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<DIV>If this is not opening try this link:
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/39117/title/Honeybee_CSI_Why_dead_bodies_can%E2%80%99t_be_found<BR></DIV>
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<DIV>Honeybee CSI: Why dead bodies can't be found</DIV>
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<DIV class="breadcrumb print" id=breadcrumb_content><A
href="http://www.sciencenews.org/view/home">Home</A> / <A
href="http://www.sciencenews.org/view/latest">News</A> / <A
href="http://www.sciencenews.org/view/issue/id/39093/title/December_20th%2C_2008%3B_Vol.174_%2313">December
20th, 2008; Vol.174 #13</A> / <SPAN class=highlighted>News item</SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class="topic content_description print">Honeybee CSI: Why dead bodies can’t
be found </DIV>
<DIV class=print id=content_top>
<DIV class="content_summary print">Virus could explain one symptom of colony
collapse</DIV>
<DIV class="content_authors print">By <A class="anonymous print"
href="http://www.sciencenews.org/view/authored/id/70/name/Susan_Milius">Susan
Milius</A> </DIV>
<DIV class="content_edition print"><A
href="http://www.sciencenews.org/view/issue/id/39093/title/December_20th%2C_2008%3B_Vol.174_%2313">December
20th, 2008; Vol.174 #13</A> (p. 5) </DIV>
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class=print>HEALTHY VS COLLAPSED</SPAN><SPAN class="description print"><A
title="HEALTHY VS COLLAPSED | Custom Life Science Images"
href="http://www.sciencenews.org/pictures/122008/sm_storyone_mainimage_zoom.jpg"
rel=shadowbox shadowboxCacheKey="0">ENLARGE</A> | Healthy hives (top) have
worker bees covering most combs, but in hives with colony collapse disorder
(bottom), a lot of bees leave the hive and don’t return.</SPAN><SPAN
class="credit print">Custom Life Science Images</SPAN></DIV></DIV>
<P>There’s bad news for diehards still arguing that honeybees are getting
abducted by aliens.</P>
<P>Beehives across North America continue to lose their workers for reasons not
yet understood, a phenomenon called colony collapse disorder. But new tests
suggest how a virus nicknamed IAPV might be to blame for one of the more
puzzling aspects of the disorder—the impression that substantial numbers of bees
vanish into thin air.</P>
<P>In tests on hives in a greenhouse, bees infected with IAPV (short for Israeli
acute paralytic virus) rarely died in the hive. Sick bees expired throughout the
greenhouse, including near the greenhouse wall, Diana Cox-Foster of Pennsylvania
State University in University Park reported November 18 in Reno, Nev., at the
annual meeting of the Entomological Society of America.</P>
<P>Outdoors, the bees could scatter across the landscape where the occasional
dead insect wouldn’t be easily noticed before scavengers found it.</P>
<P>Illusory alien abduction is just one of many symptoms that need explaining,
though. The prevailing hypothesis is that multiple forces combine to cause
colony collapse disorder, such as pesticide exposure, parasites and possibly
IAPV, Cox-Foster reported.</P>
<P>Viruses belonging to the group including IAPV linger in pollen. Cox-Foster
said that she and her colleagues have for the first time isolated bee viruses
from pollen samples from outdoor hives, though IAPV itself was not found. In
another study, the same viral strains showed up in wild bees and neighboring
domestic hives. “Our conclusion is the strains are circulating freely,”
Cox-Foster said.</P>
<P>So though the viruses don’t affect mammals and bee products would not be a
threat to people, infected bees might contaminate visited flowers, perhaps
spreading the alien-abduction symptoms.</P>
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class=print>BEE-SEARCH</SPAN><SPAN class="description print"><A
title="BEE-SEARCH | USDA-ARS"
href="http://www.sciencenews.org/pictures/122008/sm_storyone_evans_zoom.jpg"
rel=shadowbox shadowboxCacheKey="1">ENLARGE</A> | Jay Evans of the USDA’s Bee
Research Lab in Beltsville, Md., studies the effects of pathogens on
honeybees.</SPAN><SPAN class="credit print">USDA-ARS</SPAN></DIV></DIV>
<P>Bee scientists first noticed weird bee losses in November 2006 when
Pennsylvania beekeeper Dave Hackenberg reported substantial numbers of hives
failing for unknown reasons. Honeybees have plenty of reasons to die during
winter, but an experienced beekeeper could diagnose the usual ones, so
researchers paid attention to Hackenberg.</P>
<P>By mid-December 2006 a team of bee specialists had described the new
phenomenon, calling it colony collapse disorder. Colonies otherwise just humming
along would lose most of their worker bees in a matter of weeks. The honey, the
queen and the very young brood would be largely abandoned without enough of a
workforce to tend to them. During that winter, a quarter of beekeepers across
the country reported similar disappearances, and 37 percent of U.S. beekeeping
