Welcome, Guest

Author Topic: Honey Bee Virus Tricks Hive Guards Into Admitting Sick Intruders  (Read 2630 times)

Offline JurassicApiary

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 331
  • Gender: Male
A new article published in Smithsonian Magazine today: (Edit: Seeb also posted a similar "Trojan virus" thread from another publisher.  If you find this article interesting, be sure to read that one too.)


Read in Smithsonian Magazine: https://apple.news/AnrJK3qAVQJiZWEsDqo3hMg


The full article text is here should the link above become inactive:



Honey Bee Virus Tricks Hive Guards Into Admitting Sick Intruders

The virus tweaks bee behavior to infect new hives and may also spread other hive-killing pathogens and pests

04/30/2020

Honey bees are known for running a tight ship. Their hexagonal honeycombs make the most mathematically efficient use of space for storing honey, they keep diseases from spreading by minimizing touching or feeding of sick hive-mates, and guards stationed at the hive entrance act as bouncers to keep out intruders.

But new research suggests a deadly virus tricks those normally vigilant guards into letting infected invaders into their hives, reports Erik Stokstad for Science.

?Somehow, the infected bees are able to circumvent the guards of foreign colonies, which they shouldn?t be able to do,? says Adam Dolezal, an entomologist at the University of Illinois and leader of the new research, in a statement.

The virus, called Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV), has also been shown to make forager bees more likely to get lost on their way home?upping their chances of spreading the virus to a neighboring hive.

By enabling these wandering bees to slip past an unfamiliar colony?s defenses, the virus has evolved a way to spread despite the sophisticated tactics bees deploy inside their colonies to tamp down infections.

"This is an interesting study that demonstrates an arms-race between a honey bee host and its viral pathogen at the behavioral level," Eyal Maori, a virologist at Cambridge University who was not involved in the research, tells Rosie McCall of Newsweek.

IAPV infections have been linked to colony losses and are one of many environmental stresses?including parasitic mites, pesticides, pollution and loss of plant diversity?making life more difficult for some of the insect world's hardest working farmhands. Without honey bees, roughly a third of the food eaten by Americans would disappear. Bees? contributions to pollinating crops including apples, melons, cranberries, pumpkins, squash, broccoli and almonds are valued at more than $15 billion.

This new research suggests that the practice of stacking multiple hives next to each other in commercial beekeeping may play right into the hands of IAPV. Left to their own devices, bees tend to spread out, with just one or two hives per square mile.

Dolezal and his team wanted to study how IAPV spreads and had a hunch that it might make some strategic alterations to the behavior and physiology of infected bees. To track the insects? behavior, the team tagged bees with barcode-like labels that could then be recognized and tracked by cameras attached to an automated computer system.

The system, capable of tracking up to 900 bees at once, was programmed to spot a behavior called trophallaxis, in which two bees smush their faces together while sharing regurgitated food and transmitting hormones or other chemical messages.

?Trophallaxis is essential to the spread of information and nutrition throughout the hive, but unfortunately, a behavior performed with such close social contact also allows viral infections to be transmitted through a hive,? says Gene Robinson, an entomologist at the University of Illinois and study co-author, in a statement.

The researchers used the automated system to track the behaviors of 90 to 150 IAPV-infected bees released into an experimental hive. The study found that bees infected with IAPV, as well as bees with stimulated immune systems designed to mimic infection, were shunned by their hivemates when they went looking for trophallaxis, the researchers report this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

But the bees? brand of social distancing inside the hive wasn?t enough to protect them from the virus. When the team placed individuals infected with IAPV outside a hive, the guards gave them special treatment?letting them in more often and engaging in more trophallaxis with them than with healthy or immune-stimulated bees.

The researchers suspect the guards? sweet spot for the sick bees may be because of their smell, which is used by the guards to discern friend from foe. The researchers found that smelly compounds called hydrocarbons were chemically altered in bees infected with the virus. But these sick bees may slip past the velvet rope by simply being nicer to the guards, reports Science. The researchers observed sick bees being more submissive and sharing more food when approached by hostile guards.

The findings suggest that IAPV is evolving to infect as many hosts as possible, says Dolezal in a statement.

Other researchers say IAPV?s ability to modify the bees? behavior to get from hive to hive might also increase the spread of additional threats. IAPV could aid the transmission of pathogens and pests, such as the varroa mite, to new colonies, Maori tells Newsweek. The mite feeds on bees? fat reserves and has devastated colonies across the world.

More research is needed to determine if IAPV plays a big role in the spread of mites and other viruses, Maori tells Newsweek, which would represent a significant vulnerability in commercial beekeeping operations that keep many hives close together.

