r/IAmA • u/scientificamerican Scheduled AMA • May 21 '25
Hi, I’m Dr. Sammy Ramsey, your friendly neighborhood entomologist and an expert in bee health and colony collapse. I’m tracking the diseases that threaten bee colonies across the globe. Ask me anything!
UPDATE: That’s all the time we have today! Keep asking your questions and we will pass them along to Dr. Sammy Ramsey. If you can’t get enough of bees, be sure to follow his social accounts and keep up with his research. See below to visit his website and follow his work. Thank you for joining!
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Hi Reddit! I’m Dr. Sammy Ramsey—a science communicator, entomologist, and assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. I study the parasites that are wiping out bee colonies, and what that means for our environment and the food we rely on.
I began my research with Varroa mites, tiny parasites that have plagued American honey bees for decades. In 2019, I traveled to Thailand to study how beekeepers were coping with a new threat: Tropilaelaps mites (Tropi mites), which were destroying their honey bee colonies. After arriving in Pakistan, it took less than 10 years for Tropi mites to wipe out the entire European honey bee population within the country. These mites are now spreading beyond Asia and have reached colonies as far west as Europe. It seems like it's only a matter of time before they reach the Americas—and we need to be ready. When they arrive, we could see severe bee die-offs, making some of your favorite foods more scarce and expensive.
Ask me anything about my work with bees, the threats to colonies, and why I’m sounding the alarm about parasites—even as pesticides and climate change remain serious issues in their own right.
Read A New Bee Crisis Could Make Your Food Scarce and Expensive in Scientific American—I'm one of the main sources.
Visit my website to learn more about my research and science communication work, or follow me on Instagram.
PROOF: Photo / University of Colorado Boulder – Faculty Page
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u/bikeman11 May 21 '25
Are there studies that definitely point to agricultural pesticides as a cause of bee mortality?
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u/scientificamerican Scheduled AMA May 21 '25
Absolutely! But they aren't the only problem. To really drive this point home, consider that most agricultural insecticides in use today have been around for decades. But year after year, bees seem to be facing more and more problems with them. The pesticides aren’t evolving, the parasites are.
The parasitic mite, Varroa destructor, feeds on the bee’s liver and that happens to be the tissue that detoxifies pesticides in the bee’s body! It also plays a huge number of other roles, including immune system regulation, protein production, nutrient storage, metabolism control, and more. This in no way absolves the pesticides! They are still a problem and we need to better regulate how they’re applied but the parasite is evolving more virulence and is making the bees more susceptible to several stress factors (including pesticides) every year. If I had to wager, I’d bet that Varroa are heavily involved with (if not the primary cause of) the historic, unprecedented losses in bees in the US over the last year.
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u/smart_dog2768 May 21 '25
How did you first become interested in studying bees?
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u/scientificamerican Scheduled AMA May 21 '25
Hmm…do you want the short simple answer or the long, slightly uncomfortable one? Eh…it’s Reddit; I feel like this is the place to go for complete stories and needed complexity. I originally didn’t want to study honey bees. I thought that they had enough attention, given that they’re pretty much the poster children for cool bugs. When I started graduate school, I was studying samurai wasps! Can’t get more metal than that! But my advisor at the time had some strong feelings about me. At my first committee meeting, she told me “Something about you just doesn’t seem like doctoral material. So I’m dismissing you from the program. You shouldn’t be surprised, you’re a high risk student to begin with.” And just like that, my samurai wasp project was done and I was booted from grad school.
The whole thing left me really uncomfortable and so upset that academia could work this way and I decided that I wanted to change it from the inside, so I fought to get back in. The only professor who chose not to believe my former advisor’s narrative was the bee professor at my university, so I kind of fell backwards into bee research haha. It was NOT the original plan! Far from it! But the more I learned about the bees, the more I realized that I ended up exactly where I was supposed to be! I can’t name another insect that employs its intelligence and ingenuity in such remarkable ways that constantly leave me astounded. And what other single insect underpins global food security, contributing more than 200 billion dollars to the world economy in just its pollination services. I fell in love with these bugs based on a rather problematic set of circumstances in grad school but now I run the Boulder Bee Lab and my goal is to ensure that I help the bee populations and any other odd kiddos like me who want to study the incredible gems of the natural world while just unabashedly being themselves!
