Dear Southerns Beekeepers Association,
I found your website really interesting, it is nice to see others beekeepers experience especially with African subspecies.
I am a Postdoctoral researcher from the Okinawa Institute of Sciences and Technology in Japan and I am part of the Ecology and Evolution unit working on honeybees. Our team is using new sequencing technologies to understand important questions about this amazing model. Actually we are seeking how the Varroa destructor mite pest was able to jump and invade so quickly the world. We hope that by sequencing its whole genome and comparing several strains we could bring new knowledge and improving colonies management.
We are looking for beekeepers who would be interested by this study and want to participate. For genomic purpose, we are looking for both mites (5 to 10+ for a colony) and honeybees (20-30 workers for a colony) that could be put into ethanol 95 tubes (will be provided). Of course all shipment fees will be at our charge and a compensation could be given for the honeybees collected. Do you think that beekeepers from your association would like to participate to this study?
I worked with honeybees for 6 years now and one of my impression is that African subspecies are disregarded for this kind of studies compared to European and Africanized honeybees. If we could help changing that, I think this will greatly help improve management of parasite.
Thank you for your consideration to this mail and if you have any questions please feel free to ask,
Best regards,
Maéva TECHER
Postdoctoral researcher at OIST
Okinawa Institute of Sciences and Technology,
Ecology and Evolution Mikheyev’s unit,
1919-1 Tancha, Onna-son, Kunigami-gun,
904-0495 Okinawa-ken, Japan
http://ecoevo.unit.oist.jp/site/