[Pollinator] "Killing Disease Returns" - Report of NAPPC Meeting

[Ladadams at aol.com]

Mystery bee-killing disease returns to Florida

By JEFF NESMITH
Cox News Service
Published on: 10/25/07  
WASHINGTON — Unexplained honeybee deaths have recently started showing up in 
Florida, the same state where the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder was 
first discovered a year ago, the Agriculture Department's top bee scientist said 
Thursday. 
Jeffrey Pettis, research leader of the department's Bee Research Laboratory 
in Beltsville, Md., said it is too early to say if another round of bee 
die-offs has started.   
The insect plague devastated thousands of commercial bee hives in several 
states last year, posing a threat to crops that depend on bees for pollination. 
When it occurs, worker bees fail to return to hives, leaving juvenile bees 
and some adults to die. 
"We have heard recently from Florida beekeepers who have colonies in 
declining health," said Pettis. 
Speaking at a conference on problems that confront honeybees, bumblebees, 
butterflies, birds and other important pollinators, Pettis said specimens have 
been brought to his lab for analysis. 
Colony Collapse Disorder, known as CCD, was first reported by a Florida 
beekeeper in November of last year. It quickly started showing up in other states. 
Pettis was a member of a team of government and university scientists who 
last month reported that a recently discovered bee virus had been linked to hives 
in which CCD had occurred, but not to healthy hives. 
The virus, Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus, was first identified in 2004 by 
entomologists in Israel. In addition to bees from U.S. hives that appeared to 
have suffered from CCD, it was found in imported bees from Australia and royal 
jelly from China, the scientists said. 
Pettis said the next step will be to attempt to induce the same condition by 
inoculating bees with the suspect virus. 
He said Thursday that these experiments have not been completed, and that he 
could not predict when he would have results to actually determine whether the 
virus was the cause of last year's hive collapses. 
The experiments will try to combine the inoculations with factors that 
scientists suspect might be depressing the insects' immune systems and making them 
more susceptible. 
These factors include infestation by parasitic mites and exposure to 
insecticides, he said. 
In a report issued last year before the appearance of CCD, the National 
Academy of Sciences warned that all pollinators are threatened by a variety of 
factors, including habitat loss and climate change. 
Pollinators of all kinds are critical to more than $15 billion worth of 
agriculture products a year, the report stated. 
The conference here was organized by the North American Pollinator Protection 
Campaign, a coalition of more than 100 government agencies, conservation 
organizations and universities in the United States, Mexico and Canada. 
>From the Atlanta Journal Constitution 
Mystery bee-killing disease returns to Florida

By JEFF NESMITH
Cox News Service
Published on: 10/25/07  
WASHINGTON — Unexplained honeybee deaths have recently started showing up in 
Florida, the same state where the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder was 
first discovered a year ago, the Agriculture Department's top bee scientist said 
Thursday. 
Jeffrey Pettis, research leader of the department's Bee Research Laboratory 
in Beltsville, Md., said it is too early to say if another round of bee 
die-offs has started. 
The insect plague devastated thousands of commercial bee hives in several 
states last year, posing a threat to crops that depend on bees for pollination. 
When it occurs, worker bees fail to return to hives, leaving juvenile bees 
and some adults to die. 
"We have heard recently from Florida beekeepers who have colonies in 
declining health," said Pettis. 
Speaking at a conference on problems that confront honeybees, bumblebees, 
butterflies, birds and other important pollinators, Pettis said specimens have 
been brought to his lab for analysis. 
Colony Collapse Disorder, known as CCD, was first reported by a Florida 
beekeeper in November of last year. It quickly started showing up in other states. 
Pettis was a member of a team of government and university scientists who 
last month reported that a recently discovered bee virus had been linked to hives 
in which CCD had occurred, but not to healthy hives. 
The virus, Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus, was first identified in 2004 by 
entomologists in Israel. In addition to bees from U.S. hives that appeared to 
have suffered from CCD, it was found in imported bees from Australia and royal 
jelly from China, the scientists said. 
Pettis said the next step will be to attempt to induce the same condition by 
inoculating bees with the suspect virus. 
He said Thursday that these experiments have not been completed, and that he 
could not predict when he would have results to actually determine whether the 
virus was the cause of last year's hive collapses. 
The experiments will try to combine the inoculations with factors that 
scientists suspect might be depressing the insects' immune systems and making them 
more susceptible. 
These factors include infestation by parasitic mites and exposure to 
insecticides, he said. 
In a report issued last year before the appearance of CCD, the National 
Academy of Sciences warned that all pollinators are threatened by a variety of 
factors, including habitat loss and climate change. 
Pollinators of all kinds are critical to more than $15 billion worth of 
agriculture products a year, the report stated. 
The conference here was organized by the North American Pollinator Protection 
Campaign, a coalition of more than 100 government agencies, conservation 
organizations and universities in the United States, Mexico and Canada. 
On the Web: 
The North American Pollinator Protection Campaign: www.pollinators.org.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Laurie Davies Adams
Executive Director
Coevolution Institute
423 Washington St. 5th
San Francisco, CA 94111
415 362 1137
LDA at coevolution.org
_http://www.coevolution.org/_ (http://www.coevolution.org/) 
_http://www.pollinator.org/_ (http://www.pollinator.org/) 
_http://www.nappc.org/_ (http://www.nappc.org/) 

Join the Pollinator Partnership to save the bees, bats, butterflies and more! 
See _http://www.pollinator.org/_ (http://www.pollinator.org/)  for more 
information.

Our future flies on the wings of pollinators.


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