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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=navy face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";color:navy'>Thanks to
Doug Holy for forwarding the below:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Calibri><span style='font-size:
11.0pt;color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Calibri><span style='font-size:11.0pt'> <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/science/07bees.html?_r=1&emc=eta1">http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/science/07bees.html?_r=1&emc=eta1</a>
.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Calibri><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>October 6, 2010<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><b><font
size=6 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:24.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
font-weight:bold'>Scientists and Soldiers Solve a Bee Mystery<o:p></o:p></span></font></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><b><font
size=1 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:7.5pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
font-weight:bold'>By <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/j/kirk_johnson/index.html?inline=nyt-per"
title="More Articles by Kirk Johnson">KIRK JOHNSON</a><o:p></o:p></span></font></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><st1:City
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on"><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>DENVER</span></font></st1:place></st1:City><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>
— It has been one of the great murder mysteries of the garden: what is
killing off the <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/info/bees/?inline=nyt-classifier" title="">honeybees</a>?
<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Since
2006, 20 to 40 percent of the bee colonies in the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region> alone have suffered
“colony collapse.” Suspected culprits ranged from pesticides to
genetically modified food. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Now,
a unique partnership — of military scientists and entomologists —
appears to have achieved a major breakthrough: identifying a new suspect, or
two. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>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 <a href="http://www.plosone.org/home.action">the online science
journal PLoS One</a>. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>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. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Liaisons
between the military and academia are nothing new, of course. World War II,
perhaps the most profound example, ended in an atomic strike on <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Japan</st1:place></st1:country-region> in 1945
largely on the shoulders of scientist-soldiers in the Manhattan Project. And a
group of scientists led by Jerry Bromenshenk of the University of Montana in
Missoula has researched bee-related applications for the military in the past
— developing, for example, a way to use <a
href="http://maic.jmu.edu/journal/7.3/focus/bromenshenk/bromenshenk.htm"
title="Read the paper">honeybees in detecting land mines</a>. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>But
researchers on both sides say that colony collapse may be the first time that
the defense machinery of the post-Sept. 11 <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/h/homeland_security_department/index.html?inline=nyt-org"
title="More articles about the Homeland Security Department.">Homeland Security
Department</a> and academia have teamed up to address a problem that both sides
say they might never have solved on their own. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>“Together
we could look at things nobody else was looking at,” said Colin
Henderson, an associate professor at the <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType>
of <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Montana</st1:PlaceName>’s <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceType
w:st="on">College</st1:PlaceType> of <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Technology</st1:PlaceName></st1:place>
and a member of Dr. Bromenshenk’s “Bee Alert” team. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Human
nature and bee nature were interconnected in how the puzzle pieces came
together. Two brothers helped foster communication across disciplines. A chance
meeting and a saved business card proved pivotal. Even learning how to mash
dead bees for analysis — a skill not taught at <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_states_military_academy/index.html?inline=nyt-org"
title="More articles about United States Military Academy">West Point</a>
— became a factor. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>One
perverse twist of colony collapse that has compounded the difficulty of solving
it is that the bees do not just die — they fly off in every direction
from the hive, then die alone and dispersed. That makes large numbers of bee
autopsies — and yes, entomologists actually do those — problematic.
<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Dr.
Bromenshenk’s team at the <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType>
of <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Montana</st1:PlaceName> and <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Montana</st1:PlaceName>
<st1:PlaceType w:st="on">State</st1:PlaceType> <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType>
in <st1:City w:st="on">Bozeman</st1:City>, working with the <a
href="http://www.ecbc.army.mil" title="Edgwood’s Web site">Army’s
Edgewood Chemical Biological Center</a> northeast of <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Baltimore</st1:place></st1:City>, said in their jointly written
paper that the virus-fungus one-two punch was found in every killed colony the
group studied. Neither agent alone seems able to devastate; together, the research
suggests, they are 100 percent fatal. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>“It’s
chicken and egg in a sense — we don’t know which came first,”
Dr. Bromenshenk said of the virus-fungus combo — nor is it clear, he
added, whether one malady weakens the bees enough to be finished off by the
second, or whether they somehow compound the other’s destructive power.
“They’re co-factors, that’s all we can say at the
moment,” he said. “They’re both present in all these
collapsed colonies.” <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Research
at the <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/university_of_california/index.html?inline=nyt-org"
title="More articles about the University of California.">University of
California, San Francisco</a>, had already identified the fungus as part of the
problem. And several RNA-based viruses had been detected as well. But the
Army/Montana team, using a new software system developed by the military for
analyzing proteins, uncovered a new DNA-based virus, and established a linkage
to the fungus, called N. ceranae. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>“Our
mission is to have detection capability to protect the people in the field from
anything biological,” said Charles H. Wick, a microbiologist at <st1:place
w:st="on">Edgewood</st1:place>. Bees, Dr. Wick said, proved to be a perfect
opportunity to see what the Army’s analytic software tool could do.
“We brought it to bear on this bee question, which is how we field-tested
it,” he said. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>The
Army software system — an advance itself in the growing field of protein
research, or proteomics — is designed to test and identify biological
agents in circumstances where commanders might have no idea what sort of threat
they face. The system searches out the unique proteins in a sample, then
identifies a virus or other microscopic life form based on the proteins it is
known to contain. The power of that idea in military or bee defense is immense,
researchers say, in that it allows them to use what they already know to find
something they did not even know they were looking for. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>But
it took a family connection — through David Wick, Charles’s brother
— to really connect the dots. When colony collapse became news a few
years ago, Mr. Wick, a tech entrepreneur who moved to <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Montana</st1:place></st1:State> in the 1990s for the outdoor
lifestyle, saw a television interview with Dr. Bromenshenk about bees. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Mr.
Wick knew of his brother’s work in <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Maryland</st1:place></st1:State>,
and remembered meeting Dr. Bromenshenk at a business conference. A retained
business card and a telephone call put the Army and the Bee Alert team buzzing
around the same blossom. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>The
first steps were awkward, partly because the Army lab was not used to testing
bees, or more specifically, to extracting bee proteins. “I’m
guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Bethesda</st1:place></st1:City>, we got a bag of bees and just
started smashing them on the desk,” Charles Wick said. “It was very
complicated.” <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>The
process eventually was refined. A mortar and pestle worked better than the
desktop, and a coffee grinder worked best of all for making good bee paste. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Scientists
in the project emphasize that their conclusions are not the final word. The
pattern, they say, seems clear, but more research is needed to determine, for
example, how further outbreaks might be prevented, and how much environmental
factors like heat, cold or drought might play a role. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>They
said that combination attacks in nature, like the virus and fungus involved in
bee deaths, are quite common, and that one answer in protecting bee colonies
might be to focus on the fungus — controllable with antifungal agents
— especially when the virus is detected. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Still
unsolved is what makes the bees fly off into the wild yonder at the point of
death. One theory, Dr. Bromenshenk said, is that the viral-fungal combination
disrupts memory or navigating skills and the bees simply get lost. Another
possibility, he said, is a kind of insect insanity. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>In
any event, the university’s bee operation itself proved vulnerable just
last year, when nearly every bee disappeared over the course of the winter. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Calibri><span style='font-size:10.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Tahoma><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Tahoma'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Calibri><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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