A New Explanation for CCD

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A recent newsletter of the American Bee Journal reports on the discovery of a new virus in North American honey bees. An extract from the reports says:

"An Invertebrate Iridescent Virus (“IIV”) , newly-found in North America, in combination with Nosema ceranae, which arrived from overseas less recently, was found in “Virtually all of the bees from CCD colonies” sampled from widely dispersed USA hives from 2006 through 2009."

The original paper can be found here:

(http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0013181)
 
The key thing seems to be bees suffering from IIV and nosema at the same time. Which I guess means that if you keep on top of Nosema and Varroa, and excercise good hygeine, you're less likely to get CCD. Who would have thought it!
 
so.....

the (not quite) million dollar question is.... does the waggle dance tell you when your bees have IIV and nosema?
 
Nothing to do with shipping colonies vast distances, mono floral diet, imported Q's then.
 
the (not quite) million dollar question is.... does the waggle dance tell you when your bees have IIV and nosema?

it depends on if you get a grant to find out....
 
Mmmm....Tenure, a single observation hive and a post-doc to look at the bees for you. Heaven.
I'll send you vids of a new bee doing a wiggle with another bee on her back and you can write a paper on it...
 
There really is no need for me to make waspish comments on the above linked story (well, might as well make one or two......) - sharp-eyed "natural beekeepers" were already muttering darkly that the latest "it's nothing to do with 'icides" findings ignored the "icides in the room" that weakened the bees so they succumbed - here is the confirmation that certain companies will throw their money about to preserve their lucrative business flogging toxins, whatever the cost to life on earth.
Now I seem to remember the same company were throwing money at a certain association, and that despite false suggestions being made that the funding was ending, it's carrying on full steam - obviously nothing suspicious there then! :coolgleamA:

Why did we ever get rid of the stocks, ducking stools, and liberal applications of the horsewhip?
 
CCD Research sponsored by Bayer,nice to know the research has plenty of money behind it now.

Although, if everyone's saying it's due to pesticides and it isn't, I'm not sure what else they could do... most pest and disease problems in the plant world are caused by humans moving stuff around- basically taking a bl**dy great spoon, stirring the world's ecosystems together and seeing what happens. Japanese knotweed, HB, dutch elm disease, canadian pondweed, new zealand flatworm, harlequin ladybirds.... The same way we've spread varroa, IAPV...
 
Why did we ever get rid of the stocks, ducking stools, and liberal applications of the horsewhip?

Rumour has it that there are certain public schools...............:grouphug:
 
stirring the world's ecosystems together and seeing what happens. Japanese knotweed, HB, dutch elm disease, canadian pondweed, new zealand flatworm, harlequin ladybirds.... The same way we've spread varroa, IAPV...

Don't forget himalayan balsam.. the spread of that is killing British wildlife, including water voles.




Didn't 100% of the CCD samples have both this IIV and nosema ceranae??? I am struggling to get my head around this...of course is doesn't mean that there was not icide damage too. I suppose you only find what you look for, but to me it means that we should be taking nosema, which is virtually endemic in colonies, more seriously than some of us do.
 
And you could probably find other factors that were 100% present too, but strangely enough there was no search made for pesticides as well, it would be reasonable to assume that the "research" is at the very least "skewed" - Bayer's funding involvement would, of course, have nothing to do with it.............
In simple terms, the bees immune systems are severely compromised by a cocktail of "icides" and then expire from diseases that they could otherwise shrug off, and this "we've found the cause" report proves nothing of the sort, it's another attempt to let pesticides off the hook
 
Oh dear oh dear oh dear. Martin, I'll never get you to open your eyes to what science is providing us with, but for the rest of you, here are two contributions this morning from Bee-L. I'd post a link instead but I doubt that it would survive here long. It is clear that there two pathogens, working in tandem, are a major part of the story of CCD. Whether there are other factors that encourage them is an open question. If pesticides are part of the equation I'd stake a large sum on them being the pesticides the beekeepers are shovelling into their hives themselves.

First Randy Oliver's comments on this, then Jerry Bromenshenk himself in the next post:

>
> Re:
> http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/08/news/honey_bees_ny_times.fortune/index.htm


Just how low can a reporter stoop? This story is patently libelous.

Just because a reporter has the clear agenda of blaming imidacloprid for all
bee problems, doesn't mean that she needs to fabricate some conflict of
interest nonsense about Jerry.

