Israeli vaccine could save bees from colony collapse disorder

[NJCher]

Wow, if this is for real, it could be fantastic for bees AND for humans.

There's a video at the link.

snip
An Israeli company has developed a revolutionary new drug that could solve the problem of Colony Collapse Disorder, the disturbing syndrome that has been wiping out bee communities and threatening agricultural production all over the world.

The drug, Remembee, which was developed by Beeologics, has completed successful clinical trials on millions of bees in North America. Not
only has it proved effective in maintaining bee health, but it also improved the longevity of bees and increased the honey in the hives.

Based on Nobel prize-winning RNAI technology, Remembee helps the bees overcome IAVP virus, also discovered in Israel, which has been associated with colony collapse in scientific literature.

"It's really a tug of war between the virus and the host. We are helping the bee tug the rope more strongly and beat the virus. We take
advantage of an immune system that the bees elicit for viral disease. But we are really using naturally occurring phenomenon. It's not a
pesticide and it's not toxic," says Nitzan Paldi, CTO of Beeologics.
snip


http://www.israel21c.org/bin/en.jsp?enDispWho=Articles^l2624&enPage=BlankPage&enDisplay=view&enDispWhat=object&enVersion=0&enZone=Technology&

Next up: take care of the bats.


Cher

[Auggie]

1. Remembee? Beeologics?

Gotta love the names too.

[Buzz Clik]

2. It's a virus?

According to the red-faced types here at DU, the bees die because Monsanto sucks -- GMOs, pesticides, monocultures, NAFTA, etc.

I wonder if Beelogics could develop a vaccine for stupid.

[mike_c]

3. oh for pete's sake-- this again...?

It's a corporate advertisement. I think it's meant to attract investors, but it's certainly meant to attract customers, if nothing else. And oddly, it mischaracterizes bee biology pretty badly.

Ironically, this is an example of recent conversation among entomologists about CCD:

The various theories behind what CCD was/is seem to have more cultural bias than scientific evidence behind them. The most popular theories in the EU (based on the number of reports, protests, and such) were GM (Genetically Modified) crops, and Imidacloprid. Of the two, the neonicotinoid explanation had the best evidence, but even that was not terribly substantial. The GM crops theory gained no significant adherents in the US (fear of GM crops seems to be a cultural thing), but the imidacloprid theory did, including the beekeeper who is credited with bringing CCD to everyone's attention (David Hackenberg), who flat-out blamed CCD on imidacloprid back in 2007 - though none of this was supported by definitive research. That being said, there are two things to bear in mind: (1) there *is* research to show that neonicotinoids will appear, sometimes in non-trace amounts, in floral nectar - it's just that no one has taken the next step and shown that honey bees feeding on such nectar experience any *significant* adverse effects. (2) even if there *is* an adverse effect, it's unlikely that this is related at all to CCD.

The thing that seems to have been consistently missed by the media is that CCD was explicitly coined as a new term for an old syndrome (previous names included disappearing disease, spring dwindle, May disease, autumn collapse, and fall dwindle disease); if one tracks the beekeeping literature there are sporadic records of basically the same phenomenon going back at least 100 years. It shows up, kills off massive numbers of bees, then vanishes again within two or three years and stays gone for at least a decade or more. There's no way to know it's *actually* the same thing each time, but the obsession with "recent technology" when formulating explanations really made no sense, right from the start. Neonicotinoids, GM crops, cell phones, and such didn't even exist back in the 1960's, so it's hard to see how they could possibly explain the CCD phenomenon. CCD, not surprisingly in that context, has been pretty minimal in 2009. If 2010 and 2011 show even lower levels of CCD, then we may just have one more episode to enter into the books, and in 10 more years when it reappears, let's see what new name everyone gives it. Myself, I'd have to say the claim that the problem is viral is really the only sensible one, consistent with all of the available evidence.

Excerpted from the entomo-l mailing list. This is part of an ongoing conversation. The author is a well respected entomologist at UC Riverside (I removed his sig because I don't have his permission to post it). I've highlighted the last paragraph because it's the most telling about the current status of CCD outside the media.

[xchrom]

4. sounds like your quoting people who don't believe in global climate change. nt

[mike_c]

5. no, I quoted from the most active entomological list-serve...

...and the individual I quoted is a very well respected U.S. entomologist. The point I'm trying to make is that the media have made CCD a much more hysterical story than the science seems to support. Worse, they've done a bad job of it, mischaracterizing the phenomenon and its potential consequences.