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Speaker 1: Bees are extremely important for pollination
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Bees pollinating flower

[Music]
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Caption: Bees have been declared the most important living thing on earth by the Royal Geographic Society of London.

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Speaker 1 (Dr Juan Paredes):
70 percent more or less of the crops that we eat are due to pollination.
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Caption: Dr Juan Paredes, Bee Health Expert, ICIPE
Dr Juan Paredes sitting in lab

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And bees are among few other managed pollinators.
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Bees
Caption: However, bee colonies around the world are collapsing at an alarming rate.

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And if they die, we basically lose 70 percent of our crop production.
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Bees

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So, it's not one pest or one problem that is killing them
It is many many different factors like climate change,
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Beehive

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herbicides, fungicides, loss of natural habitat.
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Dr Juan Paredes walking out of African Reference Laboratory for bee health

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Speaker 2:
My name is Mary Chege. Here I am doing my masters’ project
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Man in beekeeping suit opening beehive

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which mainly focused on isolation and identification of honeybee gut microbes.
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Mary Chege sitting in lab

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So far we have managed to isolate a novel species.
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Mary Chege looking through microscope

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We are planning to use this isolate to study their roles in honeybees
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Microbes viewed through microscope

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and actually see how we can use them to improve their honeybee health.
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Mary Chege sitting in lab
Caption:
Mary Chege, MSc student, ICIPE

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Speaker 1 (Dr Juan Paredes):
Now we have all these next generation sequencing
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Mary Chege looking through microscope

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that allow us to know what exactly is in the whole insect
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Dr Juan Paredes sitting in lab

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and not just the insect itself but also all the microbes that go with it.
We're conducting this research here in Africa
because bees here in Africa seem to be less affected by the pathogens
whereas we know that they're present
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Bees in container
Scientists working in ICIPE lab
Caption:
Pathogen: a bacterium, virus, or other microorganism that can cause disease

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Speaker 1 (Dr Juan Paredes):
The same bees that are in Europe are here are the same species.
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Bees in hive

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There might be a gut microbiota that is playing an important role in protection
against these parasites or pathogens
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Bees emerging from hive

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and whatever we can improve here it can be applicable all over the world.
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Scientists working in lab

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[Music]
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Closing caption:
This project is a partnership between ICIPE (ICIPE logo) and University of Liverpool
(University of Liverpool logo)
Funded by the UK Newton Fund (Newton Fund logo)
HM Government
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