Along with other pollinators honey bees are the unsung forces behind much of what people eat, drink and even wear.
Form follows function. This is the principle that the design or shape of something – whether made by humans or in nature – should serve a purpose.
Bee colonies are collapsing around the world. In Europe, a 2012-2014 survey, the first of its kind, by the European Commission estimated that some countries were losing as many as a third of their colonies every year. In addition to motility and velocity, our in-depth analyses provide data on, among other things, the swimming patterns of honey bee sperm. This fluorescent method shows promise and can, we argue, provide baseline data for future studies evaluating honey bee sperm quality.Choosy queen bees For now, South Africa and African honey bees appear to have been spared the colony losses seen in some parts of the world.
This is where form and function meet. Honey bee sperm has a very long tail, about 225 micrometres in length. It dwarfs the tails of the sperm of larger vertebrates, which are typically in the 40-75 µm range. Our research group has adapted and stacked existing technology to study the sperm of the black soldier fly and the Cape honey bee.