The Honeybee Genome Could Be Its Savior

Three millennia ago, Romans moved honeybee hives into their orchards to improve fruit quality.Today, we still depend on honeybees, or Apis mellifera, to pollinate more than three-quarters of flowering plants across the world, including pumpkins, blueberries, apples, avocados, and the half-million acres of almond trees in California.But ever since the parasitic varroa mite came to the U.S. in 1987, the honeybee population has been under siege. In the last 20 years, their numbers have dropped 30 percent, according to a report released on October 18th by the National Research Council (NRC).Now, a paper published in the Oct. 25 issue of the journal Nature is giving scientists new hope: An international team of researchers from nearly 100 institutions has sequenced the entire genome of A. mellifera, and the work may someday lead to a solution to the bees’ problematic population decline.Read more at...Seed, October 2006.