Location: Pollinating Insect-Biology, Management, Systematics Research
Project Number: 2080-30500-001-029-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: May 1, 2022
End Date: Dec 31, 2026
Objective:
1. Use Thermal imagery technology to quantify foraging behavior in general and compare behaviors exhibited by bees exposed to sulfoxaflor compared to unexposed bees.
2. Conduct an annual census of the alkali bee population abundance in Walla Walla County, WA.
3. Collect alkali bees, ALCB, and Agapostemon spp adults, larva, and pupae for analysis of the various pathogens that may be shared among these bee species.
4. Conduct topical direct contact bioassays with new candidate insecticides on ALCB and AB, notpreviously tested.
5. Test the establishment of physical barriers to prevent adult migration of Lygus from fields of alfalfa
produced for forage into fields of alfalfa produced for seed and how many bees are impacted by these barriers.
6. Conduct an annual census of the alkali bee population abundance in Walla Walla County, WA for 2024.
7. Conduct a species-level phylogeny of the North American Nomia to provide a framework for estimating the population-related metrics for N. melanderi in managed bee beds.
8. Conduct topical direct contact bioassays with candidate acaricides on ALCB and AB.
9. Identify the predators and parasitoids captured in research ALCB binder boards.
10. Investigate alternatives to DDVP-based kill strips in the incubator.
11. Investigate how in-season insecticide/ pesticide use in individual grower fields impacts rates of parasitism and predation of ALCB in storage and incubation.
Approach:
Objective 1. Uses established methodology
Objective 2: Investigate alternatives to DDVP-based kill strips in the incubator. Just prior to harvest in 2025 and 2026, we will visit our grower collaborators as detailed in Objective 1 and remove a full bee board from each domicile. These bee boards will be placed in cold storage after transport to the EAEL at WSU IAREC. Each bee board will be weighed and measured and then cut on a band saw into five equally sized pieces, allowing for five treatments per bee board. These pieces will then be placed in bug dorms as detailed in Objective 1 and incubated for one week at 30ºC (86ºF). The first two treatments will be commercially available brands of DDVP-containing kill strips. Two other treatments will be with dispensers of botanically based plant oils, likely the commercially available Mighty Mint Oil and TetraCurb (rosemary oil). The fifth will be an untreated control. The botanical oil dispensers will be placed in the bug dorms and each dispenser and board combination will be bagged in 33-gallon clear plastic bags and sealed with a twist tie. After two weeks the bug dorms will be moved from the plastic bags and the kill strips and sachet wicks containing the plant oils will be removed from the bug dorms. The bee boards in the bug dorms will then be incubated for an additional week.
After these four weeks the bug dorms and their bee board content will be individually transported to a walk-in cold room and held there for approximately 30 minutes at 3ºC (37.5°F). The bees remaining at the bottom of the bug dorm will removed and counted, identified to gender and rated for overall health. Remaining insect predators and parasitoids will be aspirated from the bottom of the bug dorm into small plastic vials and transported to the lab where they will be permitted to warm up. Live insects will be aspirated into separate vials and placed in a freezer. The contents of both sets of vials will be separated as live or dead and will be sorted under a dissecting microscope. The predators and parasitoids present will be quantified by group and identified to family, genus, and potentially species if possible. An analysis of variance will be calculated based on treatment and if treatment differences are noted a means separation test will be completed among treatments compared to the untreated controls.
Objective 3: Investigate how in-season insecticide/ pesticide use in individual grower fields impacts rates of parasitism and predation of ALCB in storage and incubation. Objective 3 dovetails with both of the previous objectives. Specifically, with Objective 1 we will request spray records from each of the growers participating in our study. We will perform a correlation analysis between insecticides applied to each field and dates of application with the emergence of ALCB and the parasitoids and predatory insects that emerge.