Some (potentially) good news to start the morning, as the NYTimes tells us how “Scientists and Soldiers Solve a Bee Mystery“:
… 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.
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Now, a unique partnership — of military scientists and entomologists — appears to have achieved a major breakthrough: identifying a new suspect, or two.
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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.
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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…
Read the whole thing; even if overoptimistic, it’s a good story.
stuckinred
Yay, I guess.
MeDrewNotYou
Straight Dope article on colony collapse. Their motto is “Fighting ignorance since 1973 (It’s taking longer than we thought).” Tons of interesting articles from topics like the calorie content of semen to what the ‘G’ in g-string stands for. I can’t recommend the site enough.
Insects aren’t really my thing, but I find colony collapse mildly interesting, kind of like a scientific whodunit.
stuckinred
Dirty Work
WereBear
It means the future of our food supply. Unless we get those algae farms running.
Fencedude
For the videogame, basketball and political humor crowd: Obama/Biden vs. McCain/Palin…two vs. two basketball style!
stuckinred
@WereBear: We who?
WereBear
@stuckinred: As a collective entity of whatever size and allegiance.
Now me, I’m more of a rosarian. And you can eat them. But they are low protein.
JPL
What has Palin said about this? It’s an example of the public and private sector working together to find answers about colony collapses. Isn’t this an example of public spending gone amok?
spudvol
The only clue was the word “CROATOAN” spelled out in honey.
tamiedjr
Hi Anne,
Thank you for the link. I sure hope this is it and it can be resolved. This is a true disaster in the making if they can’t figure it out soon.
t
PaulW
We gotta save the bees. They’re the only ones that will protect us when the aliens come in 2012.
geg6
This is good news. This has been a huge issue here and my university has been working hard on this issue for several years. Researchers in our Ag Dept. have identified a virus in bee RNA but had not yet been able to determine if it was the problem. I’m sure this is galvanizing for them. I am no entymologist or any sort of scientist, but I attended a few brown bag lunch lectures held for faculty and staff where our researchers present their work for our personal development. We have several large bee keeping operations locallly who supply bees to farmers of the entire region and they have been severely affected by this and have been working with our researchers. The lectures included both the bee keepers and researchers and I found the subject both fascinating and frightening. This sounds like a huge step forward in a problem that truly threatens our entire food chain and I congratulate the Army and U of Montana on a great joint effort.
Skepticat
@MeDrewNotYou: A curse on you. I did not need another site on which to spend time I should be using more productively. It’s like Neatorama with actual information (and an excellent positioning line), and I fear that it’s going to keep me enthralled.
J.W. Hamner
@MeDrewNotYou:
From the article:
I’ve been modestly interested in this topic as a “ZOMG! We’re all gonna die!!” kind of thing, and that factoid is something I was completely unaware of. Seems like a point that needs to be made a little more forcefully in the apocalyptic press reports, no?
Draylon Hogg
The BBC had a report on this that showed a link between CCD and nicotine based pesticides. It said the nicotine intoxicated bees and in France, where such pesticides are prohibited CCD is much less prevalent.
Moses2317
OT, but it is an open thread – here is my latest blog post about the Democratic record on Wall Street reform.
Winning Progressive
Katherine Hunter
i am happy to report that the Youth Garden Project of my town (in remote SE Utah) sponsored a bee keeping program a few years ago / many local residents signed up and now we have numerous private bee hives two of which are in my neighborhood / i see honey bees really love leek flowers (i have a lot of leek and garlic plants) / i like to think they are buzzing back to their nearby home hives / the local honey is delicious / no, it doesnt taste like garlic or leeks / one hive produces honey that has a faint taste of cinnamon !
Katherine Hunter
i am happy to report that the Youth Garden Project of my town (in remote SE Utah) sponsored a bee keeping program a few years ago / many local residents signed up and now we have numerous private bee hives two of which are in my neighborhood / i see honey bees really love leek flowers (i have a lot of leek and garlic plants) / i like to think they are buzzing back to their nearby home hives / the local honey is delicious / no, it doesnt taste like garlic or leeks / one hive produces honey that has a faint taste of cinnamon !
some other guy
The New Yorker had a very informative story about this a couple years ago.
uloborus
Okay, Guy With Entomology Degree But Is Rusty here. I have looked at the article and then at the paper. My statistics have completely gone to Hell, but assuming they’re not totally misrepresenting them (unlikely) this is The Shit. This is good stuff.
It is not completely conclusive. They pointed out – and it’s an excellent point – that different regions are producing different test results. They only used about four different locations for their tests, but one of them was in Australia. They’re good results, but the authors are understandably waiting for follow-up testing from their peers.
CCD is a tangled mess. It’s associated with all kinds of stuff, but none of it has been consistent. This wasn’t just an association, it was a gigantic correlation. CCD doesn’t happen without a specific virus infecting the colony. CCD rarely happens without the virus (IIV) and a certain fungus infecting the colony. Infect the colony with both and it gets CCD. Other pathogens seem to be able to replace the fungus, but are way less dangerous. In general it’s clear that CCD is a combination of factors – but one of them is ALWAYS the IIV virus. They’re suggesting that any colony with IIV be treated as if it will die if it gets a fungal infection.
This won’t be certain until lots of peer review and follow-ups happen. But if scientists from other countries get consistent results we’ve got our pathogen and it’s IIV+’a trigger’. The only reliable trigger seems to be that fungus. And the interesting part is that nobody even thought to look for IIV until now. It’s a kind of virus entomologists assumed bees don’t get.
Cris
Montana, fuck yeah.
Anne Laurie
@uloborus: Thanks! One reason I put this up was the hope someone with more actual information would be able to help the rest of us understand how important this might be.
SciVo
@MeDrewNotYou: That Straight Dope report is entirely consistent with the theory that the problem is an artificially-large comb size making abnormal bees that are too vulnerable to any number of things. I mean, come on — this is just a problem for European honey bees (the industrial bee), and only for some beekeepers but not others? How is that not the main hypothesis to be tested scientifically?