Hives with glass fronts will be used to videotape the dances of Sussex honey bees in a £1.9m bid to halt their decline.

Scientists are also aiming to breed hygienic honey bees to wipe out diseases that are ravaging the country’s apiaries.

Researchers at the bee lab at the University of Sussex – which is launched tomorrow – will study the bees’ meaning-filled “waggles”.

They hope to decode where they are foraging in countryside and towns and find out what areas are good for the nectar-feeding bees.

The university has established the laboratory of apiculture and social insects with a programme to research the health and management of honey bees.

One of the major problems facing the honey bee, which has seen declines in the number of hives of nearly 75% in the past century, is diseases and pests.

Some bees are more hygienic than others, with a greater tendency to remove dying and dead larvae or pupae from the hive, reducing the chance of infection for others.

The trait is genetic, so bees can be selected from hives which exhibit the behaviour to breed hygienic colonies.

Professor Francis Ratnieks, head of the Falmer-based laboratory, said: “The good thing about hygiene is it targets not just one disease, but several, and the second good thing is that it is entirely natural.

I view it as a useful thing we can bring to bear on the disease problem.”

Although a hive may exhibit hygienic behaviour, not all the worker bees – which have the same queen as a mother but may have any one of about ten fathers – will carry the gene.

By using hives with glass fronts and marking the worker bees with tiny numbers, the researchers hope to narrow down which bees within a colony carry the hygienic gene.

They will use the information to breed from young queens with the same fathers, speeding up the process of making hives hygienic.

Prof Ratnieks said that while disease was a factor affecting the survival of honey bee colonies, another major problem was a decline in flowers as sources of food.

He said the research into their sources of food aimed to provide hard information to encourage farmers and landowners to consider honey bees in decisions over land use.

It is hoped the project will garner results which will offer beekeepers sound scientific advice on how best to manage pests. The honey bees will also be monitored to see what else is killing them.