Meghan Holden

mholden@jconline.com

A group of masked figures draped in head-to-toe garb eagerly swarmed a honey bee colony Saturday morning at the Purdue University Honey Bee Laboratory.

The Beekeepers of Indiana members had successfully executed their breeding experiment to learn how to rear queen bees, thanks to a crash course by Purdue entomology researcher Krispn Given.

The class was just one of many at the Purdue Bee Lab Field Day, which brought in a record crowd Saturday.

"The interest is just overwhelming now," Given said.

The spike in interest from beekeepers and the public comes as the country has continued to lose hives in recent years due to diseases, pesticides, the loss of biodiversity and the mysterious colony collapse disorder.

Purdue is contributing to the fight against honey bee decline by building a healthier, more sustainable population.

Given and fellow entomology expert Greg Hunt lead efforts at the university to increase the population of bees who can fight off Varroa mites that carry viruses and pose the largest threat to colonies.

Back in 2007, the team noticed when they put sticky boards in colonies to collect mites that some were chewed or missing legs, indicating that bees were fighting back against them, Given said.

So, they started selecting and raising bees with the mite-biting trait, which made up less than 10 percent of their bee population.

Now, after continuing this selection process, about half of them possess it, he said.

And it seems to be helping their colonies thrive.

Nationwide, beekeepers lost 44 percent of their honey bee colonies from April 2015 to April 2016, according to the Bee Informed Partnership.

But Purdue's 110 colonies experienced only a 12 percent loss, Given said.

"That just makes us feel all the hard work of selecting is paying off, but it’s one step at a time," he said.

The bee lab is also affecting colonies outside Purdue.

Breeders from the Heartland Honey Bee Breeders Cooperative, which is made up of states across the Midwest, bring their queen bees to the lab every year for an "insemination fest," where the Purdue researchers artificially inseminate their bees with semen from drones, or male bees, from colonies with the mite-biting trait.

Mindy Appold, a landscape architecture professor at Purdue, is also working to save the bees with a new garden near the lab that will be filled with diverse plants containing pollen and nectar for the honey-makers.

She's seeking volunteers to help with her goal to build an educational garden that will allow kids to come and learn about bees, Purdue research and the connection between plant diversity and bee health.

"What we choose to plant really does make a difference," Appold said.