If she had actually taken the time to read the article, rather than just the
headline, she might have understood that Jerry's paper was not concerned
with pesticides, other than one brief mention, in which it says: "A survey
of bee samples from across the USA revealed traces of pesticides in many
bee samples, but none were shown to correlate with CCD," referring to Mullin,
et al.*

What they [Mullin et al] actually said was: "While exposure to many of these
neurotoxicants elicits acute and sublethal reductions in honey bee fitness,
the effects of these materials in combinations and their direct association
with CCD or declining bee health remains to be determined," so I do not feel
that Jerry misrepresented them.

What apparently ticked off the Future "journalist" was that she was afraid
that Jerry's paper might divert attention from her pet peeve--that Bayer's
neonicotinoids must be killing bees. If she had taken a moment to read the
Mullin paper, she would have found: "Our results do not support sufficient
amounts and frequency in pollen of imidacloprid (mean of 3.1 ppb in less than
3% of pollen samples) or the less toxic neonicotinoids thiacloprid and
acetamiprid to account for impacts on bee health."

This was not Jerry that said this, but the team of excellent pesticide
researchers cited below.

I've written to Fortune, suggesting that they publish a retraction of the
libelous claims. Feel free to do so yourselves: [email protected]

Randy Oliver


*Mullin CA, Frazier M, Frazier JL, Ashcraft S, Simonds R, et al. (2010) High
levels of miticides and agrochemicals in North American apiaries:
Implications for honey bee health. PLoS ONE 5: e9754.
 
Last edited:
Read it yourself over at Bee-L folks. Jerry Bromenshenk:


The Fortune reporter knows full well:

(1) the onion seed pollination work was done for a large U.S. company,
there was no grant received from Bayer,

(2) the acoustic recorder is better at pesticide detection than pathogens
- the latter part of the development is an ongoing research project still
being funded by USDA.

(3) we weren't asked by NYT to disclose our funding sources, it wasn't
brought up, and there was no need since this information is required by PloS
ONE before they will even review a paper. You can find it on the PloS ONE
site.

(4) Bee Alert Technology, Inc. is a technology transfer company that is
legally recognized as an independent company in the State of Montana,
affiliated with the University of Montana. It is MT State Board of Regents
Approved and has been since the early 2000s. Intellectual property agreements
are in place, stipulating issues such as patents, IP rights, licensing, and
if we ever make any money - which seems a LONG way off, the University
receives an established royalty for research and education.

This all came about because of changes in Federal Law ensuing from the
1980 Bayh–Dole Act or University and Small Business Patent Procedures Act.
This is _United States_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States)
_legislation_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law) dealing with intellectual
property arising from _federal government-funded research_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_funding#Government-funded_research) . Adopted in _1980_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980) , Bayh-Dole is codified in _35 U.S.C._
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_35_of_the_United_States_Code) _§ 200_
(http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/35/200.html) -212_[1]_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh–Dole_Act#endnote_35USC200212) , and implemented by 37 _C.F.R._
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Federal_Regulations) 401_[2]_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh–Dole_Act#endnote_37CFR401) . Among other
things, it gave U.S. universities, small businesses and non-profits
_intellectual property_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property) control
of their _inventions_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention) and other
intellectual property that resulted from such funding.

The Fortune article presents an assortment of lies and half-truths by a
reporter who left another magazine before it folded. Unfortunately, this
article has spawned a copy by New Yorker Magazine that added an even more
inflammatory headline and chose to emphasize some of Ms Eban's more outrageous
claims of what she alleges I said.

The NEW version of this fiction appears at:
_http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/10/bee_mystery_unsolved_lead_inve.html_
(http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/10/bee_mystery_unsolved_lead_inve.html)
and it also encourages reader comment, as does Fortune.

The only good thing about all this is that it can still generate a smile,
courtesy of friends - such as the proposed title sent to me “Fortune’s
Misfortune – Smearing Scientists Is Liable To Be Libel “.

Thanks to all. Jerry
 
Didn't 100% of the CCD samples have both this IIV and nosema ceranae??? I am struggling to get my head around this...of course is doesn't mean that there was not icide damage too. I suppose you only find what you look for, but to me it means that we should be taking nosema, which is virtually endemic in colonies, more seriously than some of us do.

Why point the finger at nosema when it is "virtually endemic" ? Obviously any study is going to find lots of it ( I vaguely remember a New Zealand study where it was found in 100% of colonies ) , it would be better to recognise it as a natural component of the bees guts IMHO
 

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