Bee Collapse Solved

[Charlie]

Hey guys, there was some speculation that the very useful pesticide imidacloprid might be responsible for the problems bees were having the last few years. But, looks like that's not it. More:

"Honey bee collapse problem potentially solved
Scientists believe the fungus Nosema ceranae is responsible for honey bee collapse, not pesticides as once feared. Flumagillin (an antibiotic) kills the fungus in its active, reproducing state, but there is no known method of killing its spores. A Montana State University grad student tested different compounds beekeepers could use to kill the N. ceranae spores and found that a 10 percent bleach solution worked the best."

Charlie

[Darkhorse]

I remember hearing about this a few years back.  Of course the media being as they are, I heard that the honeybees were definitely dying out as the population was too small to successfully reproduce, and that their loss will spawn a world famine...


So are honeybees back on the road to recovery with this news?

[helixturnhelix]

Funny enough last spring I was up at UC Berkeley for a job interview and one of the grad students in the lab I interviewing did research on bees.  I asked her about if she was worried about her colonies collapsing, etc... and it was pretty interesting how she explained how the majority of bee keepers with problems do not have good husbandry.  They keep their colonies too close together, to high a population, low genetic diversity etc...  If this is indeed caused by a fungus then in makes alot of sense that these conditions would promote the growth of organisms. 

As far as killing the spores, it is really difficult to kill spores in general.  In Bacillis bacteria, when nutrients is low or the population is too high, they will often form endospores, which are a vegative version of of the bacteria.  When nutrients and what the bacteria needs to grow are back into alignment these spores turn back into reproducing bacteria.  What is interesting about the endospore, is it is impervious to pretty much anything.  You can treat them with alcohol, radiation, antibiotics, heat, you name it and they usually come right back once the conditions are too their liking again.  Pretty amazing how resilient they are in this state.