 Colony Collapse Disorder
|
What's the buzz about honeybees?
|
 Podcast
|
Intro
|
 You probably don't think much about honeybees
|
In the U.S. and Europe, honeybee populations have been in decline for years. Major drop in just the last few years.
|
Honeybees not even native to North America -- brought over with early settlers from Europe. Meanwhile, in the intervening few hundreds of years, agriculture has become dependent on their services. Honeybee population issues have commercial agriculture scrambling.
|
Some new news on what may be driving most-recent problems, but not all that well reported
|
Commercial honeybees
|
Moved around U.S. to pollinate crops in season
|
Big customer: California almonds (80% of world crop)
|
Stresses of moving bees results in high losses in even a good year. 17% loss is considered "normal" in an average year.
|
When bees get sick, normally fly away from hive to die.
|
The rise of CCD
|
In U.S., honeybee population decline has occurred over 20 years. Lots of possible factors -- parasitic mites have been discovered; stresses of moving bees around to service crops when & where they're needed; incautious application of insecticides, etc.
|
Recent years (since 2004) seen new, very different, problem -- CCD (colony collapse disorder)
|
Pennsylvania
|
Potential suspects -- pollution, global warming, cell phones, genetically modified crops, parasitic mites, africanized honeybees ("killer bees").
|
Likely to be something infectious
|
Recent news -- study in the journal Science on Sept. 7 that seems to be a big step forward. A Metagenomic Survey of Microbes in Honey Bee Colony Collapse Disorder -- getting lots of press, some of it even accurate. Strategy developed to study epidemics in humans caused by mysterious pathogens, used CCD as a model.
|
Work by 454 Life Sciences (now a part of Roche, also did work on Neanderthal genome) & scientists at Columbia University.
|
Genetic screening of honeybees from 30 colonies with CCD, 21 with no CCD, from four locations in the U.S. Also looked at bees from Australia.
|
Metagenomics -- sequence everything, then sort it all out
|
IAPV
|
One virus seems to have a strong association with CCD -- IAPV (Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus).
|
Odd thing -- symptoms of IAPV seem very different in Israel than in CCD.
|
Where'd it come from?
|
Wrapup
|
Story isn't settled yet
|
IAPV likely not cause of CCD all by itself
|
Maybe IAPV is just a marker of otherwise sick bees, maybe it causes CCD only in concert with some other factor. Could just be opportunistic infection (although high degree of correlation between CCD & IAPV makes this unlikely).
|
To test IAPV's culpability, need to take a healthy hive, give them IAPV & see what happens, how IAPV effects the bees
|
Meanwhile, other theories (cell phone radiation, genetically modified crops, etc.) can be largely discounted.
|
Some of them, though, may well be contributing factors by increasing stress on the bees -- parasites, pesticides, poor nutrition, stress of travel, etc.
|
In any event, unlikely that a treatment for viruses in bees can be found. Beekeepers will have to control other factors in CCD (mites, etc.). One good thing to come from this news -- since IAPV seems to be a good marker for oncoming CCD, should be possible to create a quick test kit for the virus so sick hives can be isolated.
|
Meanwhile, Ilan Sela (who first identified IAPV in Israeli hives) also found that about 30% of the bees there have incorporated bits of IAPV DNA into their own genetic structure. These bees seem to be resistant to the virus. Solution may involve importing / propagating these inheritantly resistant bees.
|
CCD seems to be more common in larger commercial beekeepers who migrate.
|
Sources and other links
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
License The use of these shownotes is governed by a Creative Commons (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5) license
|