ARTICLE TITLE: Saving the Honeybee AUTHOR/SOURCE: Diana Cow Foster and Dennis van Engelsdrop MAIN POINTS:

Dave Hackenberg makes living moving honeybees. He trucks his beehives from field to field to pollinate crops; he migrated with his family and bees from central Pennsylvania to central Florida. The bees finished pollination on blooming Pennsylvanian pumpkin fields. After a month, the remaining colony had lost large numbers of workers. Young workers and queen remained healthy. Half of 3,000 bee hives devoid of bees. Diana and Dennis formed a working team by December 2006. Described the phenomenon and named it colony collapse disorder or CCD. Hackenberg's colonies stopped dying the following spring, but 800 of original 3,000 colonies survived. Survey conducted said that 1/4 of U.S beekeepers suffered similar losses and more than 30% of all colonies died. Next winter die off expanded, hitting 36 percent. Bee loss raised alarms. 1/3 of world agriculture production depends on the European Honeybee: Apis mellifera. Monoculture farms require intense pollination activity for short periods of the year, a role bees and bats cannot fill. Only a mellifera can deploy armies of pollinators at almost any time of the year. Collaboration ruled out causes for CCD and found many contributing factors. No single problem has been found. Bees with CCD are infested with pathogens including a newly discovered virus, but infections seem secondary. Before CCD, honeybees suffered from other ailments that reproduced their populations Honeybee colonies in 2006 were about 2.4 million less than half what it was in 1949. Beekeepers couldn't recall dramatic winter losses than in 2007 and 2008 CCD won't cause honeybees to go extinct. If skills of beekeepers low, then nearly 100 of our crops could be left without pollination. Large scale production of certain crops could be impossible, such as fruits and vegetables like apples, blueberries, broccoli and almonds could become rare to find. The parasites were responsible for 45 percent drop in number of managed bee colonies worldwide between 1987 and 2006. Mites carry viruses and inhibit the hosts' immune responses. Hackenbergs had a long experience of fighting mites, the symptoms were different. Van Engelsdorp performed autopsies on Hackenberg's remaining insects and found symptoms never observed before, like scare tissue in internal organs. Tests also detected usual suspects in bee disease. Gut contents were found spores of nosema, single-celled fungal parasites that can cause bee dysentery.

Spores counts in samples were not high enough to explain losses. Molecular analysis by Diana Cox-Foster revealed surprising levels of viral infections of various known types. No single pathogen found in the insects could explain scale of disappearance. Bees were all sick, but each colony seemed to suffer from different combination of diseases. Authors hypothesized that something had compromised bees' immune system, making them susceptible to any number of infections that normal colonies can fend off. Spring 2007- authors task force began countrywide surveys of all aspects of colony management, interviewing operators that encountered CCD and those that haven't. Symptoms affected stationary beekeepers and migratory ones. Even organic beekeepers were affected. Die-offs caused the public to express concern. Many wanted to share idea to the reasoning of CCD. One theory favored was that bees were poisoned by pollen from genetically modified crops, specifically by crops. The crops have a gene for insecticidal toxin. But the toxin only becomes activated in guts of caterpillars, mosquitoes and some beetles. Digestive tracts of the bees don't allow Bt to work. Another theory is blaming synthetic poisons. Two main suspects were acaricides, the chemicals beekeepers use to control mites and pesticides. Either could be on pollinated crops. By 2006, there were newer types of pesticides that replaced older ones. One was neonicotinoids, being blamed by beekeepers in France for harming insect pollinators. The class of insecticides mimics effect of nicotine- a natural defense that tobacco plants deploy against leaf-eating pests. It is more toxic to insects than to vertebrates. Neonicotinoids enter pollen and nectar of the plant, not just leaves, which means it affects pollinators. Neonicotinoids decrease honeybee ability to remember how to get back to their hive, a sign that they can contribute to CCD. Other experts suspected that bees' natural defense might be undermined by poor nutrition. Honeybees no longer have the same number or variety of flowers available because humans tried to "neaten" the environment. The task force focused on pesticides and nutrition in addition to other obvious possibilities, a new mutated pathogen. With no dead bees to study, the team decided to collect live bees from apiaries in the midst of collapse. Bees were collected in alcohol for varroa and nosema counts. Bees, pollen and honeycomb wax were frozen to be preserved for molecular and chemical analyses. Broad-spectrum analysis, sensitive to insecticides, herbicides and fungicides found more than 170 different chemicals. Most stored pollen samples contained 5 or more different compounds, and some contained as many as 35. But although both levels and diversity of chemicals are of concern, none is the cause of CCD. Healthy colonies sometimes had higher levels of some chemicals than colonies with CCD.

