In 1993, a newly appointed entomology professor at the University of Minnesota started a breeding program based on a simple observed behavior: some honeybee colonies were unusually good at detecting and physically removing diseased or mite-infested brood before it could spread infection through the rest of the hive. Three decades later, that program’s output — the Minnesota Hygienic line — is used by beekeepers worldwide, and its creator, Marla Spivak, has become one of the most publicly recognized bee researchers alive, a status confirmed in 2010 when the MacArthur Foundation awarded her one of its “genius grant” fellowships.
Key Takeaways
- Marla Spivak earned her PhD in entomology from the University of Kansas in 1989 and has been a Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Entomology at the University of Minnesota since 1993.
- She began breeding specifically for hygienic behavior — workers detecting and removing diseased or Varroa-infested brood — starting in 1993, a program that produced the Minnesota Hygienic line still used by beekeepers today.
- Spivak received a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” Fellowship in 2010, funded at $500,000, recognizing her hygienic-behavior research and broader contributions to bee health.
- Colonies bred for hygienic behavior show measurably improved resistance to chalkbrood and American foulbrood, and offer beekeepers a genetic, non-chemical tool against Varroa alongside conventional miticide treatments.
- Beyond research, Spivak has actively worked to translate her findings into practical use, training beekeepers directly and supporting local hygienic-behavior breeding programs across the country.
Table of Contents
- Who Is Marla Spivak?
- What Hygienic Behavior Actually Is
- How Hygienic Behavior Is Actually Tested
- Building the Minnesota Hygienic Line
- The MacArthur Fellowship
- The Bee Squad and Propolis Research
- Practical Impact for Working Beekeepers
- Frequently Asked Questions
Who Is Marla Spivak?
Marla Spivak completed her PhD in entomology at the University of Kansas in 1989 and joined the University of Minnesota in 1993, where she holds the title of Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Entomology. Her research career has centered on social immunity — the mechanisms by which insect colonies collectively resist disease — with a specific, sustained focus on honeybee hygienic behavior that has spanned more than three decades. She has also become a prominent public communicator on pollinator health, delivering a widely viewed TED talk and regularly briefing policymakers and the general public on colony collapse and bee decline.
What Hygienic Behavior Actually Is
Hygienic behavior refers to worker bees’ ability to detect brood cells containing dead, diseased, or Varroa-infested pupae — often before visible external symptoms would tip off a human inspector — uncap those cells, and remove the compromised brood before an infection or infestation can spread further through the colony. Not all colonies express this behavior equally; some strains are dramatically better at it than others, which is precisely what made it a viable trait to select for and breed toward, the same basic logic that underlies any livestock breeding program built around a naturally occurring, variable, heritable trait.
How Hygienic Behavior Is Actually Tested
The standard field test for hygienic behavior, popularized by Spivak’s own lab, is the freeze-killed brood assay: a section of sealed brood comb, roughly two inches by two-and-a-half inches and containing around 100 cells, is cut out and frozen solid for 24 hours, then reinserted into the center of the brood nest in the colony being tested. A truly hygienic colony will detect, uncap, and remove more than 95 percent of that frozen, obviously dead brood within 24 hours; a non-hygienic colony can take six days or longer to fully clear the same test section. Reliable classification requires a colony to hit that 95-percent-plus removal rate on two separate, consecutive tests, not just once — a real, replicable field method any beekeeper with basic equipment can run on their own colonies, and the same underlying assay breeders use today to identify strong hygienic-behavior candidates for further selection.
Building the Minnesota Hygienic Line
Spivak’s breeding program, launched in 1993, systematically selected breeder queens from colonies that showed the strongest hygienic response, then propagated and refined that trait across successive generations. The result, now known as the Minnesota Hygienic line, gives beekeepers a genetic option for improving colony disease resistance that doesn’t depend solely on chemical intervention. Research has demonstrated real, measurable resistance improvements against chalkbrood and American foulbrood in colonies bred for the trait, and hygienic behavior has also been studied as a partial, complementary tool against Varroa destructor — not a replacement for direct miticide treatment, but a genetic factor that can reduce mite reproduction success within a colony over time.
It’s worth being precise about how this article relates to another already on this site: our existing Minnesota Hygienic Bees article covers the breed/line itself — its genetics, sourcing, and practical use in an apiary. This article is centered on Spivak’s own career, research methodology, and broader advocacy rather than duplicating that breed-focused coverage.
