Researchers have found a virus that typically infects plants has been systemically infecting honeybees in the United states and China.
The detection of this virus (the Tobacco Ringspot Virus or TRSV) could help explain the decline of honeybees
The study results provide the first evidence that honeybees exposed to virus-contaminated pollen can also be infected
Researchers have known for some time that honeybees can transmit TRSV when they move from flower to flower during the pollination process.
and whether such a virus could cause systemic infection in the honeybees. Since CCD was reported first to have wiped out entire hives across the United states in 2006 and 2007 more than 10 million hives in all researchers have linked strongly toxic viral cocktails to the collapse of the honeybee colonies.
Besides TRSV researchers have linked Israel Acute Paralysis Virus Acute Bee Paralysis Virus Chronic Paralysis Virus Kashmir Bee Virus Deformed Wing Bee Virus
Black Queen Cell Virus and Sacbrood Virus to some degree as causes of honeybee viral disease.
but how they systemically infect the bodies of honeybees and lead to the collapse of hives.
or viral infections are overwhelming the honeybees and the hives. Last summer for instance researchers from the University of Maryland and the USDA collected pollen from seven major types of crops along the East Coast where CCD has been especially destructive where bees had been in serious decline and fed
and are for this reason prime suspects as potential sources of host-jumping species (jumping from one species plants to another species honeybees).
because it lacks an internal genomic process that edits out errors in replicated genomes meaning that TRSV can generate all sorts of variant error-filled copies with lots of different infection characteristics that cannot be defended easily once they jump from plants to honeybees and spread throughout the hives.
and a few symbiotic ecological relationships such as leaf-cutter ants and their microbial partners, but the approach has never before been applied on this scale for an outbreaking forest nuisance.
Plight of the bumblebee: Nature Newsin a bid to curb the rapid decline in 10%of wild North american bumblebee species,
international researchers have agreed on the key scientific priorities that will drive the next steps including the establishment of a body to push forward research.
The United states and Canada are home to about 50 species of native bumblebees (Genus bombus), which are important wild pollinators of fruit and vegetable crops.
Honeybees tend to perform poorly in tomato pollination. But in the last three years, researchers have identified five North american species that have undergone a relatively swift population reduction since the 1990s
For example, the Bombus franklini worker bee was widespread in northern California and southern Oregon in 1998,
government agencies and commercial breeders to set future research priorities that might help to stem declines in bumblebee numbers.
such as finding the cause of the bumblebee disease thought to be behind the population crashes.
Some researchers have pinned the die off of native bumblebees on a fungal pathogen, Nosema bombi, which could have been introduced into the United states
when commercial bumblebees introduced into Europe by breeders then brought back escaped into the wild.
A related parasite has been implicated in the well-known decline of honeybees, although the two events seem to be unconnected,
and identify any other diseases possibly infecting the bumblebees. Other attendees concentrated on climate-change impacts that could be exacerbating the decline.
which may mean queen bumblebees find less nectar when they come out of hibernation. This group proposed long-term monitoring projects
In order to check the status of bumblebee populations across the United states conference participants suggested gathering and digitizing information from databases of different agencies,
Scientists at the conference also identified a need for basic research into bumblebee genetic diversity.
Attendees also agreed on a proposal to create an IUCN bumblebee specialist group that can coordinate the necessary research that will help policy-makers counteract the population loss.
many are hopeful that work from the conference will start to stem the bumblebee's decline.
and it seems that honeybees are no different. Sleep-deprived bees are less proficient than their well-rested hive mates at indicating the location of a food source to other members of the colony by waggle dancing the figure-of-eight dance used to communicate the quality
Like all animals, European honeybees (Apis mellifera) rely on a sleep-like state of inactivity to survive
Nature Newsfor Scott Cornman, the honeybee genome is prized a resource, yet he spends much of his time removing it.
Cornman, a geneticist for the Bee Research Laboratory of the US Department of agriculture (USDA) in Beltsville, Maryland, is trying to characterize the various pathogens that plague the honeybee (Apis mellifera), arguably the world's most important insect.
His strategy is to subtract the honeybee genome from every other stray bit of genetic residue he can find in bee colonies, healthy and diseased.
soon after the honeybee genome was sequenced (Honeybee Genome Sequencing Consortium Nature 443,931-949; 2006), and for many it was a chance to marvel at a field transformed.
There has been made a lot of progress on how disease affects honeybees at the molecular level, says Christina Grozinger, director of Pennsylvania State university's Center for Pollinator Research in University Park, one of the conference organizers.
