Important Research Areas

Novel Overlapping Gene

One major area of in depth study involves the genetics of the current European honey bee population, and that of many different diseases afflicting them now.  Some studies are suggesting that the bees have become especially succeptible to particular diseases because of the structure of their genes.
There has also been investigations into the ways bee parasites are able to contribute to this, leading to the working knowledge that the varroa mite is able to immunosuppress the bees, much like other parasites do in vertebrates.
Perhaps most importantly concerning this branch of research, it has been found that vertical transmission of diseases within bees is possible, making the presence of parasites after initial infection unnecessary.  Vertical transmission involves the diseases being passed from queen to offspring.  This means that once a queen is infected and breaks away from a colony to start another hive, all of her offspring will carry the various viruses into all of their lifecycles.  Much of the research in all of these areas was accomplished with similar genetics techniques, such as metagenomic approaches in surveying, and reverse transcription-PCR, as well as breed hybridization.