Israeli Virus Linked to Devastating Bee Disease

Honeybee on a peach blossom. Bees are essential for pollination of 90 fruit and vegetable crops worldwide. (Photo by Z. Huang courtesy Michigan State University)





UNIVERSITY PARK, Pennsylvania, September 7, 2007 (ENS) - Scientists are homing in on a possible cause of the new bee disease known as colony collapse disorder, linking it with a virus from Israel that may have arrived in the United States via shipments of live bees from Australia.

Since it was first reported in 2004, colony collapse disorder, CCD, has affected 23 percent of the commercial bee colonies in the United States, causing losses of from 50 to 90 percent of the bees in each colony.

A team of entomologists and infectious disease researchers are reporting a "strong correlation" between the colony collapse disorder and a virus, the Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus, IVAP, identified just three years ago.

This is the first report of IAPV in the United States, the scientists said, adding that this virus is transmitted by the varroa mite, found in many U.S. hives.

But the scientists are serving up the results of their study with a dose of caution.

"We have not proven a causal relationship between any infectious agent and CCD," they wrote in Thursday's issue of "Science Express" online.

They did find that the prevalence of IAPV genetic material in bees suffering from colony collapse disorder, the timing of the outbreaks and the geographical circumstances "indicate that IAPV is a significant marker for CCD."
On the hunt for the cause of colony collapse disorder, the researchers decided to sequence the genetic material in bees to try to find a potential pathogen…

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