At the meeting, Michelle Flenniken, a virologist at the University of California, San francisco, presented evidence that, in honeybees, it can also trigger a general immune response that might ward off a variety of threats.
This may be a new viral response that hasn't been characterized well in honeybees, says Flenniken,
Job swapping makes its mark on honeybee DNASUBTLE differences in the DNA of honeybees are reflected in the bees'roles within the hive.
All honeybees (Apis mellifera) are born equal, but this situation doesn t last long. Although genetically identical, the bees soon take on the specific roles of queen or worker.
But Amdam says that the fact that honeybees can revert to a previous role indicates that there is a kind of epigenetic roadmap."
show that low-level exposure to a combination of two pesticides is more harmful to bumblebee colonies than either pesticide on its own.
Bumblebees sense electric fields in flowersas they zero in on their sugary reward, foraging bumblebees follow an invisible clue:
electric fields. Although some animals, including sharks, are known to have an electric sense, this is the first time the ability has been documented in insects.
It has long been known that bumblebees build up a positive electrical charge as they rapidly flap their wings;
whether bumblebees were picking up on this. Keen to find out, he and a team of colleagues measured the net charges of individuals of Bombus terrestris, a common species of bumblebee,
by using sucrose to lure them into a Faraday pail an electrically shielded bucket that reacts to the charge of anything inside it.
most bumblebees were carrying a positive charge. Next, the team placed the insects into an arena with petunias (Petunia integrifolia)
Finally, the team released bumblebees into an arena with artificial flowers, half of which were carried positively charged and a sucrose reward,
"We think bumblebees are using this ability to perceive electrical fields to determine if flowers were visited recently by other bumblebees
and are therefore worth visiting, says Robert."We had no idea that this sense even existed,
Scientists, meanwhile, are vigorously debating whether the studies on neonicotinoids and the health of honeybees and bumblebees,
Honeybees in French fields exposed to thiamethoxam show impaired homing back to hives1. And bumblebee colonies exposed to"field-realistic levels of imidacloprid in labs show a decreased growth rate
and an 85%reduction in new queen production, compared with controls2. 21 october 2012:""Field-level exposure of bumblebees to imidacloprid and a non-neonicotinoid insecticide impairs foraging,
increases worker-bee mortality and reduces colony success3. 7 february 2013:""Prolonged exposure to imidacloprid and another insecticide impairs learning and memory in honeybees4.
27 march 2013: Lab study shows that imidacloprid, clothianidin and an organophosphate pesticide block firing of honeybee brain cells, especially when combined5.
March 2013:""No clear consistent relationships seen between neonicotinoid levels and colony mass or production of new queens by bumblebee hives6.
In January, the European Food safety Authority in Parma, Italy, Europe s food-chain risk-assessment body, concluded that three commonly used neonicotinoids clothianidin,
they could play a part by making bees more susceptible to the parasitic mite Varroa destructor and the parasitic fungus Nosema apis,
Conducted by an agency within the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs (DEFRA), it exposed 20 Â bumblebee colonies at three sites to crops grown from untreated,
The European Food safety Authority in Parma, Italy, concluded in May that maize (corn) seeds treated with fipronil pose a high acute risk to honeybees. ips trial approved On 19 july, Japan s health minister,
They first monitored the plots in their natural state, identifying the most abundant species of bumblebee (of the Genus bombus) in each.
The researchers counted how many different species of plant the bumblebees visited, studying 736 individual insects in total.
Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1, Brosi and Briggs find that after they removed the dominating bumblebee species from a given plot,
Brosi's study measured seed production only in larkspur a plant that is pollinated by several species of bumblebee.
The team interrupted honeybees making a comb by smoking them out of the hive and found that the most recently built cells have a circular shape,
The authors say that the worker bees that make the comb knead and heat the wax with their bodies until it reaches about 45 oc warm enough to flow like a viscous liquid.
the comb cells of the Italian honeybee (Apis mellifera Ligustica) are circular (top), but after two days they already look more hexagonal (bottom).
For example, honeybees (Apis mellifera) and gray jays (Perisoreus canadensis) 2 have been seen to violate IIA, and so have hummingbirds (Selasphorus rufus) 3."On witnessing such behaviour in the past,
Himalayan heights pose no problem for beesalpine bumblebees can hover happily in pressure conditions equivalent to an altitude of 9, 000 metres higher than the peak of Mount everest.
Bumblebees are often found above 4, 000 metres and have been recorded foraging as high as 5, 600 metres.
whether bumblebees vertical range was limited by aerodynamics and physiology. Working in the mountains of Sichuan, China,
the duo caught five male bumblebees (Bombus impetuosus) foraging at 3, 250 metres and placed them in a plexiglas chamber.
