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Scientists Isolate and Treat Parasite Causing Decline in Honey Bee Population
In a recent report, a team of scientists from Spain claims to have isolated and treated the parasite causing honey bee depopulation syndrome. Their hope is to prevent the continued decline of honey bee populations in Europe and the US. "The loss of honey bees could have an enormous horticultural and economic impact worldwide. Honeybees are important pollinators of crops, fruit and wild flowers and are indispensable for a sustainable and profitable agriculture as well as for the maintenance of the non-agricultural ecosystem. Honeybees are attacked by numerous pathogens including viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites."
A Day in the Life of Debbie G1bs0n
A silver tear rolled down Debbie's perfect cheek as she slowly lowered her
sleek young body into the white marble bathtub. When she was younger, a nice
hot bubble bath was all she needed to raise her spirits, but now it seemed that
nothing would calm her troubled soul. Life wasn't easy for the teenage singing
sensation. It seemed that no matter what she did, no one would take her work
seriously.
"Trite," the critics had called her last album. "Trite, cheesy and
sappy." Debbie shuddered and began to weep harder. These were her innermost
feelings they were poking fun at. If "Lost in Your Eyes" and "No More Rhyme"
weren't heartfelt reflections of the depth of the human soul - she didn't know
what was. And surely "Electric Youth" was the most inspirational song about
youthful potential since David Bowie's "Changes." But still her finest works
were ridiculed by those too emotionally and intellectually immature to fully
understand them.
But Debbie's musical career wasn't what was bothering her, and she knew it
all too well. Her real problem was that she could no longer go on ignoring the
feelings that were swelling inside her body. She was blossoming into woman-
hood, but could not realize her fantasies in fear of tarnishing her image as
the fresh, innocent pop starlet. It wasn't so much to preserve her career -
she knew in her heart of hearts that she could make it on her talent alone -
but she felt she owed it to her fans. She wanted to be a role model to young
girls, to tell them that it's cool to just say no to sex and drugs - to follow
their dreams and to be individuals. But at the same time, Debbie was finding
it harder and harder to resist the powerful desires coursing through her veins.
Yes, Debbie was a virgin, but it was more by circumstance than conscious
choice. She was curious, but didn't want to just hop into bed with the first
guy that came along. And since her busy career prevented any kind of real
romance from developing, it seemed that she was doomed to chastity forever. It
had been months since the last time she had been touched in a sexual manner. A
smile crept across her face while her mind replayed once again that delicious
evening.
She washed the tears from her face while her slender toes slipped around
the tiny chain on the rubber stopper in the tub. A gentle tug and the water
began slowly draining away. Debbie began gently caressing her taut young body
as the water lowered, exposing her soft flesh to the cool air. Bubbles
crackled and popped on the delicate surfaces of her small, pert breasts -
sending tingling pleasures from her tiny pink nipples to her moist womanhood.
"Kirk," she whispered to herself. "Oh... Kirk...."
To most people, Kirk Camer0n was just another television star. He played
Michael on the popular sitcom "Growing Pains" - a winsome youth with an
irresistible smile and a keen wit. But he was more than this to Debbie. Much
more.
By now the water had reached the floating curls of her soft blonde pubic
hair. Debbie ran her slender fingers through the tiny locks and remembered
that night at the Emmys.
By mere chance they had been seated next to each other. They talked a
little, mostly about being mobbed by hordes of twelve year old fans whenever
they went out in public. But while they spoke, Debbie could feel Kirk
undressing her with his eyes - tracing her curves and taking obvious glances at
her tight skirt. He had an air of hungry confidence about him, and she felt
desires welling up inside her that she had never felt before. The lights went
down in the room, and the ceremony began. Kirk took Debbie's hand and began
gently stoking it. Then he suddenly let go, and instead put his hand on her
knee. Slowly he began to move it up her leg, stroking and caressing her inner
thigh; making Debbie swoon in shameful anticipation.
Lying in the bathtub, Debbie's mind p
I just hope that whatever they do doesn't end up upsetting the balance and put humans at risk of swarms of deadly furry yellow death. As long as they kill other people and not me I'm not really too bothered.
zomBEEs!!!!! oh noooeeess!!!11!!
