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The researchers also treated some colonies with only one dose of miticide, to see whether the Pol-line bees could survive with less help from the chemicals.

After two miticide treatments, half the commercial bee colonies survived the season, compared with 65% of the Pol-line, the team reports today in Scientific Reports.

Despite being entirely free of Varroa destructor—a devastating parasitic mite—at the start of the season, the hives required miticide treatments by late summer.

So far, routine miticide applications are sufficient to mitigate this problem.

Samuel Ramsey, who conducted the fat body research as part of his dissertation in vanEngelsdorp’s lab at the University of Maryland, says, “the holy grail is to add some sort of miticide into the feed of the bees” that could be absorbed in the fat body.