No neonicotinoids were found in the original samples, but other pesticides cannot yet be exonerated. It remains possible that bees afflicted by CCD were harmed by a chemical not evident at the time of collected samples. Attempts to identify a new infectious disease could b a root of CCD, looked as if they would go nowhere fast. None of the known bacterial, fungal or viral diseases of bees could account for CCD losses. Cox-Foster with Ian Lipkin's group in Columbia University turned to microbe-hunting method called met genomics, in the technique; DNA and RNA are collected from an environment containing many organisms. Genetic material is blended together and minced to pieces short enough that sequences could be deciphered. In met genomics, however the genes belong to different organisms so sequencing produces snapshot of sequences in a collection of organisms, including microscopic ones in an ecosystem. Met genomics was used to survey environments revealing surprising diversity of microorganisms. Gene sequences in samples were from bees. Nonbee sequences matched to genetic sequences belonging to known organisms. Researchers with expertise in molecular analysis of organisms joined the team to find the potential culprit. All samples had eight different bacteria described in two previous studies. Findings suggest that those bacteria may be symbionts, serving an essential role in bee biology. One bee virus stood out, never identified in U.S. IAPV was found in almost all colonies with CCD symptoms. Correlation was not proof that IAPV was cause of CCD. Two of three strains of IAPV infected bees. IAPV existed in bees in other parts of world for a while. Infection mimicked some symptoms of CCD. Findings supported notion that IAPV can cause CCD. Additional sampling showed that IAPV alone could not cause CCD. Joint study in 2007 with USDA tracked colonies owned by 3 traveling beekeepers and observed colonies infected with IAVP without collapsing. Some colonies were able to rid themselves of the virus. Consensus is that multiple factors can interact to weaken colonies and make them susceptible to a virus-mediated collapse. Scientists are finding ways to protect against the IAVP. One is a interfering with RNA which blocks the virus. Long term solution is to breed virus-resistant bees. Humankind must act quickly to ensure that pact between flowers and pollinators stay intact, to safeguard our food supply and to protect our environment. Efforts will ensure that bees continue to provide pollination and our diets remain rich in fruits and vegetables.

AUTHOR'S POINT:

CCD or colony collapse disorder is a phenomenon where bees lose large amounts of population in their colonies. Bees are becoming sick with different varieties of diseases. The authors Diana Cox-Foster and Dennis vanEngelsdorp tried to find out the cause of CCD. There were suspected factors, like poor nutrition and exposure to pesticides. After various testing and sampling from Cox-Foster and vanEngelsdorp and schools like Pennsylvania State University, they found a virus never identified in the U.S. It is called Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus, or IAPV. It was found in almost all colonies with CCD, but IAPV was alone couldn't cause CCD. The other factors, poor nutrition and exposure to pesticides lead to CCD. We humans must act quickly to resolve this problem, or else it will destroy our food supply and the environment. MY THOUGHTS: I think more people need to be more informed about what is going on. Before I read this article I had no idea about what CCD was. I think the authors of this article did a great job to finding the factors of CCD and all of the time invested in finding the caused this was well worth it. I think the colleagues from the universities played a huge role in identifying what caused the colony collapse disorder. Without them, I believe that the author's couldn't have found out about IAVP fast enough and that could hurt our crops and food supply. So What? Colony collapse disorder of honey bees said to be caused by Israeli Acute Paralysis, poor nutrition and exposure to pesticides. What if? The cause of CCD was never bothered to be found? Says Who? Diana Cox-Foster and Dennis vanEngelsdorp

What does this remind you of? Cancer .. because doctors are still trying to find a cure for it.