes.

Kirsten: I have a question I always ask everybody I have on the show. If you had to choose a plant or a pollinator to represent you, what would it be?

Marla: That is such a hard question. Well, let's see. On one hand, it would be something that's so persistent. If it was a plant, it'd probably be a weed, but something persistent. Maybe Lasioglossum. Hey, I have a bee already now. [laughs] You know what? How about a cottonwood tree?

Kirsten: A cottonwood tree. Why a cottonwood tree? I don't know anything about cottonwood trees, so you'll have to paint a picture for me.

Marla: That's the source of propolis in our area, and probably in your area too in Germany. It's been known by Native Americans forever that it's a medicinal plant. The leaf buds they've been using in traditional medicines forever. That's where our bees are collecting most of the propolis. It's just a beautiful tree.

Kirsten: I'm sure I know it. It's probably what we call a poplar here.

Marla: It's a Populus. Yes, I'm sure you have them there. If you snap off a leaf bud and smell it-

Kirsten: You'll smell Populus.

Marla: -you'll say, "Oh, there it is. That's my--"

Kirsten: I know that smell. [laughs]

Marla: Yes.

Kirsten: Thank you so much, Marla.

Marla: Thank you.

Kirsten: It's been a blast. I'm so glad you've stuck in bee research and inspired so many people.

Marla: Well, me too. [laughs] Why not?

Kirsten: What are you planning on doing once you retire, do you know? Are you just going to take your bike and enjoy life?

Marla: I really don't know. I'd like to get the genetics of these bees that I'm seeing right now. I'd like to get the genetics into some commercial bee operations on a very small scale. Like I said I have some ideas on how to do that so it's not just sitting there, so it really isn't just for me. [chuckles] I would like to give it to beekeepers somehow. Like I said, I had some ideas on how to do that. I'll continue to work on that, but after that I really have no plan, which is-- I feel like a teenager leaving the house. It's like, "I'm free. I can do what I want."

Kirsten: You should do what you want.

Marla: I will. [laughs]

Kirsten: I'm sure you will.

Marla: I have no doubt.

Kirsten: You have a way of doing what you want all these years as well. Insights.

Marla: Yes. Ask my parents. [laughs]

Kirsten: Our parents are there to be irritated by our choices and then proud of us when it works out.

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Marla: That's right.

Kirsten: All right, Marla. Thank you so much. Been a real pleasure.

Marla: Likewise. Thanks. Bye-bye.

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