Bee Murder Mystery Solved!

[3113]

Many unknowns remain, but they've narrowed the suspects! Hooray!

It has been one of the great murder mysteries of the garden: what is killing off the honeybees? Since 2006, 20 to 40 percent of the bee colonies in the United States alone have suffered “colony collapse.” Suspected culprits ranged from pesticides to genetically modified food.

Now, a unique partnership — of military scientists and entomologists — appears to have achieved a major breakthrough: identifying a new suspect, or two. A fungus tag-teaming with a virus have apparently interacted to cause the problem, according to a paper by Army scientists in Maryland and bee experts in Montana in the online science journal PLoS One.

Exactly how that combination kills bees remains uncertain, the scientists said — a subject for the next round of research. But there are solid clues: both the virus and the fungus proliferate in cool, damp weather, and both do their dirty work in the bee gut, suggesting that insect nutrition is somehow compromised.

Fully story here.

 

[JackLuis]

Hooray for Bees!
Go Army!

 

[R. Richard]

Obviously, they're gonna have to vaccinate the bees. I'm NOT gonna volunteer for the job. Bees have a nasty temper and the right of self defense.

 

[trysail]

There's many a slip 'twixt cup and lip.

I'd hesitate before I called the problem "solved." What they have is a theory.

http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601110&sid=aN1molZ_y4zo


Researchers May Have Pinpointed Cause of Bee-Killing Disorder
By Drew Armstrong

Oct. 6 (Bloomberg) -- An attack by a virus and a fungus may be the cause of a mysterious honeybee disease that has killed billions of the pollen-gathering insects and threatened the U.S. agricultural industry, University of Montana researchers say.

The virus, Invertebrate Iridescent Virus, or IIV6, seems to work together with a common fungus called Nosema to kill the bees, said the researchers, Colin Henderson and Jerry Bromenshenk, in findings published today in the online science journal PLoS ONE. The bee disease known as Colony Collapse Disorder first appeared in 2006 and causes entire hives to die off without explanation.

Honeybees pollinate $15 billion of U.S. crops each year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and companies such as General Mills Inc. and Clorox Co. use pollinated crops in their products. Scientists had looked toward viruses and fungal infections as a cause of the disorder. The disease has been reported in at least 35 states and been found in Europe, Asia and South America.

“We have a strong suspect, I’m convinced we have what it is,” Henderson, an associate professor at the university’s College of Technology, said in a telephone interview.

Since the first outbreak in 2006, the disorder has showed up in 26 percent to 36 percent of hives each year, according to a survey released in April by the Department of Agriculture. The primary indication of colony collapse is whether hives were found empty. The disorder is characterized by a massive flight of bees, which don’t return to their hives to die.

Pollinated Products
Bees are essential for the health of pollinator-dependent crops such as almonds and blueberries. Fruit-pollinated products are found in items such as Haagen-Dazs ice cream from Minneapolis-based General Mills. Lip balm made by Burt’s Bees Inc., a unit of Oakland, California-based Clorox, contains wax from the honeycombs of beehives.

Henderson and Bromenshenk began looking into the cause of the bee disorder in 2006, when the first cases appeared. They found Nosema, a single-celled fungus that was already well known, and uncovered a suspicious DNA virus, IIV6, that “nobody had looked for,” Henderson said.

“That pattern of those two showed up about 100 percent in the first infected colonies that we found,” Henderson said. When a second outbreak of the mysterious illness hit, the scientists collected more samples, and again the virus and the fungus appeared in the dead bees.

Close to Home
Then came more evidence. One of the bee colonies kept by the University of Montana researchers got the disease, and for the first time, scientists we were able to track the malady from beginning to end, Henderson said.

The tool to dig up the surprise virus from the dead bees came from a U.S. Department of Defense program meant to monitor disease outbreaks in people, specifically ones from biological weapons.

The Defense Department technology essentially took ground up bee parts and pulled out chains of proteins, some of which may have been the virus that was infecting the bees. Henderson and Bromenshenk compared the discoveries against a giant database of known proteins funded by the National Science Foundation.

“We just looked for everything,” Henderson said. What they found was IIV6, a virus that was common in moths though it wasn’t known to exist in bees.

Testing the Theory
Having identified the virus and the fungus, the researchers tested bees in the lab. First they infected the bees with the fungus alone, and some died, though not as many as with Colony Collapse Disorder. Then they infected some with just the virus, with the same result. When the combination of virus and fungus was used, the results resembled the deadly disorder that had been wiping out hives across the country, the researchers said.

The next step will be to test the theory in the field to see if it proves true, Henderson said.

“The real closure of the circle for us is to take the two pathogens to inoculate a colony, see it collapse, then pull out the pathogens again,” he said. That will allow scientists to be sure they have identified the cause, he said.

“We’re eight-tenths of the way there, in my opinion,” Henderson said.

 

[squarejohn]

Some folks thought colony collapse was linked to UFO sightings.

 

[harding]

Yeah

Obviously, they're gonna have to vaccinate the bees. I'm NOT gonna volunteer for the job. Bees have a nasty temper and the right of self defense

But... they must be used to getting pricked with something like a needle. Surely someone (the military side?) can come up with an artificial bee filled to the brim with anti-virus that can just wander into the hive and...

oops, sorry, I guess too much Halloween writing had gotten to me!

 

[R. Richard]

But... they must be used to getting pricked with something like a needle. Surely someone (the military side?) can come up with an artificial bee filled to the brim with anti-virus that can just wander into the hive and...

oops, sorry, I guess too much Halloween writing had gotten to me!

Actually, it's normal for only one bee, the queen bee, in a hive to have sex. The virgin queen bee will kill all rivals, by stinging them to death and then engage in an arial gangbang with male (drone) bees from the hive. (Why no one has filmed this is a mystery to me, got to be hot stuff!)

Of course, as everyone knows, there's also thelytoky. Although, thelytoky isn't normally bruited about a proper hive.