Mehmet Ali Döke earned his bachelor’s in Molecular Biology and Genetics, and master’s in Biology from Middle East Technical University in Turkey. During his junior year, he started working with honey bees and was a part of the group who surveyed the beekeepers in Turkey to document bee losses and possible reasons in coordination with the COLOSS effort. In his master’s, Mehmet investigated the seasonal variation of a metabolic enzyme in honey bees.
Mehmet moved to US in 2013 to work on a doctorate degree in Entomology at Pennsylvania State University (PSU) supervised by Christina Grozinger. They studied honey bee overwintering from physiological, social, and ecological perspectives. Better understanding honey bee overwintering is valuable because it is a fascinating adaptation for an insect species and improving the winter survival can boost the sustainability of beekeeping operations to which we owe a significant portion of our food.
Upon completing the doctorate in PSU in August 2017, Mehmet started working as a postdoctoral researcher at University of Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras with Tuğrul Giray. They want to further investigate the evolution of overwintering in honey bees by comparing mechanisms by which honey bees survive adverse periods in tropical and temperate climates.
Listen in to learn about the effect of the winter season on bee populations, how bees have adapted, and what beekeepers can do to protect their colonies.
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“Honey bees are in such large numbers, they wouldn’t be able to make it through another year if they couldn’t start the spring earlier than the other species. That’s in a way an advantage, but also a curse.” – Mehmet Ali Döke
Show Notes:
- Why honeybees stay active during the winter
- How the honeybee has adapted to the winter climate
- Why in hibernation, bees create a “bee ball”
- The difference between summer and winter bees
- How bees are able to tell when the seasons are changing
- The ways pheromones could be affecting a young bee’s development
- What key factors play into colony loss in the colder months
- How varroa mites could contribute to winter loss
- Mehmet’s advice for preparing your bees for the winter by weight of the colony
- The importance of genetics on bees survival through the winter
“The overall weight of the colony, when we put into a statistical correlation, didn’t correlate with how much honey they have or with how much brood they have or any other things. But it did correlate with the adult population.“ – Mehmet Ali Döke
Links Mentioned:
- Learn more about the Center for Pollinator Research at Penn State
- Check out Mehmet Ali Döke’s website
- Read Mehmet’s article, “Overwintering honey bees: biology and management” from Current Opinion in Insect Science and the graphic from the article that he talks about:
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- Dr. Döke’s recommendations:
- Connect with Mehmet Ali Döke at The Gozinger Lab