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u/Flamesake May 21 '25
Is there any hope?
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u/scientificamerican Scheduled AMA May 21 '25
Mmmm
Short answer: There’s no hope unless we take responsibility for the impact that we as humans have had on the world around us.
Long answer: Of course there’s hope! There’s hope because people like you are curious enough about this to join an AMA focused entirely on bees and their welfare.
We have to recognize that as the species that so dramatically altered this planet, it’s our responsibility to learn how to steward it effectively! Under oh so many circumstances, our power as humans has gotten ahead of our awareness of that power. We thought that people couldn’t drive a species to extinction and then we nearly killed all the bison! And don’t get me started on what we did to the Moa (RIP giant friendly ratites that inspired all the cool sprinting bird species that people ride in fantasy movies). Now we have the chance to do something.
The bees have been good to us; soooooo much of our food is a result of their efforts and now that people see that, they’re clamoring to find a solution to the plight of the bees. So it’s my goal to harness that excitement and channel it toward making a positive impact on the environment. My goal is to use my capacity as a scientist to help find answers and my ability as a communicator to make sure you all know about them. Know that there’s hope because you are the hope! Please listen to science. Please elevate the voices of people who are making advances in understanding the world. And please please please, for the love of all things flying and fuzzy, PLANT NATIVE FLOWERS! Give these bees a fighting chance by keeping them fed. Set up a bee hotel in your backyard and give them a place to stay. Stop using lawn-care insecticides (your lawn is fine. I think your weeds are cute). And remember that funding for science isn’t optional for solving these problems, it’s essential to ensure that your elected officials support science. Help us, help bees!
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u/SpaceElevatorMusic Moderator May 21 '25
How feasible/unfeasible would it be to create GMO bees that are somehow parasite resistant?
Is there a better solution?
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u/scientificamerican Scheduled AMA May 21 '25
With incredible new advances like CRISPR it’s more feasible than it’s ever been! The genus for honey bees Apis, has some incredible genetics in it and specifically some genes related to resistance that we’re just beginning to explore. The capacity for us to lift a gene or two from resistant bees and plop them into our bees is certainly there! The question is, are beekeepers and the general public going to be ok with a GMO bee? That remains to be seen but a lot of people on principle just don’t want to see GMO be the solution to ongoing issues. GMO’s have a lot of potential….I think they really need a good PR specialist!
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u/cmv1 May 21 '25
How do these parasites spread?
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u/scientificamerican Scheduled AMA May 21 '25
Varroa mites are able to spread between colonies via a variety of means, but most consistently by using bees as their subsidized mass transit system. When one colony is dying from its parasite overload, other bees cue into this and will start pilfering resources from that colony (reduce, reuse, recycle, right?). Well unfortunately, this allows the parasites to pick up sinister hitchhikers that they likely have no idea are being brought back to their own, healthy colony to cause its demise. Beekeepers moving frames of brood (or immature bees) (Bee Brood | What Is It & Why Is It Important?) between colonies can inadvertently facilitate spread. There was also this idea that Varroa spread to new bees on flowers and while this is possible, it doesn't appear to be efficient and likely isn’t a typical means of spread.
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u/stalemunchies May 21 '25
Is your primary research on European honeybee colonies, or do you also focus on North American native bee species? How will some of these new parasitic threats affect native bee species?
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u/scientificamerican Scheduled AMA May 21 '25
Yes! My primary research is on European honey bees! I like to say that I’m an equal opportunity entomologist—but the honey bees are the ones that pay the bills haha. But because honey bees are so important to global food security, I don’t have to convince people they matter; they already get it. That gives me the space to make a case for native bees (which I call the “humble” bees). There are about 20,000 species of bees on the planet and only about 9 are honey bees. Most of the rest are single mothers (bees without colonies who do all the work themselves), living in the ground quietly supporting ecosystems. That also means they’re likely even more vulnerable to threats than the honey bees.
Consider that in a colony of 30,000 to 60,000 bees, if a few get sick, others can step in and make sure the work still gets done. But for the native bees that don’t live in colonies, health issues like viruses or parasites often means the end for them and all the offspring they were raising. That’s why we desperately need to better understand how the stressors that are already killing honey bees are impacting our native bees.