000 metres would provide a formidable challenge for bumblebees. Such changes were simulated not in the flight chamber."
 If so, why do alpine bumblebees have that extra capacity for upward thrust? Dillon suspects that it is required for other tasks,
America's honeybee population is dying. Scientists have suggested that this colony collapse disorder could be the result of long-term exposure to a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids
For example honeybees or bumblebees can be used to carry natural pest killers like the fungus Beauveria bassiana
#Follow A Queen bee On Her Maiden Mating Flightqueen honeybees mate just once in their lives within weeks of emerging as an adult from the little honeycomb cells in
More than Honey a recent documentary about the death of domestic honeybee hives around the world includes the amazing bees'-eye video of this flight above.
so they could take over killer bee hives. If simply giving her a little extra temporary armor would allow her to defeat the killer bee queen
and take over the killer bee hive e
#Are Crocodiles Secret Fruit-Lovers? Seed dispersal by animals is important for plants to help them occupy new areas of land.
Usually bugs birds or intrepid kittens do that job. Now we can add crocodiles to that list.
and we'll have ROBOT KILLER BEES everywhere. This idea is similar to the Pet Rock.
It has all the colors of an oil puddle in the sun. Yet the real weirdos are our familiar yellow-and-black honeybees says U s. Geological Survey biologist Sam Droege.
The Augochloropsis is one of 4000 bee species native to the U s. Honeybees on the other hand are more recent settlers that European farmers brought to America in the 1600s.
Click here to enter the gallerydroege considers honeybees weird because their habits differ from those of most native bees which tend to be solitary
Only native bumblebees which comprise about 40 species in North america have a formal colonial social structure with workers and queens.
Honey-and bumblebees'social structures mean people are able to cultivate them in hives and drive them around to places that need them.
Small farms could depend entirely on native bees though larger farms required honeybees. The natives may be especially effective at pollinating foods native to The americas including cherries and cranberries.
Another major difference between native and honeybees is that the natives don't suffer from colony collapse disorder a mysterious condition that's killed off on average one-third of domestic honeybee colonies every year since 2006.
and viruses that honeybees do and they don't have the same social order Droege says.
However they do require bumblebees to pollinate them. Domestic honeybees don't make the correct movements eggplant flowers need.
I apologize for the error. Bees are magical and bring life upon the Earth. I adore BEES!..
#European Bee Sperm bank Will Improve U s. Bee Gene Poolhere's a new idea for protecting the declining honeybee population in the U s. One team of scientists is importing European honeybee semen for fun
The Washington team hopes to use the European sperm to fertilize American queen bees producing offspring that may be more resilient to colony collapse disorder the mysterious syndrome in which workers abandon a colony dooming it to die.
Italian honeybees for example are quick to reproduce a boon for American farmers in warmer areas who want bees to pollinate early-blooming crops.
the killer bees now invading North america...I hope they're taking appropriate precautions c
#Raise Your Own Edible Bugs With This Decorative Kitchen Podthe U n. recently suggested (not for the first time) that we put a bit more crunchy insect protein into our diets.
#Honeybees May be Dying Off Because They're Eating Inferior Honey Substituteshoney is good for you and it's a nice natural substitute for sweeteners like table sugar or high-fructose corn syrup.
But honeybees throughout North america have been dying by the millions for a decade now often simply disappearing from their hives never to return.
Honeybee Societya beehive buzzes with thousands of genetically similar female honeybees. Some nurse their queen and her eggs while others fly out in search of pollen and nectar.
Drone Male honeybees which carry only one set of chromosomes fertilize the queen's eggs.
10000ã¢Â#Â0000average Lifespan of a Worker bee in Months: 3managed Honeybee Colonies in 2011 in the U s.:
2. 49 Millionsee the rest of the articles from our 2013 How It Works section here
#Something Is Killing Up to Half Of America's Bees There's some kind of environmental issue/plague/apocalypse killing America's honeybees
Researchers might use the device to study honeybee ecology. TIME: 3 monthscost: $110mapping energy leaks in poorly insulated homes no longer requires hiring a technician.
In the announcement President Obama said he will also set aside $8 million for new honeybee habitats.
and adaptively evolved in the honeybee. The first genetic mechanism for sex determination was proposed in the mid-1800s by a Silesian monk named Johann Dzierson according to the study's co-author and Arizona State university Provost Robert E. Page Jr.
and worker bees--both females--emerged from the different quality and quantity of food. But what about the males he asked.
evolved in their article Gradual molecular evolution of a sex determination switch in honeybees through incomplete penetrance of femaleness.
