Has Mystery oF Bee Deaths (Colony Collapse Disorder) Been Solved?

[Guest guest]

Hi y'all,

 

I think the answer is NO .. but the below news article ..

 

http://news.aol.com/story/ar/_a/has-mystery-of-bee-deaths-been-solved/2007090615\

4909990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001

 

 

and another one from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6978848.stm

 

are interesting and they do give us some hope. Not only are we concerned

about aromatic plants but also for the many other decorative plants and food

plants that depend to a great degree on pollination by honeybees. In a

short time, loss of honeybees could result in tens of billions of dollars in

agricultural losses in the USA alone .. the world wide cost would take years

to calculate .. and we would all be forced to make major (unhealthy) changes

in our diets.

 

As for aromatics, the loss of bees would have an impact on prices .. but

more critical would be the loss of many aromatics. If you've ever been

around fields of aromatic plants .. especially the Rose Fields of Isparta,

Turkey or Kazan, Bulgaria .. you'll know that bees swarm those fields. I

expect a shortage of bees would be more disastrous to the Rose crops than

would a shortage of water .. folks can always irrigate but finding enough

bees to bring into the valleys in Turkey and Bulgaria would be a major

problem.

 

Y'all have a good one .. and keep smiling. :-) Butch

http://www.AV-AT.com

 

Has Mystery of Bee Deaths Been Solved?

By ANDREW BRIDGES,

AP

Posted: 2007-09-07 05:17:54

Filed Under: Science News <http://news.aol.com/science>

WASHINGTON (Sept. 6) - Scientific sleuths have a new suspect for what's

been killing billions of honeybees: a virus previously unknown in the United

States.

 

Between 50 percent and 90 percent of commercial honeybee hives in the U.S.

have been affected by the mysterious die-off, which has also sparked concern

for crops that rely on the insects to pollinate them. Source: AP

The scientists report using a novel genetic technique and old-fashioned

statistics to identify Israeli acute paralysis virus as the latest potential

culprit in the widespread deaths of worker bees, a phenomenon known as

colony collapse disorder.

 

Next up are attempts to infect honeybees with the newfound virus to see if

it's indeed a killer.

 

" At least we have a lead now we can begin to follow. We can use it as a

marker and we can use it to investigate whether it does in fact cause

disease, " said Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, a Columbia University epidemiologist and

co-author of the study. Details appear this week in Science Express, the

online edition of the journal Science.

 

Experts stressed that parasitic mites, pesticides and poor nutrition all

remain in the lineup of suspects, as does the stress of travel. Beekeepers

shuffle bees around the nation throughout the year so they can pollinate

crops as they come into bloom. The newfound virus may prove to have added

nothing more than insult to the injuries bees already suffer, said several

experts unconnected to the study.

 

 

" This may be a piece or a couple of pieces of the puzzle, but I certainly

don't think it is the whole thing, " said Jerry Hayes, chief of the apiary

section of the Florida department of agriculture.

 

Still, surveys of honey bees from decimated colonies turned up traces of the

virus nearly every time; bees untouched by the phenomenon were virtually

free of it. That means finding the virus should be a red flag that a hive is

at risk and merits being quarantined, scientists said.

 

" The authors themselves recognize it's not a slam dunk, it's correlative.

But it's certainly more than a smoking gun - more like a smoking arsenal.

It's very compelling, " said May Berenbaum, a University of Illinois at

Urbana-Champaign entomologist.

 

The mysterious deaths have struck between 50 percent and 90 percent of

commercial honeybee hives in the United States, sowing fears about the

effects on the more than 90 crops that rely on bees to pollinate them.

 

Scientists previously have found blasting emptied hives with radiation

apparently kills whatever infectious agent that causes the disorder. That

has focused their attention on viruses, bacteria and the like, to the

exclusion of other noninfectious phenomena, like cell phone interference,

also proposed as culprits.

 

The earliest reports of colony collapse disorder date to 2004, the same year

the virus was first described by Israeli virologist Ilan Sela. That also was

the year U.S. beekeepers began importing bees from Australia - a practice

that had been banned by the Honeybee Act of 1922.

 

Now, Australia is being eyed as a potential source of the virus. That could

turn out to be an ironic twist, since the Australian imports were meant to

bolster, not further damage, U.S. bee populations devastated by another

scourge, the varroa mite. Meanwhile, officials are discussing reinstating

the ban, said the Agriculture Department's top bee scientist, Jeff Pettis.

 

In the new study, a team of nearly two dozen scientists used the genetic

sequencing equivalent of a dragnet to round up suspects. The technique,

called pyrosequencing, generates a list of the full repertoire of genes in

bees they examined from U.S. hives and directly imported from Australia.

 

By separating out the bee genes and then comparing the leftover genetic

sequences to others detailed in public databases - a move akin to running a

suspect's fingerprints - the scientists could pick out every fungus,

bacterium, parasite and virus harbored by the bees.

 

They then looked for each pathogen in bees collected from normal hives and

others affected by colony collapse disorder. That statistical comparison

showed Israeli acute paralysis virus was strongly associated with the

disorder.

 

The technique is a model for investigating outbreaks of infectious diseases

in people too, since it can rapidly pinpoint likely causes, Lipkin said.

 

Sela, a Hebrew University of Jerusalem professor, said he will collaborate

with U.S. scientists on studying how and why the bee virus may be fatal.

Preliminary research shows some bees can integrate genetic information from

the virus into their own genomes, apparently giving them resistance, Sela

said in a telephone interview. Sela added that about 30 percent of the bees

he's examined had done so.

 

Those naturally " transgenic " honeybees theoretically could be propagated to

create stocks of virus-resistant insects, Lipkin said.

 

 

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press.