How sweet it is...
I hope this caused some synapses to fire.
Oh god no! Not the bees! Not the bees!!! AAAAAAAAUUUUGGHH!!!
Where would we be, in today's world, without science? There's all sorts of potential catastrophes just waiting to happen. Our high population isn't helping, but hey, what can you do. Just saying. Without hordes of well-paid scientists, we would be so hosed right now. We might still be hosed! But at least we're figuring SOME things out before it's too late, mostly.
They can't keep handing out antibiotics to bees. If they have identified the cause, they should find resistant bee strains and breed those.
I remember when some dumbass said that the honeybees were being killed off by cell phones and WiFi internet.
So where are they now?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
You know bees are useful for fertilizing plants and not just the sticky yellow stuff right?
Bees, along with butterflies and other insects, are essential for pollination.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
This should bee a positive step for farmers everywhere who depend on these critters for pollination of their crops. I'm buzzing with joy!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
A parasite. Not virus or bacteria.
Breeding resistant bees is kinda like breeding humans that are resistant to tapeworm.
You kill or surgically remove parasites - you don't develop antibodies to fight them.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
This story is in direct disagreement with a recent article in SciAm, where they find colony collapse is MORE like caused by IAPV, and NOT the nosema parasite.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=saving-the-honeybee
And since the scientists in the SciAm article looked at a lot more than two apiaries, I am gonna have to give them a lot more credence.
"Honeybees are attacked by numerous pathogens including viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites."
The Honeybees role 15d6 to defend -
Death to the Fungi!
"i lost my dignity on a slippery wiener"
Mod the parent up
Nosema seems to be just a part of the equation - not the solution to it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey_bee_depopulation_syndrome#Nosema
A study reported in September 2007 found that 100% of afflicted and 80% of non-afflicted colonies contained Nosema ceranae.
Link to the September 2007 SciAm article about the study:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=bees-ccd-virus&page=1
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
... in yet more affairs which they should not be interfering with. Why do we interfere so much with the natural progression of life of this planet?
Oh yes, sorry. I forgot that bees "are indispensable for a sustainable and profitable agriculture". Profit is to be made. Must do whatever is necessary to fill wallets.
Every day I find dozens more dead bees splattered over the front of my car, and it's the same with every other car I see.
Multiply those insect deaths by the number of cars travelling the roads every day and it adds up to a lot of dead bees.
I'm not suggesting the decrease in bee numbers is attributable to this cause, but the decline in bee population does happen to coincide with the massive increase in world motor vehicle numbers of the last decade or so.
Yes, yes, I know, correlation does not equal causation...I'm just saying.
Interestingly, the story itself contains a quotation not so favorable to the story's summary, and even its own text is less optimistic:
A critical read of these statements (remember to parse it as English) and the rest of the article as well tells us that this particular parasite was identified as the sole cause in two professional apiaries. The principal researcher (they say "principle" in the article... reading "news" causes me physical pain these days) is saying one strain of parasite could be responsible. But what has actually happened is that they have identified a single parasite that was active in two apiaries with hives suffering from underpopulation. That does not mean a single parasite caused the dieoff (the bees suffering from some other parasite, infection, or other distress might be the ones that departed) and it does not mean that the "cure" for colony collapse disorder has been identified.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Don't treat the parasites, kill them. The parasites are the problem, and the last thing we need is to treat them. Treat the bees, kill the parasites.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
But not as useful as more efficient, native pollinators, which in North America honeybees displace.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Reading the other comments here, it's clear this isn't a case closed situation, but, this has been one of the single most frightening changes in nature in recent years and its reassuring to know that there at least seems to be progress.
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
While we are not sleeping the siesta... (an there is also the well known fact that many of our best brained people have died bullfighting :( )
Glad to hear those parasites are doing better now! But how are the bees doing?
But how many of those problems are science caused?
It's entirely possible if not likely that this bee crisis is tied into something else science has done.
After all. Bees were around for millions of years--so to all of a sudden coincidentally start going away during the industrialized era is suspicious.
