WBKA Winter Zoom Talks – The Perilous Life of Drones by Dr Alison McAfee

An abundance of healthy, high-quality drones are necessary to produce top-notch queens, but extreme temperatures linked to climate change could be impairing their fertility. Worryingly, the drones’ sperm, as well as the male bees themselves, can die at temperatures that are now occurring during heat waves. In an effort to better understand factors affecting drone heat resilience, we tested how geographic origin of the population, Africanization, body size, and viral infections influenced drone and sperm heat tolerance.

Speaker: Dr Alison McAfee, University of British Columbia

Alison completed her Ph.D. in Genome Science and Technology at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and is now a postdoc at UBC and North Carolina State University. She is a L’Oreal For Women in Science Research Excellence Fellow and her research has been reported by Scientific American, National Geographic, and CBC, among other venues. When she is not looking at bee sperm under the microscope, she enjoys long, steep hikes, fishing, and training horses with her dressage coach.

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