Topical RNAi in honey bees (Apis mellifera)

RNA interference (RNAi) has been used to knock down gene expression associated with behavior in honey bees (Apis mellifera). Successful knockdowns have been achieved with injections, which are time consuming when large numbers of bees need to be treated. We report here a method to treat large numbers of bees quickly that uses RNAi bound to nanoparticles and spray onto bees with a nebulizer. Quantitative PCR measurements for several genes reveal comparable effects of this method to the more established injection method. We will report on the details of this method and results obtained using it to treat groups of bees with double strand RNA (dsRNA) and small interference RNA (siRNA) for physiological and behavioral analyses.