Commercially Engineered Bees Spread Disease to Wild Bees

[FourScore]

Commercially Engineered Bees Spread Disease to Wild Bees
by Will Dunham

WASHINGTON - Disease spread to wild bees from commercially bred bees used for pollination in agriculture greenhouses may be playing a role in the mysterious decline in North American bee populations, researchers said on Tuesday.

Bees pollinate numerous crops, and scientists have been expressing alarm over their falling numbers in recent years in North America. Experts warn the bee disappearance eventually could harm agriculture and the food supply.

Scientists have been struggling to understand the recent decline in various bee populations in North America. For example, a virus brought from Australia has been implicated in massive honeybee deaths last year.

Canadian researchers studied another type of bee, the bumblebee, near two large greenhouse operations in southern Ontario where commercially reared pollination bees are used in the growing of crops such as tomatoes, bell peppers and cucumbers.

The researchers first observed that the commercial bumblebees regularly flew in and out of vents in the sides of the greenhouses, escaping from the facilities.

The researchers then devised a mathematical model to predict how disease might spread from this “spillover” of runaway commercial bees to their wild cousins.

The model predicted a relatively slow build-up of infection in nearby wild bumblebee populations over weeks or months culminating in a burst of transmission generating an epidemic wave that could affect nearly all of wild bees exposed.

The model also predicted a drop-off in infection rates as you get further from the greenhouses.

GREENHOUSE BUMBLEBEE PARASITES

The researchers then sampled wild bumblebee populations around the greenhouses, catching bees in butterfly nets, holding them in vials and taking them back to a laboratory to screen for pathogens, including testing their feces.

The patterns that had been predicted by their mathematical model were borne out by studying the wild bees, they said.

Most of the parasites in the wild bumblebees were found to be at normal levels except for one intestinal parasite known as Crithidia bombi that is common in commercial bee colonies but typically absent in wild bumblebees.

The researchers found that up to half of wild bumblebees near the greenhouses were infected with this parasite.

“All of the different species of bumblebees that we sampled around greenhouses showed the same pattern: really high levels of infection near greenhouses and then declining levels of infection as you moved out,” said Michael Otterstatter of the University of Toronto, one of the researchers.

“It was quite obvious that this was coming from the greenhouses and it was a general adverse effect on the bumblebees,” Otterstatter added in a telephone interview.

He said the parasite weakens and often kills bees. The “spillover” of disease from commercial colonies may be a factor in the decline of bee populations in North America, he added.

http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSN2232266420080723

[flashl]

1. Why JUST Commerical Bees? What about OUR 450 year Militarized Franken Bee Project?

Finding Land Mines by Following a Bee
Business Week

Conditioned to associate explosive chemicals with food, bees can show the way to buried mines without risk to dogs or humans.

Today's methods of detecting land mines has one problem: Whether accompanied by keen-nosed dogs or chemical-vapor detectors, human mine-sweepers still must step their solitary way through minefields. It's dangerous work, risking a trip of a fuse that could easily maim or kill. So to avoid that, a group of scientists is researching how to put a more nimble creature to work: the honeybee.

By conditioning a bee to think it's finding food when it senses chemicals used in explosives, a team of scientists from the University of Montana, Montana State University, and the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration is trying to harness the bee's acute sense of smell. The group then maps the positions of the hungry swarms, using a laser-based detection method similar to radar, called lidar. Led by researchers Jerry Bromenshenk and Joseph Shaw, the team reported its results in a recent issue of Nature's physics journal Optics Express.

450-YEAR PROJECT. The work comes as part of a push by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is funding the project, and other organizations to develop safer and more effective ways of detecting and removing land mines. A deadly reality in much of the developing world, land mines kill roughly 15,000 to 20,000 people each year, according to a 2003 RAND Corp. study. They can lay undetected for many years, only to be triggered by an unususpecting civilian out for a stroll.

[TheMadMonk]

2. Looks like it's about to be deep sixed by the military.

Saw a post here earlier/yesterday which referred to some high level decision to not let this research out of the country.

Combined that with the simple fact that the US does not have much of a landmine problem, that decision becomes pure unmitigated evil.

[flashl]

3. Claiming project has ended prevents assessing the unknown and unaccountable harm to food supply. nt

[MyNameGoesHere]

4. hey wasn't this an X-Files running theme? n/t

[flashl]

5. Yes, "The Truth Is Out There". nt