7/2/24
Two obsessions preside over this household. In recent years, I have become dotty about bees. At the same time, my wife has become besotted with fungi.
For both of us, these interests have occasionally led to faint, distant, incoherent apprehensions of the supernatural. I seek and sometimes sense the divine in the hive. She finds it in mycelium – the root-like structure of fungi through which they may conduct some form of communication. In her case, however, being a profoundly knowledgeable naturalist, the reverence goes further. When I told her that the poet Norman MacCaig once said, “Landscape is my divinity” she replied, “Diversity in nature is my divinity.”
Her prime focus, however, is on mushrooms.
When she takes our dog for a walk in the woods in autumn, she mooches along with her eyes fixed to the ground like a truffle- hound (so preoccupied can she become that the dog once wandered off and she didn’t notice). She has declared sections of our garden to be strictly off-limits for lawnmowers and strimmers because they are so rich in fungi. Shelves in our house are overflowing with jars of mushrooms that she has dried and stored. Our younger daughter became so sick of the smell of mushrooms pervading the whole house from the oven in the kitchen that she says she has been put off for life.
I had assumed that these fascinations were separate and would remain so: she had her interest and I had mine and never the twain should meet. However, a talk last week on Zoom organised by the Scottish Beekeepers’ Association has put aid to that ignorant assumption.
An impressively qualified young man named Dr Nicholas Naeger was speaking to us online from his office in Washington State University. His subject? “Using fungi to help bees”.
According to Dr Naeger, fungi can be useful to bees in two ways:
1) As a form of feed
2) To kill varroa mites
Apparently, fungal exudates contain nutrients that are very similar to pollen. Fungi produce a “high amount” of sterols (unsaturated steroid alcohols) and a wide range of phenolic compounds such as are also found in dark-skinned berries and pomegranates all of which are as good for bees as they are for humans.
At the same time, Dr Naeger and his colleagues (along with other researchers around the world) have established that varroa mites are very susceptible to entomopathogenic fungi. They have developed a new strain of mold-like fungus called Metarhizium which can eradicate varroa – the mites that feed on bees and can kill a colony – and are planning to turn it into a product which can be administered to hives.
Bees themselves are said to be highly resistant to the spores of Metarhizium and are not harmed by its application. Metarhizium works by drilling into the mite and killing it from within even while the mite is feeding on the bee.
Naturally, authorities around the world will need to approve this product before beekeepers can take advantage of its benefits.
In the meantime, Dr Naeger says that the best way beekeepers can encourage fungi to be of use to bees is to leave areas of the garden untended, “where leaves can decay and where woods can decay”.
I’m sure my wife will approve of that.