operations reported collapses during the following winter.</P>
<P>Roughly a third of food production worldwide depends on animal pollinators
such as bees. North American farmers start renting honeybees in February to
ensure pollination of the almond crop, and continue renting bees for other crops
throughout the growing season. Rental prices for bees are rising, in part
because of the collapses. Price changes affect the economics of crops from New
England blueberries to Washington state apples.</P>
<P>Even small, stationary operations have been struck by the disorder, said
Cox-Foster. “We’ve had some organic growers report collapses.”</P>
<P>Analyses of beekeeping practices dashed notions that some food or treatment
to keep pests out of the hives was to blame, she reported. Several studies have
failed to find links between colony collapse and acute exposure to crops
genetically modified to produce the Bt pesticide.</P>
<P>IAPV surfaced as a suspect in September 2007. Researchers at Columbia
University and a consortium of other centers and the USDA reported that
sequencing DNA from collapsed and healthy hives revealed a high percentage of
the once-obscure virus among the sick hives. At the time, researchers cautioned
that the virus might be playing a major role or might just be an opportunist,
useful as a marker.</P>
<P>In a perfect world, Cox-Foster would have performed the classic experiments
based on Koch’s postulates: giving a suspected pathogen to an organism, seeing
if the disease symptoms match and then trying to recover the same pathogen from
the newly ill. Infecting free-flying bees with a potential cause of the disorder
wasn’t an option, though, so the team experimented in greenhouses.</P>
<P>Those greenhouses stress the bees, says Dennis vanEngelsdorp, Pennsylvania’s
acting state apiarist. The stress weakens the bees and may contribute to their
collapse, he says, agreeing that the virus certainly isn’t the whole answer. He
points out that IAPV has turned up in colonies that don’t collapse, as if
they’re usually healthy enough to cope with it.</P>
<P>Exposure to conventional pesticides might also affect bee health. Residues of
75 pesticides have turned up in pollen samples, according to ongoing work by
Maryann Frazier of Penn State and her colleagues. The pesticide list includes
chemicals that are no longer in wide use, such as DDT.</P>
<P>Cox-Foster said in Reno that she was surprised by the range of pesticides
found. One sample included residues of the pesticide aldicarb exceeding levels
considered toxic for humans, if humans were eating pollen. (Tests of honey show
it’s safe, Cox-Foster said.) Effects of such cocktails on bees, however, still
need clarification.</P>
<P>Despite the new evidence, the pieces of the puzzle aren’t falling into a tidy
pattern. “I’m not happy about the answer I’m giving you,” says vanEngelsdorp. A
mix of miseries seems to drive a colony to collapse, but it’s not always the
same mix.</P>
<P>“It’s like heart disease in humans,” he says. “Two people can have a heart
attack and not share any underlying causes.”</P>
<P>
<HR>
<A
title="Back Story : Tracing Collapse | Jerry A. Payne, USDA-ARS/bugwood.org; H. Puschmann/iStockphoto; map source: Bee Alert Technology, Inc."
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alt="Back Story : Tracing Collapse"
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<P></P>
<P>Click on the image above to see an enlarged version of the
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<DIV><FONT lang=0 face="Gill Sans MT" size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10"><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR>Laurie Davies Adams<BR>Executive
Director<BR><B>Pollinator Partnership </B><BR>423 Washington Street, 5th
floor<BR>San Francisco, CA
94111<BR>415-362-1137<BR>LDA@pollinator.org</FONT><FONT lang=0 face=Arial
color=#000000 size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"><BR><BR></FONT><FONT lang=0
face="Gill Sans MT" color=#0000ff size=4 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="14"><B><A
href="http://www.pollinator.org/">www.pollinator.org</A></B></FONT><FONT lang=0
face="Gill Sans MT" color=#000000 size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10"></B><BR><A
href="http://www.nappc.org/">www.nappc.org</A><BR><BR></FONT><FONT lang=0
face="Gill Sans MT" color=#000000 size=3 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="12"><B><I>National Pollinator Week is June 22-28, 2009. <BR>Beecome
involved at <A
href="http://www.pollinator.org/">www.pollinator.org</A></I></FONT></B></DIV></FONT><BR><BR><BR><DIV CLASS="aol_ad_footer" ID="d9e8e9cf7f8fc10f7854eb91a8cb88a4"><FONT style="color: black; font: normal 10pt ARIAL, SAN-SERIF;"><HR style="MARGIN-TOP: 10px">Make your life easier with all your friends, email, and favorite sites in one place. <a href="http://www.aol.com/?optin=new-dp&icid=aolcom40vanity&ncid=emlcntaolcom00000010">Try it now</a>.</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>