World first US approval of honeybee vaccine to protect bees from foul brood
The US Department of Agriculture approved a conditional licence for bee vaccination on January 4th 2023 as honeybees have been in decline for decades around the world since 1980s.
The purpose of honeybee vaccine on honeybee is to protect the insects from a very contagious disease labelled American foul brood, which has the potential to weaken and destroy the bees’ hives seriously.
It appears that this disease is one of the most contagious, widespread and destructive honeybee disease that had ever seen discovered, and it’s thought that over 25% of bee colonies are currently infected.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/07/us/honeybee-vaccine-usda-approval-scn-trnd/index.html
Experts are pinning their hopes on the vaccine’s ability to protect the bees, mainly because bee interactions within nature are some of the most important, they are responsible for pollination of plants and of food crops that we eat.
Honeybee vaccine against foul brood by biotech Dalan Animal Health
In 2018, lady biologist Freitak the University of Helsinki Finland developed bee vaccine for the first time when she found a moth was exposed to certain bacteria, through eating it, it was able to pass down a resistance to the bacteria to the next generation, but didn’t get any approval for usage.
The US bio technology company Dalan Animal Health developed the honeybee vaccine. It has been labelled a breakthrough in the protection of honeybees from the new American foul brood, which is thought to currently have no known cure since 1980s.
The way it works is to add a special bacteria to the royal jelly in the hive which does not have any harmful impact upon the bees. As a result, when the queen produces new larvae, they in turn also bear the immunity necessary to protect the rest of the bee colony in the future.
This method could be used to discover and implement more vaccine for other bee related diseases and other insects diseases in the close future. The bees are suffering day by day, and they now work in a stressful environment brought about by the aforementioned conditions.
There is another bee virus disease that destroys their wings since 1980s. So researchers have been finding the related chemicals in the bees body and brain to warn of the onset of such stress levels.
Honeybees’ great role in food production is at stake in climate change
In essence a third of the world’s food production depends on the bees ability to do its job effectively, and without them much of the food that we love such as apples, tomatoes, avocados, strawberries, rice, almonds would not grow as usual.
Bees are that vital balance in nature that keeps everything running smoothly. If vast populations were to die off, it would have a profound impact upon the natural world.
Bees are also great at reducing the pollution in our atmosphere. It’s not just the new disease which is providing challenging for the survival of bees, as climate challenge is also impacting their existence.
Early warm spells and freak rain patterns can cause disruption sin the patterns of nature, such as flowers blooming too soon, and the blooms are gone by time bees are looking for them according to nature’s body clock.
So sometimes it may just be a case of the flowers not around when the colony is trying to flourish. Climate change, pesticides, habitat loss and diseases are the main factors in the decline of bee populations all aver the world.
And in very bad years the combination of all of these factors has been responsible for wiping out over a half of a bee farm’s colonies.
Source: smithsonian, dalan animal health
