Team:Tec-Chihuahua/test

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April 28^th
Meeting with Mr. Guillermo Rodríguez

Viana and Ana Laura had the opportunity to travel to Cuauhtémoc, a city specialized in fruit growing; production and exportation of apples, peaches, strawberries, walnuts, among many others.¹ Thanks to Viana, who is native from this city, we were able to get to contact this beekeeper. Mr. Rodríguez is the president of the association of beekeepers in the city and we saw an enormous opportunity in talking to him. This was our very first direct approach with the beekeeper’s community!  We  were  very  excited  to  start  getting  to  know them.  What  would they think about our ideas? Would they be interested in our

project? How many things would they have to tell us? Our project was about to begin its transformation path.

This enriching talk lasted approximately 1 hour 15 minutes and different topics were discussed. We learned many general characteristics of bees' lives thanks to the great experience of the beekeeper: The different varieties of bees that exist, specific tasks of each type of bee and the joint work bees and beekeepers do to ensure pollination.

Regarding the existing methods against Foulbrood, Mr. Rodríguez mentioned how SAGARPA (National Secretary of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fishing, and Food) does not allow the usage of chemical contaminants in beehives because wastes may end up in honey flows. Mr. Rodríguez mentioned how beekeepers sometimes use extracts of rosemary or oregano against Foulbrood, but it is always difficult for them to know what dose to add and ensure it is adequate for fighting the diseases and at the same time does not destabilize the hive. On another hand, he mentioned that the method of burning beehives results very expensive for them. Currently, in Cuauhtémoc, there is almost no presence of American Foulbrood, since, in the past, many sick hives were exposed to this burning method, then the disease decreased. On the other hand, European foulbrood is most commonly found in Cuauhtemoc.

The beekeeper emphasized how a natural product against Foulbrood is needed, so there are not left residues in the honey and he also highlighted how beekeeping varies around the world and sometimes there are specific necessities for each region.

Thanks to the sharing we made with the beekeeper of our project, he was able to have a new panorama of beekeeping, and how emerging technologies, in this case, synthetic biology, can accurately respond to specific problematics and can relegate past methods that imply many setbacks.

Mr. Rodríguez kindly invited us to present our project with the Cuauhtémoc beekeepers association and commented us about M.C. Alejandro Romo who has done different investigations on the diseases and who we would talk with later in this story.

Getting to know real experiences of the treatment methods used against our interest diseases helped us to better measure the severity of the problem and the obstacles with which beekeepers have to fight to keep their bees’ welfare.

References

1. Soto, A. (2017). Cuauhtémoc, región en crecimiento económico. Retrieved from http://referente.mx/@Almer/cuauhtemoc-region-en-crecimiento-economico
2. Image retrieved from: Visita Chihuahua. (2018). Chihuahua y sus alrededores. http://www.visita-chihuahua.com/index.php/2015-05-06-09-42-18

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