But what about the stars going out?
Is it possible to transfer the parasites to the RIAA lawyers? Or are they not as evolved as the honey bees and therefore immune? Can you give a parasite to another parasite?
I was worried there would be a mead shortage...and a decline in pagan moon shine is a bad thing...
-Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
"In a recent report, a team of scientists from Spain claims to have isolated and treated the parasite causing honey bee depopulation syndrome. "
When I read that summary heading I expected the opening line to include the word "us".
How much more parasitic could our relationship with honeybees possibly get?
Phew, at last I can turn my cell phone back on, cause it's not the RF interference that kills the bees. I feel like I've been on a 2 year long plane takeoff.
-- Home is where you eat your heart out.
The Doctor: Donna, c'mon think! Earth. There must have been some sort of warning. Was anything happening back in your day? Like electrical storms, freak weather, patterns in the sky?
Donna: Well how should I know? Um... no. I don't think so, no.
The Doctor: Okay, never mind.
Donna: Although... there were the bees disappearing.
The Doctor: "The bees disappearing"? The bees disappearing. The bees disappearing!
Shadow Architect: How is that significant?
Donna: On Earth we have these insects. Some people said it was pollution or mobile phones.
The Doctor: Or they were going back home.
Donna: Back home where?
The Doctor: Planet Melissa Majoria.
Donna: Are you saying bees are aliens?
The Doctor: Don't be so daft! Not all of them.
I was worried the dying off of honeybees was going to lead to more shitty movies like The Happening.
Name...That...Autocomplete!
Saying the reason the bees were dying was because of human pollution.
Another media lie.
... this will go to show that things not based on moeny do have inherent value.
Efficient agriculture has a money value.
... when everyone on here was an electrical engineer and supported the theory it was cell phone towers? Where are you people now?
Watch the skies!!!!
"A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist" - Sir Humphrey Appleby
What about the people who don't like or can't eat Chinese?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
They even made a movie about it http://ur1.ca/3oog
A flawed idea but still interesting.
If you have a resource which can be exploited at a certain rate sustainably, then find by for example pouring nitrates and phosphates on to it you can triple production for a few years, then it fails. Is it really sane to exploit it unsustainably?
Our economic system forces perverse results. Sustainable equates with failure. In the above example those who operate sustainably will be forced out of business because they have to compete with others who can simply borrow some money, increase production for a short time flooding the market and crashing the prices, then buy up their competitors at a steep discount before raising prices again.
Actually this is a national security issue, particularly for farming and food production.
Deleted
I suppose that the deline of the Bee population has nothing to do with the rise of modified crops.... just sayin...
As someone who actually keeps bees, this story is hilarious! We've been treating for Nosema for more years than I've been keeping bees (16). Take a deep breath. Every eight years or so we go through the same series of events, colonies die off for no apparent reason, then recover in a few years. This "catastrophe" will pass as well and as soon as the non profits and other interested entities have milked it for what it's worth CCD will be replaced by the next environmental "catastrophe". Meanwhile, eat honey and drink mead.
In Wyoming, I hear that the sheep have learned to fight off the cowboys. The ones in Australia are not quite so smart.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Thanks for the bugfix!
Saying the reason the bees were dying was because of human pollution.
It is. A healthy colony is far more able to fight off infections naturally than those which exist in a food chain polluted by all the various bits of crap which have been introduced. I suspect that the problem isn't any one thing but rather a broad spectrum build-up of contaminants and environmental irritants. Even the article makes no bones about the fact that this one particular type of infection is not the sole cause of CCD.
Frankly, this solution, (antibiotics) sounds suspiciously like just another way to sell more drugs on an industrial scale. I wonder who funded and promoted these lab-coats?
-FL
My other favorite is Yeast. --You can still take dough and make bread without having to add yeast from a jar. Bread results from one of the oldest and most amazing symbiotic relationships ever.
Cheese is also pretty neat that way. Though honey is nicer than bread. You don't need to bake the bees in order to eat the end product.
-FL
But what about the cell phone theory? Oops.
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...