SELECTING AND PRODUCING VIRUS-RESISTANT HONEY BEES

This project has the principal goal of identifying honey bees carrying traits that suppress viral infection and/or replication and using the selected, genetically-resistant honey bees to produce subsequent generations of honey bees with enhanced resistance to viruses and/or less variable resistance to honey bee viruses.The subgoals of the project are:i) demonstrating the efficacy of highthroughput screening of drones for enhanced resistance using a visual screen following virus injection (idenfication of drones with superior resistance to virus infection and virus replication requires injection of drones with an infectious clone of Deformed Wing Virus harboring a luciferase reporter construct);ii) evaluating progeny of honey bee queens inseminated with semen of drones carrying visually evident virus resistance, and demonstrating that drone offspring of these progeny queens exhibit enhanced and/or less variable DWV virus resistance than do progeny of queens inseminated with semen of drones that are not DWV virus resistant.