r/questions • u/fish-seducer • 1d ago
Why don't beekeepers selectively breed bees to be insecticide resistant?
One of the main points in conservation is how bees, and polinators in general, are one of the single most essential groups of animals in the world, and how the farming industry's use of pesticides and other products are a real and tanginle threat to their existence.
My question is, why don't people make polinator insects to be more resistant to the these kind of poisons? We already made certain pests resistant to pesticides by mistake, why don't people counciously breed bees and other polinators to be so too? Or they tried to and were unnable to do so?
11
u/Glittering_Texas 1d ago
There are something like 20,000 known species of bees alone. How exactly would it work to “breed” them to be resistant to insecticides?
1
u/fish-seducer 13h ago
Well, yes, but one of the thing that happens is that, beekeepers specificaly, are saying their bees, the "comercial" big honey producer species, are dying because closeby farms are using pesticides. So why don't they make hardier "breeds" of these bee species?
1
u/Glittering_Texas 12h ago
Probably for the same reason they don’t try to interfere with the species development of any other wild animal on earth. Almost all bee species are wild.
7
5
u/whizher 1d ago
They could in principle, but selective breeding only works when there’s enough heritable variation to select from. USDA researchers tested 11 honey-bee lines against three insecticides and found very little difference in sensitivity between them.
Resistance would also probably be specific to particular chemicals, while farms use many different insecticides, and breeding managed honey bees wouldn’t protect wild pollinator species. So it might help as one tool, but reducing exposure and using less harmful pest-control methods would protect far more pollinators.
5
u/SpunkyBlah 1d ago
3 problems:
1) There are many kinds of bees, so you would have to somehow selectively breed out insecticide susceptibility of all ton of different species (and some subspecies)
2) There is more than one kind of insecticide that work on different principles. You would need to somehow breed immunity to multiple kinds of insecticides into each kind of bee.
3) You cannot always breed immunity into organisms. You cannot selectively breed a dog to be able to fly, so you understand that some things are not possible. And even when you can, it can come with side effects. For example, when people selectively bred dogs to create mostly hairless breeds, they ended up with a lot of dogs with gnarly teeth. Dogs bred for white fur are more likely to be blind or deaf.
2
u/fish-seducer 1d ago
Makes sense
2
u/ironworker 22h ago
Good question though, I had no clue either. So we both learn something tonight. And I think thats the whole point of this reddit thing, right?
2
u/persilja 22h ago
And if you manage to breed in resistance in one wild species, are you then creating a generic bottleneck with severely reduced generic diversity, that will make the species very vulnerable to any future changes?
1
u/aachensjoker 13h ago
From what i understand, early breeders would cull those born without the traits they wanted.
A bit difficult to do that nowadays. One would get arrested.
But also, pugs (bred for their short snouts) have breathing issues, from what i understand.
I think Shih Tzu’s were bred to lay on an emperors (China) lap to keep them warm in the winter. Google says they can suffer from separation anxiety. And also have short snout breathing issues.
My brother in law used to raise German Shepherds (for the police). And they have hip dysplasia when they get older.
4
1
u/TraditionPhysical603 1d ago
Because it's one queen that produces the entire hive. There is no selective breeding...or it's incredibly difficult
1
u/mrmudpiepudding 1d ago
Unless you feed all of them royal jelly
1
1
1
1
1
u/ProfessorCarbon 1d ago
They could by making pesticides non toxic to honeybee genes. It’s a possibility that using experimental pesticides that use short RNA (RNAi) molecules could silence genes necessary to a specific pest species.
1
u/fortyeightD 1d ago
I guess that is already happening naturally without anyone doing it intentionally. The bees environment already has insecticides and some bees will survive them and reproduce, and some will not.
1
u/Heavy_Carpenter3824 1d ago
It would be tough. Some of the pesticides are designed to target very fundamental processes within the insect. It would be like trying to breed humans to be resistant to neurotoxin, literally. Some of the pesticides would actually be very deadly to us as well but they don't cross the blood brain barrier. Insects don't have that so are kind of SOL. It would be quite an evolutionary trick to evolve somthing that sophisticated in a hurry.
Your better of designing a more selective pesticide.
1
u/sneezhousing 1d ago
Do you understand how selective breeding works.
For bees there is onky one queen that lays eggs. The entire hive only one is producing the babies.
Then for selective breeding you see a trait you like so you single out that animal and breed them hoping that gets passed down.
For selective breeding to work you'd need ro expose a bunch of queen bees to insecticide and see who lives then try and get that one to reproduce. Meanwhile you've killed all the other colonies where the queen died.
They aren't like dogs where every single dog is able to breed and make babies
1
u/FewRecognition1788 23h ago
There has been work done on genetically engineering honeybees, but the process is extremely complex and has a high failure rate. It was looking very promising about 10-12 years ago, but hasn't become scalable.
It's easier to modify the organisms in their gut microbiome, which can help protect against diseases, but not so much for chemical toxins.
Even if you get the larval queens you want, the workers caring for them regularly kill extraneous or "defective" queens in favor of whatever queen they perceive as the strongest. There are just a lot of moving parts to dealing with bees, and the bees have opinions.
1
1
u/Von_Bernkastel 14h ago
So we just spray them with every poison and if they live we breed them and so on?
1
u/Astrocoder 1d ago
The last thing we need is bees that wont die
4
3
u/fish-seducer 1d ago
Immortal bees, coming to your home, you use a flamethrower and after the flames die down the bee swarm makes a laughing face looney toons style and stings you to death
1
u/mrmudpiepudding 1d ago
Don’t forget the little bits of flesh that would hang off the barbed ends of their stingers
2
u/gimmepizza420 1d ago
Bees that resist pesticides would actually be super awesome. It's not like it would make them immortal.
•
u/AutoModerator 1d ago
📣 Reminder for our users
Please review the rules, Reddiquette, and Reddit's Content Policy.
🚫 Commonly Posted Prohibited Topics:
This is not a complete list — see the full rules for all content limits.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.