As if we did not have enough worries for our bees:
A viral pathogen on plants has been detected in honey bees! In the journal of the American Society for Microbiology, scientists from the U.S. and Beijing, China after routinely screening bees for rare viruses found a new one! This one is called Tobacco Ringspot Virus (TRSV). They decided to investigate further to see if this plant infected virus could also cause systemic infection in honey bees.
Yan Ping Chen from the USDA, ARS laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, and colleague Ji Lian Li from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science in Beijing are suggesting: " The results of our study provide the first evidence that honey bees exposed to a virus-contaminated pollen can also be infected and that the infection becomes widespread in their bodies".
It is already known that bees can transmit a virus from plant to plant. Many honey bee viruses are known causes of honey bee vital disease.
When the researchers investigated further, they noticed that colonies classified as "weak"; TRSV and other viruses were more prominent than in the "strong" ones.
Another important aspect found is that colonies with a lot of viruses in the fall dwindled rapidly and were dead before February! The strong colonies with fewer viral problems survived the entire cold winter months.
Finally Chen and Li concluded that "The increasing prevalence of TRSV in conjunction with other bee viruses is associated with gradual decline of host populations and supports the view that viral infections have a significant negative impact on colony survival"
No comments:
Post a Comment