#Peaceful bumblebee becomes invasivebumblebees look cute. They have a thick fur fly somewhat clumsily and are less aggressive than honeybees or wasps.
They are appreciated very much by farmers as keen pollen collectors. Particularly in the context of the crisis-stricken honeybee populations the buff-tailed bumblebee Bombus terrestris is being bred on an industrial scale for the pollination of fruit and vegetable crops both inside and outside greenhouses.
It was hoped that these insects would take over these important services when they were introduced first into central Chile in southern South america in 1998 as pollinators in a few greenhouses with the backing and approval of the state authorities.
But that was not All the buff-tailed bumblebee turned out to be an extremely invasive insect that embarked on an unparalleled victory tour that took it as far as Patagonia.
As an aside the first European bumblebee species Bombus ruderatus was introduced back in 1982 but it turned out to be relatively harmless in comparison.
He has been monitoring the spread of buff-tailed bumblebees over the last ten years. Together with this wife Regula and his colleagues from South america he has published just his work in Journal of Animal Ecology.
and examine the parasites which accompany them as stowaways in the bumblebee intestines. The findings show that the European buff-tailed bumblebee spread southwards from central Chile along the Andes at a rate of around 200 kilometres a year--faster than the ecologists would ever have expected.
After just a few years the buff-tailed bumblebee had crossed the mountain chain and it reached the Atlantic coast of Argentina in late 2011.
By 2012 the insect had penetrated already deep into south Patagonia reaching the gateways to some of the major national parks. Given that colonies
He is convinced that in just a few years'time the bumblebees will reach the Strait of magellan. From there it would be just a little leap to Tierra del fuego.
Unfortunately we don't have any information at all about the occurrence of bumblebees on this large island comments the researcher.
In the other poorly accessible areas in Southwestern Chile no one has looked for buff-tailed bumblebees either.
Native species are disappearingthe triumphant advance of the European bumblebee is a disaster for the native bumblebees--five out of a total of 250 bumblebee species to be found in the world live in southern South america
--and a disaster particularly for the attractive and vivid orange giant bumblebee Bombus dahlbomii. Wherever the buff-tailed bumblebee settles the native species are done for:
in most areas in which its competitor has appeared B. dahlbomii has disappeared surprisingly quickly. One possible reason for its extinction is the protozoan parasite Crithidia bombi
which lives in the intestines of the buff-tailed bumblebee. This parasite causes intestinal infections in the European and native bumblebee species in South america.
It modifies the behaviour of the workers increases their mortality rate and prevents the establishment of new colonies.
Paul Schmid-Hempel is worried about the rapid spread of the buff-tailed bumblebee in remote areas of southern South america not least
The European bumblebee could disrupt the ecological balance of southern South america to a major degree. Nor is it stopping either at the boundaries of famous nature reserves like Torres del Paine
and major pollinators like honeybees do not tend to forage at high altitudes Associate professor Dyer said.
and royal jelly but also to those dedicated to crop pollination and queen bee breeding. The researcher specialized in bee genetics points out that the developed technology was published recently on INIFAP we are in process of validation using field tests with beekeepers
#Queen bees honesty is the best policy for reproduction signalsqueen bees convey honest signals to worker bees about their reproductive status
if queen bees were manipulating workers into serving them or if they were providing valuable honest information to workers.
Why do worker bees care if their queen is mated well? According to Elina Niã o postdoctoral fellow Penn State previous research has shown that colonies headed by more promiscuous queens--those who mate with many males--are more genetically diverse and therefore healthier more productive and less likely to collapse.
So if worker bees are able to detect poorly mated queens and take steps to remove them that could be an explanation for the rapid rates of queen loss
and Tel aviv University describe how they assigned queen bees to a variety of treatment groups. They report their findings in today's (Nov 13) issue of PLOS ONE.
Finally the researchers presented the gland extracts to worker bees and observed the extent to which they were attracted to different extracts.
The team found that worker bees preferred pheromone extracts of queens that were inseminated with semen rather than saline.
or saline were preferred by worker bees. These results suggest that queens are signaling detailed and honest information about their mating state and reproductive quality to workers
According to Grozinger in addition to signaling queen bee reproductive status and quality queen bee pheromones regulate how fast workers mature and transition from taking care of developing larvae to foraging outside the hive.
#Sex determiner gene of honey bee more complicated than thoughtbee colonies consist of a queen bee lots of female worker bees and some male drones.
The queen bee who in the course of their mating flight mate with different drones multiple times passes on to fertilized eggs a random combinations of two csd copies so-called alleles.