The MacArthur Fellowship
The MacArthur Foundation’s own description of its Fellowship recognizes Spivak’s work developing “hygienic” bee stocks resistant to disease and breeding programs that have “enabled the breeding of more disease-resistant bees for use throughout the beekeeping industry” — funded through a $500,000 no-strings-attached grant.
Spivak received the MacArthur Fellowship — often called the “genius grant” — in 2010, one of a small number awarded annually across all fields, not just science. The recognition specifically cited her hygienic-behavior research and its translation into practical breeding tools available to ordinary beekeepers, not merely as a laboratory finding confined to academic journals. The Fellowship’s unrestricted funding structure — recipients receive the full amount with no required proposal or reporting obligations — reflected the Foundation’s assessment that Spivak’s ongoing, self-directed research trajectory merited direct, flexible support.
The Bee Squad and Propolis Research
Spivak’s research program extends well beyond hygienic behavior and Varroa. Her work helped establish the Bee Squad, an outreach and extension arm of the University of Minnesota Bee Lab that educates Minnesotans directly about honeybees and native bees and has supported development of dedicated bee research facilities on the university’s Saint Paul campus — another example of Spivak pushing research findings out into direct public and grower-facing programming rather than confining them to academic publication. A separate, ongoing research thread in her lab focuses on propolis, the antimicrobial plant-resin material bees collect and use as a protective coating within the hive; that work examines propolis’s antimicrobial benefits not just for honeybees but comparatively in the stingless bee Scaptotrigona mexicana, broadening the social-immunity research question beyond a single species.
Recognition beyond the MacArthur Fellowship has continued to accumulate: Spivak received the Minnesota AgriGrowth Council’s Distinguished Service Award in 2015, the Siehl Prize for Excellence in Agriculture in 2016, and the WINGS WorldQuest Women of Discovery Earth Award, also in 2016 — a sustained pattern of recognition across agricultural, scientific, and exploration-focused institutions that reflects how broadly her hygienic-behavior and pollinator-health work has resonated outside entomology specifically.
Practical Impact for Working Beekeepers
What separates Spivak’s career from purely academic bee research is her sustained effort to get hygienic-behavior breeding into the hands of working beekeepers rather than leaving it as a university-lab result. She has published extensively in outlets beekeepers actually read, presented at beekeeping association meetings and workshops nationally, and specifically supported the development of local, regional hygienic-behavior breeding programs so beekeepers outside Minnesota could select for the trait using their own regional stock rather than relying exclusively on purchased Minnesota Hygienic queens. That emphasis on usable, transferable methodology — teaching beekeepers to test and select for hygienic behavior themselves — is arguably as significant a legacy as the original Minnesota Hygienic line itself. For more on other researchers and figures whose work reshaped practical beekeeping, see our roundup of famous people who kept bees.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Marla Spivak known for?
Her decades of research on honeybee hygienic behavior and the Minnesota Hygienic breeding line she developed starting in 1993, along with her 2010 MacArthur “genius grant” Fellowship and public advocacy on pollinator health.
What is hygienic behavior in honeybees?
The ability of worker bees to detect and remove diseased or parasite-infested brood from the colony before the problem can spread — a heritable trait that varies significantly between colonies and can be selectively bred for.
Does the Minnesota Hygienic line eliminate the need for Varroa treatment?
No. It provides a genetic, complementary tool that can improve colony resilience, but it is not considered a replacement for direct Varroa monitoring and treatment in most commercial and hobbyist operations.
What did Marla Spivak win the MacArthur Fellowship for?
Her hygienic-behavior research and its practical translation into breeding programs used throughout the beekeeping industry, recognized with the Fellowship’s unrestricted $500,000 grant in 2010.
Where does Marla Spivak teach and research today?
She has been a Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Entomology at the University of Minnesota since 1993.
How do beekeepers test a colony for hygienic behavior?
The standard method, popularized by Spivak’s lab, is the freeze-killed brood assay: freezing a section of sealed brood comb for 24 hours, reinserting it into the colony, and checking whether more than 95 percent is removed within 24 hours on two consecutive tests.
Is there a difference between this article and the site’s Minnesota Hygienic Bees article?
Yes — that article focuses on the bee line itself and how beekeepers use it. This one focuses on Spivak’s career, research process, and advocacy work behind the line’s development.
