[Pollinator] Fw: Bees: Science press conference

Wed Sep 5 12:57:30 PDT 2007

----- Forwarded by Wayne F Wehling/MD/APHIS/USDA on 09/05/2007 03:56 PM
-----

Subject: Science press conference

 Summary of press conference

Jeff Pettis got a good share of the coverage and presented very good
answers.  He presented very good context for what this means for the
beekeepers and pollination.

Major players who asked questions included AP, Washington Post, New York
Times, Reuters, LA Times, MSNBC, and BBC, among others.  As expected,
despite repeated answers that this is only a finding of an association--a
link--between IAPV and CCD, a number of reporters insisted on treating it
as we have found a cause and were just "equivocating." The process and
standards of proving a cause-and-effect relationship and that there may be
other factors involved was explained several times.  Several questions were
asked about the possibility that packaged bees allowed by APHIS to be
imported into the US from Australia since 2004 or that royal jelly imported
from China may have introduced IAPV.  Jeff Pettis answered well, saying
that we have provided the science we have to APHIS, which is the regulatory
agency involved.  But he also pointed out that 1) IAPV may have already
been in the U.S. (ARS and others are looking at frozen samples from before
2004 to see if IAPV appears, and 2) IAPV may be a natural mutant of Kashmir
bee virus--already here in the U.S.

An audiofile of the press conference and Science's press package will be
accessible to unregistered media and the public at:
http://www.eurekalert.org/bees after 2 pm on Thursday. A copy of Science
embargoed press release is below.

Kim Kaplan
Chief, Special Projects
Information Staff
Agricultural Research Service
U.S. Department of Agriculture
301-504-1637 (voice)
301-504-1648 (fax)

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE                         Contact: Natasha
Pinol
2:00 p.m. US Eastern Time
+1-202-326-7088
Thursday 6 September 2007
npinol at aaas.org

Virus Named As Possible Factor in Honey Bee Disappearance

A comparison of healthy and unhealthy bee colonies points to a virus
contributing to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), according to a report
published online in the
6 September online version of the journal Science, at the Science Express
web site. Science is published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society.

"Our extensive study suggests that the Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus
(IAPV) may be a potential cause of Colony Collapse Disorder," said W.
Ian Lipkin, director of the Center for Infection and Immunology at the
Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University. "Our next step is to
ascertain whether this virus, alone or in concert with other factors such
as microbes, toxins and stressors, can induce CCD in healthy bees,"
he added.

CCD is a puzzling phenomenon occurring in the United States - and possibly
other countries where it is not yet confirmed - in which all adult bees
disappear from the hive, leaving the honey and pollen behind.
Few, if any, dead bees are found around the hive.

Between 50 and 90 percent of the commercial honey bee (Apis mellifera)
colonies in the United States have been afflicted by CCD, and the disorder
is making it difficult for U.S. commercial beekeepers to pollinate crops.

Researchers including Lipkin and Diana Cox-Foster, entomology professor at
Pennsylvania State University, and colleagues have taken a new approach to
investigating infectious disease outbreaks. To find the cause of CCD they
used a rapid genome sequencing technique called pyrosequencing to catalogue
the entire variety of microorganisms that honey bees harbor. After
comparing their sequences with known sequences held in public databases,
they identified symbiotic and pathogenic bacteria, fungi and viruses found
in both healthy and CCD-afflicted colonies.

They tested samples collected over three years across the United States
from normal and CCD-affected hives. They also tested royal jelly imported
from China, which is fed to bee larvae to start up a new colony, as well as
apparently healthy bees imported from Australia, in an attempt to locate a
source for an infectious agent. After detailed statistical comparison of
all the samples, the molecular signs of Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus
appeared to be associated with CCD.

"This research gives us a very good lead to follow, but we do not believe
IAPV is acting alone," said coauthor Jeffery S. Pettis, research leader of
the Bee Research Laboratory, United States Department of Agriculture.
"Other stressors to the colony are likely involved," he said. Those
stressors could be poor nutrition, pesticide exposure and parasitic mites.

The next research steps include inducing CCD in healthy bees, determining
the global distribution of IAPV and CCD and studying bees that appear to be
resistant to CCD.

###

Note to reporters: After the embargo on this research lifts at 2:00 pm U.S.
Eastern Time Thursday, 6 September 2007, a related web page will be freely
accessible to the public at: http://www.eurekalert.org/bees.

"A Metagenomic Survey of Microbes in Honey Bee Colony Collapse Disorder,"
by D.L. Cox-Foster, E.C. Holmes, D.M. Geiser, D.
vanEngelsdorp, A.L. Kalkstein and L. Cui at Pennsylvania State University
in University Park, PA; S. Conlan, G. Palacios, P-L. Quan, T.
Briese, M. Hornig, A. Drysdale, J. Hui, J. Zhai and W.I. Lipkin at Columbia
University in New York, NY; E.C. Holmes at Fogarty International Center,
National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD; J.D. Evans and J.S. Pettis
at U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service in
Beltsville, MD; N.A. Moran and V.
Martinson at University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ; D. vanEngelsdorp at
Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture in Harrisburg, PA; S.K.
Hutchison, J.F. Simons and M. Egholm at 454 Life Sciences in Branford, CT.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the
world's largest general scientific society, and publisher of the journal
Science (www.sciencemag.org). AAAS was founded in 1848, and serves 262
affiliated societies and academies of science, reaching 10 million
individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed
general science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of
1 million. The nonprofit AAAS (www.aaas.org) is open to all and fulfills
its mission to "advance science and serve society"
through initiatives in science policy; international programs; science
education; and more. For the latest research news, log onto EurekAlert!,
www.eurekalert.org, the premier science-news Web site, a service of AAAS.