These are eaten however by worker bees after they hatch. Up until now it was assumed that there were up to 20 csd alleles.
The study builds on earlier work by the researchers characterizing the innate immune response to snake venom and honeybee venom.
and that mast cells can also enhance innate resistance to honeybee venom. Such innate immune responses do not require prior immunization or the development of specific antibodies.
and Remko Leys at the South australia Museum to model a mass extinction in bee group Xylocopinae or carpenter bees at the end of the Cretaceous and beginning of the Paleogene eras known as the K-T boundary.
Analyzing DNA sequences of four tribes of 230 species of carpenter bees from every continent except Antarctica for insight into evolutionary relationships the researchers began to see patterns consistent with a mass extinction.
But in others such as honeybee colonies the queen mates with multiple males and so there are 17 or 20 sets of paternal genes
If a worker bee is isolated it will develop a distinctive hydrocarbon profile and be rejected if it is reintroduced into a colony.
and health of honeybees noted that the study showed that ants and bees are related more closely than previously thought.
Of particular interest was the finding that ants are a sister group to the Apoidea a major group within Hymenoptera that includes bees
#Model of dangerous bee disease in Jersey provides tool in fight against honeybee infectionsscientists at the University of Warwick have modelled an outbreak of the bee infection American foulbrood in Jersey using a technique
which could be applied to other honeybee diseases such as European foulbrood and the Varroa parasite. As well as modelling how bee infections spread the method also allows scientists to simulate various disease control interventions in order to measure their efficacy.
which affects the larval stage of honeybees. It can cause the death of an entire hive within a matter of monthsthe Jersey data covered 450 honeybee hives their location
and their owners from which the researchers built a computer simulation which modelled the speed at
Honeybees are one of the most important bee species in the world in terms of their contribution to food production through pollination.
This is the first rigorous statistical analysis carried out on a honeybee disease epidemic that we are aware of.
Set aside the fact that the honeybee's cousins--hornets wasps and yellow jackets--actually account for most stings said Richard Fell Ph d
what is killing honeybees. Some estimates put the value of honeybees in pollinating fruit vegetable and other crops at almost $15 billion annually Fell said.
Without bees to spread pollen from the male parts of plants to the female parts fruit may not form.
Farmers use honeybees to pollinate more than 100 different fruit and vegetable crops around the country in an approach known as managed pollination It involves placing bee hives in fields
He discussed the ongoing decline in honeybee populations in the U s . and some other countries--a condition sometimes termed colony collapse disorder (CCD).
Although honeybees have been doing better in recent years something continues to kill about 1 in every 3 honeybees each year.
Honeybees are not the only species of bee that can be used in managed pollination. If colonies continue declining Fell believes that there will be an increase in the use of other species including the bumble bee and alfalfa leafcutter bee.
In addition they are not as easily managed for pollination as the honeybee. The major advantages of using honeybees are ease of movement both in
and out of orchards or fields as well as the ability to manage colonies for higher populations.
Honeybee colonies can be moved from one crop to another in a single season something that cannot be done easily with bumble bees
If we can gain a better understanding of the factors causing honeybee decline we may be able to apply this knowledge to protecting other species. Fell cited funding from the Virginia Department of agriculture and Consumer Services the National Honey Board the Virginia Agricultural
#Ecologists get first bumblebees eye view of the landscapeecologists have produced the most detailed picture yet of how bumblebees use the landscape thanks to DNA technology and remote sensing.
The results--which come from the largest ever study of wild bumblebee nests--could help farmers
Despite their size and often conspicuous colouring bumblebees are difficult to study in the wild
To work out how far bumblebees forage from their nests a team of ecologists from the Centre for Ecology
and Hydrology (CEH) University of East Anglia University of Bristol and Institute of Zoology instead took advantage of bumblebees'unusual genetics.
All workers in a bumblebee colony are daughters of a singly-mated queen which means they are related highly in genetic terms.
The team sampled DNA non-lethally from live wild bumblebees including 2577 worker and 537 queen bees of five different species. Back in the laboratory they genotyped the samples
The maps allowed the team to estimate the location of each colony as well as how far each bumblebee travelled to find food.
By using the secrets hidden within the DNA of bumblebees we can start to understand how queens
For example reducing the distance that bumblebees have to fly to find food might increase their chances of survival into the next generation
Our findings could help land managers to plan schemes to help conserve bumblebee populations in both agricultural
Bumblebees are among the most important pollinators of many food crops and wild plants. The next stage of the research is to use mathematical models to produce a bees'eye view of the landscape.
Dr Claire Carvell the project leader says Ultimately we want to be able to predict which types of landscapes work best for bumblebees
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