(音樂)
(Music)
These bees are in my backyard in Berkeley, California. Until last year, I'd never kept bees before, but National Geographic asked me to photograph a story about them, and I decided, to be able to take compelling images, I should start keeping bees myself. And as you may know, bees pollinate one third of our food crops, and lately they've been having a really hard time. So as a photographer, I wanted to explore what this problem really looks like. So I'm going to show you what I found over the last year.
這些是我在加州柏克萊房子後院的蜜蜂。 一直到去年,我從來沒有飼養過蜜蜂, 但是國家地理頻道請我拍下蜜蜂的故事, 於是我決定,為了拍到令人信服的照片, 我應該開始自己養蜂。 如你所知, 蜜蜂為我們三分之一的農作物傳粉, 最近蜜蜂的生存狀況不是很好。 所以,身為攝影師, 我想探索這個問題的真實長相。 所以接下來將展示我去年的發現成果。
This furry little creature is a fresh young bee halfway emerged from its brood cell, and bees right now are dealing with several different problems, including pesticides, diseases, and habitat loss, but the single greatest threat is a parasitic mite from Asia, Varroa destructor. And this pinhead-sized mite crawls onto young bees and sucks their blood. This eventually destroys a hive because it weakens the immune system of the bees, and it makes them more vulnerable to stress and disease.
這個毛茸茸的小生物 是一隻正從撫幼室出來的新蜜蜂, 目前蜜蜂正面臨幾個生存難題, 包括殺蟲劑,疾病,和棲息地的減少。 其中,最大一種威脅來自亞洲的寄生蟲, 瓦螨。 這個針頭大小的螨蟲爬到幼蜂身上, 吸吮他們的血。 這最後造成整個蜂窩的毀滅, 因為瓦螨會降低蜜蜂的免疫力, 讓他們無法抵抗壓力和疾病。
Now, bees are the most sensitive when they're developing inside their brood cells, and I wanted to know what that process really looks like, so I teamed up with a bee lab at U.C. Davis and figured out how to raise bees in front of a camera. I'm going to show you the first 21 days of a bee's life condensed into 60 seconds.
這時蜜蜂處於其最敏感時期, 他們正在撫幼室內進行發育。 為了解這個過程到底真相為何, 所以我和加州大學戴維斯分校的蜜蜂實驗室合作, 設法在攝影機前養育蜜蜂。 下面將為你展示一隻蜜蜂生命最開始的21天, 濃縮成60秒鐘。
This is a bee egg as it hatches into a larva, and those newly hatched larvae swim around their cells feeding on this white goo that nurse bees secrete for them. Then, their head and their legs slowly differentiate as they transform into pupae. Here's that same pupation process, and you can actually see the mites running around in the cells. Then the tissue in their body reorganizes and the pigment slowly develops in their eyes. The last step of the process is their skin shrivels up and they sprout hair. (Music)
這是一個蜜蜂卵,他正在孵化成幼蟲, 這些新孵化的幼蟲在撫幼室中到處游動, 吃這些保育蜂分泌的白色粘液。 然後,他們的頭和腿慢慢的分化出來, 變態成蛹。 這是同一次蛹化過程, 但你可看到螨在撫幼室內到處爬動。 然後他們體內組織重新排列, 色素慢慢在其眼中積累。 最後一步是表皮變皺, 體毛開始生長。 (音樂)
So -- (Applause)
所以---(掌聲)
As you can see halfway through that video, the mites were running around on the baby bees, and the way that beekeepers typically manage these mites is they treat their hives with chemicals. In the long run, that's bad news, so researchers are working on finding alternatives to control these mites.
就像你在影片中途所看到的, 螨蟲在幼蜂周圍爬, 養蜂人一般控制這些螨蟲的方法為 對著蜂巢噴灑化學藥品。 長久來說,這非好事, 所以研究員正尋找其他方案, 來控制這些螨蟲。
This is one of those alternatives. It's an experimental breeding program at the USDA Bee Lab in Baton Rouge, and this queen and her attendant bees are part of that program.
這就是其中一個方案。 這個實驗性的育種計畫, 由位於巴頓魯治市的美國農業部 (USDA) 蜜蜂實驗室負責, 這個蜂后和其侍衛蜂為本計畫的一份子。
Now, the researchers figured out that some of the bees have a natural ability to fight mites, so they set out to breed a line of mite-resistant bees. This is what it takes to breed bees in a lab. The virgin queen is sedated and then artificially inseminated using this precision instrument. Now, this procedure allows the researchers to control exactly which bees are being crossed, but there's a tradeoff in having this much control. They succeeded in breeding mite-resistant bees, but in that process, those bees started to lose traits like their gentleness and their ability to store honey, so to overcome that problem, these researchers are now collaborating with commercial beekeepers. This is Bret Adee opening one of his 72,000 beehives. He and his brother run the largest beekeeping operation in the world, and the USDA is integrating their mite-resistant bees into his operation with the hope that over time, they'll be able to select the bees that are not only mite-resistant but also retain all of these qualities that make them useful to us.
現在,研究員已經弄清楚 某些蜜蜂有天生抵抗螨蟲的能力, 所以他們開始同系交配出一種抗螨蟲蜜蜂。 這是如何在實驗室為蜜蜂育種過程。 先麻醉尚未生殖過的蜂后, 接著研究員用精密儀器對她人工授精。 現在,這個過程允許研究員 準確的控制哪些蜜蜂要用來繁殖。 但是操控太多卻有個代價, 他們成功的繁殖了抗螨蟲的蜜蜂, 但是在這個過程中,這些蜜蜂也失去了一些特性 比如他們的溫順性,和儲存蜂蜜的能力。 所以為了解決這個問題, 這些研究員和商業養蜂人合作。 這是擁有72000個蜂巢的Bret Adee, 他正打開其中一個蜂巢。 他和弟弟經營著世界最大的養蜂企業, 美國農業部把抗螨蟲蜜蜂引進這個養蜂場, 希望一段時間之後, 他們可以挑選出既能抵抗螨蟲, 又能保留其他有用特性的蜜蜂。
And to say it like that makes it sound like we're manipulating and exploiting bees, and the truth is, we've been doing that for thousands of years. We took this wild creature and put it inside of a box, practically domesticating it, and originally that was so that we could harvest their honey, but over time we started losing our native pollinators, our wild pollinators, and there are many places now where those wild pollinators can no longer meet the pollination demands of our agriculture, so these managed bees have become an integral part of our food system.
這麼說, 聽起來好像我們正在操控和利用蜜蜂, 事實上,我們已經這樣做了數千年。 我們把這野生的生物放進一個箱子裏, 實際馴養他們, 本來這是為了獲取其蜂蜜。 但是漸漸地我們也開始失去我們的天然傳粉者, 我們的野生傳粉者, 現在有很多地方,那些野生傳粉者 已經無法應付我們農業的傳粉需求, 所以這些受控的蜜蜂 已成為我們食物系統的重要一份子。
So when people talk about saving bees, my interpretation of that is we need to save our relationship to bees, and in order to design new solutions, we have to understand the basic biology of bees and understand the effects of stressors that we sometimes cannot see. In other words, we have to understand bees up close.
所以當人們談論如何拯救蜜蜂的時候, 我的看法是, 我們需要拯救我們和蜜蜂的關係, 為了設計出新的解決方案, 我們需要了解蜜蜂的基本生物學知識, 及了解是否有什麼我們看不到的壓力來源對蜜蜂產生影響。 簡單的說,我們要更詳細了解蜜蜂這個物種。
Thank you.
謝謝。
(Applause)
(掌聲)