Offline Seeb

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 410
  • Gender: Female
Re: Honey Bee Virus Tricks Hive Guards Into Admitting Sick Intruders
« Reply #1 on: April 30, 2020, 08:02:23 pm »
I had never heard of IAPV until I read these two articles. Here is what I found for symptoms [It's presence or extent of presence in the US is still not clear to me]

Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV)
Symptoms of IAPV are similar to ABPV and CBPV including: shivering wings, darkened hairless abdomens and thoraxes, progressing into paralysis and death. IAPV is found in all life stages and castes of bees. IAPV and other viruses were found to be strongly associated with colony collapse disorder (CCD) in the United States, but no direct relationship between the viruses and CCD has yet been shown (Cox-Foster et al. 2007).  IAPV is extremely virulent at high titers, as when vectored by Varroa and is covert at low titers.


I'm not sure what IAPV is extremely virulent at high titers, as when vectored by Varroa and is covert at low titers means, perhaps someone will explain it to me in layman's terms

Offline The15thMember

  • Global Moderator
  • Galactic Bee
  • *******
  • Posts: 4426
  • Gender: Female
  • Traveler of the Multiverse, Seeker of Knowledge
Re: Honey Bee Virus Tricks Hive Guards Into Admitting Sick Intruders
« Reply #2 on: April 30, 2020, 11:59:51 pm »
I'm not sure what IAPV is extremely virulent at high titers, as when vectored by Varroa and is covert at low titers means, perhaps someone will explain it to me in layman's terms
In my admittedly extremely limited knowledge of the subject, I think "titers" is just a fancy way of saying "viral load".  According to Wikipedia, viral titers is defined as the number of viral particles per mL of applicable body fluid.  So it's one of those words that scientists like to use to make layman feel dumb, because they could just as easily say viral load, and then you'd know what they meant.  :cheesy:  The translation would be "IAPV is extremely aggressive at a high viral load, as when vectored by Varroa[,] (I may as well proofread while I translate) and has little symptoms at low viral load".  Sounds basic enough when you say it like that.  :wink:  Of course that is only my translation; perhaps if Van notices this thread he'll confirm if I'm right or not, since he was in immunology.   
I come from under the hill, and under the hills and over the hills my paths led.  And through the air, I am she that walks unseen.

Offline Seeb

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 410
  • Gender: Female
Re: Honey Bee Virus Tricks Hive Guards Into Admitting Sick Intruders
« Reply #3 on: May 01, 2020, 08:22:42 am »
Thanks Member,  do you know if IAPV is present in the US? 

Online Ben Framed

  • Global Moderator
  • Universal Bee
  • *******
  • Posts: 12410
  • Mississippi Zone 7
Re: Honey Bee Virus Tricks Hive Guards Into Admitting Sick Intruders
« Reply #4 on: May 01, 2020, 08:39:37 am »
Thanks Member,  do you know if IAPV is present in the US?

And if so what can be done about it?  Thanks for the heads up.
2 Chronicles 7:14
14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

Offline Acebird

  • Galactic Bee
  • ******
  • Posts: 8110
  • Gender: Male
  • Just do it
Re: Honey Bee Virus Tricks Hive Guards Into Admitting Sick Intruders
« Reply #5 on: May 01, 2020, 08:48:36 am »
IAPV and other viruses were found to be strongly associated with colony collapse disorder (CCD) in the United States,
I think it is.
Brian Cardinal
Just do it

Offline The15thMember

  • Global Moderator
  • Galactic Bee
  • *******
  • Posts: 4426
  • Gender: Female
  • Traveler of the Multiverse, Seeker of Knowledge
Re: Honey Bee Virus Tricks Hive Guards Into Admitting Sick Intruders
« Reply #6 on: May 01, 2020, 12:09:06 pm »
Thanks Member,  do you know if IAPV is present in the US?

And if so what can be done about it?  Thanks for the heads up.
I had never heard of IAPV specifically until this article either, but varroa vector many, many viruses.  It doesn't surprise me that it's present in the US and we've never really heard about it before.  The best way to protect your bees from viruses is to protect them from varroa, at least as best you can in today's environment.   

Coincidentally, I was just listening to an old episode of PolliNation podcast yesterday where they were talking about viruses and honey bees.  There was apparently a plan to start making more virus testing available to beekeepers to help further research about the viruses that varroa vector.  Not sure where that project is now, the episode was from early 2018.  Oddly enough, the scientist mentioned the phrase "virus titers" as an example of how the terminology surrounding virology is complicated and how they were making efforts to make the information more accessible to the public.         
« Last Edit: May 01, 2020, 12:19:20 pm by The15thMember »
I come from under the hill, and under the hills and over the hills my paths led.  And through the air, I am she that walks unseen.

Offline JurassicApiary

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 331
  • Gender: Male
Re: Honey Bee Virus Tricks Hive Guards Into Admitting Sick Intruders
« Reply #7 on: May 01, 2020, 01:12:12 pm »
I had not heard of IAPV until this article either.  It makes sense that a virus or similar silent killer would be responsible for CCD.

 

anything