Fortifying the Future for Bees

North Carolina has one of the most diverse bee faunas east of the Rockies, and its largest university, NC State, is a national leader for pollinator research. 

“Raleigh is a Bee City USA, and NC State is a Bee Campus USA,” Applied Ecology Associate Professor Elsa Youngsteadt says. “We’re located in an area that specifically acknowledges and cares about this group of animals.”

Additionally, North Carolina agriculture and agribusiness generates more than $100 billion annually in economic impact. Honey bees alone pollinate $15 billion worth of fruits, vegetables and nuts in the United States every year. Bees are also essential for productive ecosystems, supporting a multitude of plants and animals. 

There are currently over 50 active research projects between the three bee laboratories in the Department of Applied Ecology. Researchers are studying the health of bees, from their microbiome to the landscapes they inhabit, all aiming to generate more buzz and healthier hives for these much needed pollinators.

Health of the Hive

University Scholar Professor David Tarpy is driven by his fascination with social insects, specifically honey bees. 

“The complex behavioral tapestry that social insects afford researchers is what interests me most, and how other biological disciplines such as genetics and genomics, chemical ecology, pathogen dynamics, foraging biology and evolutionary ecology are integrated into the same fascinating system,” he explains.

Investigating honey bee health is more important than ever. On average, beekeepers lose 40% of their colonies each year. Repeatedly building back lost colonies is expensive and has implications for agricultural industries. 

Just like us, honey bees sometimes take medications to improve their health. Powdered antibiotics are administered to colonies and transferred to larvae through social behaviors such as grooming and feeding. However, the treatment protocols need improvement.

“We are using a fluorescent dye system to investigate the transfer of surface-supplied antibiotic throughout honey bee colonies,” says Bradley Metz, research scholar in the Tarpy Lab. This research will help assess the effective dosing and variation in exposure. 

Another current project focuses on queen bees, the sole reproductive female for a colony. To better understand how the unique microbiome of honey bee queens affects their health, productivity and reproductive quality, Tarpy and his colleagues manipulate queen rearing conditions. “We can determine how this translates to the community of beneficial microbes in their guts and overall colony health,” Tarpy says. 

“The science in and of itself is incredibly fun,” Metz shares. “Our day-to-day work involves an extremely varied and sometimes improvised set of skills and tasks that leads from highly technical to highly physical and everything in between.” 

Besides benefiting bees, honey bee research in the Tarpy Lab provides hands-on research experience for undergraduate students. “The NC State Apiculture program doesn’t exist without student researchers,” Metz says. 

Wild Bees in Urban Places

Associate Professor Elsa Youngsteadt researches bees that live in urban ecosystems. While cities are well-established and continue to grow, the field of urban ecology is fairly new. 

“Sometimes it still feels like a whole new ecosystem that we get to study,” Youngsteadt says. “I try to figure out how organisms cope, or don’t, with this completely new, weird environment.” 

As you may have experienced on a sunny day, urban environments can feel hotter than a natural landscape. The combination of pavement and a lack of vegetation causes heat to become trapped, which may impact bee health. 

“From past research, we already know that urban heat islands can be stressfully hot for some bees in Raleigh,” Youngsteadt explains. “But we would also expect the effects of warming to differ geographically – depending on whether the city is adding warmth to a cold climate, versus one that is already hot.”

Youngsteadt and her lab sampled bees in urban farms and community gardens in Detroit, Toledo, Raleigh, Durham, Atlanta, Athens, Denver, Fort Collins, Phoenix and Tucson. They measured the bees’ body temperature and hydration state while foraging, as well as their contributions to cucumber pollination. 

“We’re still processing the samples, but our goal is to find out whether heat or dehydration is a bigger concern, and to see how warming-driven changes in the bee community could affect pollination in urban farms,” Youngsteadt says. With this information, conservationists can more accurately predict where bees are most at risk.

Youngsteadt’s group is also researching which bee species may be the most susceptible to rising temperatures, and how bee loss may impact plant communities. After determining the thermal tolerance of five different bee species, graduate student Melina Schopler created a plant-pollinator network in flight cages, recording which bees visited which plants. Then, she created new networks by removing one bee species at a time, in order of their vulnerability to heat-driven extinction. 

The goal is to assess how a warming planet might change pollination networks and plant communities: Will some plants be left behind when their heat-intolerant pollinators drop out? Or will the remaining heat-tolerant bees step in to fill the gaps? This research is ongoing, but we can expect bee networks and plant communities to change as temperatures rise. 

Defeating Disease  

Just like us, bees catch and spread disease. In Professor Rebecca Irwin’s lab, Bianca Jimenez is studying how a fecal-orally transmitted gut pathogen called Crithidia bombi, which typically infects bumble bees, might spill back into bumble bee populations from different bee species. 

“There are three steps of Crithidia bombi transmission: deposition of infected feces on flowers, survival of the pathogen on flowers, and acquisition of the pathogen by bumble bees,” Jimenez explains. 

Her research assesses how each step affects the probability of pathogen spillback from various bee species to bumble bees. “By understanding the mechanisms of pathogen spillback,” Jimenez says, “we can get a better handle on how diseases spread and use that knowledge to support conservation and biodiversity efforts.”

Graduate student April Sharp, also a member of the Irwin Lab, is investigating if a pollen diet can reduce the intensity of Crithidia bombi infection. Previous research suggests that sunflower pollen reduces Crithidia bombi infection; however, the mechanism behind this phenomenon is unknown. Sharp is testing similarly shaped pollen to determine if pollen morphology is the key to bumble bee health. 

Flying Forward

While the future of bees is uncertain, Youngsteadt finds hope in the data. “Not all bees are going to be okay, but they are so diverse and respond differently to environmental changes, so some will surely stick around.” 

Future advances in honey bee research at NC State will be possible because of the unwavering support of the NC State Beekeepers Association (NCSBA). A new state-of-the-art Apiculture Research & Extension Center, funded with help from the NCSBA, will open in 2026 on Lake Wheeler Road. The 5,000-square-foot facility will be used by students, researchers and Extension agents. A screened-in porch will allow for up-close demonstrations of beekeeping for school groups and the general public. 

“We cannot thank the NCSBA enough for their support in securing the state legislative funding to make this building a reality,” Tarpy says. 

Additionally, the NCSBA secured funding for a $1 million endowment, creating a new Endowed Professorship in Apiculture and supporting NC State apiculture operational expenses. This support will enable NC State and the Department of Applied Ecology to be leaders in pollinator research for generations to come.

Discoveries of bee health from NC State researchers have direct real-world applications. “I really appreciate how well-connected the university is with growers and land managers,” Jimenez says. “It helps take our research beyond the lab to make a difference.”