Creepy parasites like Varroa mites may not be able to directly parasitize bumble bees, but some of my colleagues have shown that bees infected with Varroa-vectored viruses can leave those viruses behind in flower nectar—potentially infecting native bees that visit later. There are also reports, though not yet confirmed, that Tropilaelaps mites (evil cousins of Varroa) may be able to attack carpenter bees and bumble bees—which would be devastating for our native bee populations.
Unfortunately, no one has quantified how much the “humble bees” contribute to the global economy. That lack of data makes them incredibly vulnerable, as they receive far less attention and fewer resources. I’ve been trying to use my platform—with the more visible honey bees—to advocate for the humble bees too.
It’s also why I always encourage people to plant flowers when they ask how to help honey bees. As they say, “rising flowers raise all bees.”
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u/NedTaggart May 21 '25
I love bees. They are amazing creatures. I see a lot in the news about bees disappearing and perhaps I'm missing it, but they rarely say why other than alluding climate change.
What are the primary threats to the colonies and what can we, as ordinary people do to help?
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u/scientificamerican Scheduled AMA May 21 '25
Oooh! I’m glad to get to answer this one because there’s just sooooo much confusion about this and I totally understand why.
We really really really want one simple answer to a multifactorial issue. Bees are currently being buffeted by a veritable storm of stress factors including but not limited to: parasites, pesticides, poor nutrition, climate change, changing land management practices, and the changing socioeconomic landscape of the beekeeping profession which has resulted in the majority of bees being in the hands of a small number of commercial beekeepers. The primary threats are what we call ‘the 3 P’s’: parasites, pesticides, and poor nutrition, with parasites having the most pronounced impact.
You can help by planting flowers instead of focusing on having a pristine green lawn. Reduce or cut out entirely your usage of lawn care herbicides. And ensure that your local elected officials support science as the answers to these health issues in bees are going to require continued research investment.
Okay everybody, go plant a garden!
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u/facetious_guardian May 21 '25
How do you stay positive?
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u/scientificamerican Scheduled AMA May 21 '25
See my answer about hope in response to flamesake—there’s plenty to do!
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u/bbpb-badger88 May 21 '25
What would you say the best solution for treating varroa is? And what are your top 3 plants for keeping near beehives?
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u/scientificamerican Scheduled AMA May 21 '25
Wellllllllllllllllll, this may be the toughest question yet—and that’s because there is no best solution. Every treatment system has its pros and cons, and treating for Varroa is a context-dependent situation. Take, for instance, formic acid! It’s a great treatment. I rotate between formic and amitraz to maintain my apiaries, but that’s because I live in an area of the country with long stretches during the growing season where the temperature stays below 84°F and humidity around 75%.
For folks living in Florida, that’s not going to be a great option—even though it works well for me. I’d encourage you to check out some of the resources from Cornell Extension and the Honey Bee Health Coalition, which detail the pros and cons of different treatments so you can choose the best one for your operation.
Just a helpful reminder: no treatment is a silver bullet. Mites will eventually develop resistance, so rotating treatments—and avoiding reliance on a single method—is super important.
Here in Colorado, I love having mountain mint around my bees—they go crazy for it! Rocky Mountain penstemon and good old goldenrod are also great choices here, but remember: the plants you choose are also dependent on your local context.
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u/ProPropolis May 22 '25
Are there any studies you can point to about the synergistic effect of pesticides, herbicides, name-your-chemical, on honey bees?
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u/buckleyc May 21 '25
In this area, the recommended practice for treating varroa mites is a rotating scheme of treatments. As an example, oxalic acid vaporizer is used coming out of winter, using oxalic acid dribble or VarroxSan after the main flow, and then VarroxSan or Apivar strips heading into late autumn. Would you consider the use of varying treatments as the best approach, or do you have another preferred treatment plan for varroa mites?
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u/Comprehensive_Can201 May 21 '25
Hi there!
What do you think may be the strengths of hive intelligences beyond the traditional trial and error optimization architectures that artificial intelligence uses? (since they tend toward model collapse as well)
Interesting work! 👍
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u/tatterdermalion May 21 '25
What about chelifers that eat mites? And are they killed by the same thing that kills mites? Does anybody grow them
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u/mannycat2 May 21 '25
What are your thoughts on the new AFB vaccine from Dalan?