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US Approves World's First Vaccine For Declining Honey Bees (bbc.com) 100

Posted by BeauHD from the protecting-the-world's-pollinators dept.
The US has approved use of the world's first vaccine for honey bees. The BBC reports: The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) approved a conditional license for the vaccine this week, according to the biotech firm behind its development. It was engineered to prevent fatalities from American foulbrood disease, a bacterial condition known to weaken colonies by attacking bee larvae. [...] American foulbrood disease poses a challenge for beekeepers as it is highly contagious and has no cure. The only treatment method requires burning the colony of infected bees along with the hives and equipment and treating nearby colonies with antibiotics.

The new vaccine contains an inactive version of the bacteria that causes American foulbrood disease, Paenibacillus larvae, according to Dalan Animal health. The bacteria are incorporated into royal jelly feed given by worker bees to the queen bee, which then ingests the feed and keeps some of the vaccine in her ovaries, according to the biotech firm, which specializes in insect health and immunology. It says this gives bee larvae immunity to the disease as they hatch and reduces death from the illness. [...] Dalan plans to distribute the vaccine "on a limited basis" to commercial beekeepers and said the product would probably be available for purchase in the US this year.
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US Approves World's First Vaccine For Declining Honey Bees More

US Approves World's First Vaccine For Declining Honey Bees

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  • Wow (Score:5, Funny)

    by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Friday January 06, 2023 @02:14AM (#63184074)

    Why would they want to put a chip in bees?

  • Vaccine jokes aren't funny (Score:3, Insightful)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Friday January 06, 2023 @02:39AM (#63184098)

    I wanna make some jokes about this stuff, but there are too many actual anti-vaxxer fools, and there's no way I want to sound like those idiots even for lolz.

    • Re:Vaccine jokes aren't funny (Score:5, Funny)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Friday January 06, 2023 @03:06AM (#63184112)

      Joke away, we're talking about bees here. They demonstrate significantly higher intellectual capability than anti-vaxxers.

      • You say this but the vaccine chips are AI enabled with 5G.

        It's only a matter of time before radicalized bees are on Twitter and stage a hive revolt.

        • That's right, and furthermore, those microscopic chips end up in the honey you buy in grocery stores. When you eat it, the chips become integrated into your body, giving the government an easy way to track your every move.

    • Bees who are against vaccines are known as anti-vaxzzzzers.

    • Keep joking. Ridicule is as good a response as any & more fun for the rest of us!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ab0mb88 ( 541388 )

      Sure they are. You just need to expose yourself to some inoffensive vaccine jokes and maybe some mildly offensive vaccine jokes and you will be ready for the good jokes when you encounter them.

  • If the vaccine only prevents deaths, but not the disease, then what may happen is that the bees are just able to spread it even further. Yes, sure, the hive with vaccinated bees will survive, but how about others? And how do we anymore identify the hives with sick bees to give antibiotics to the nearby bees? How does this affect the wild bees and other species that might be more exposed to the disease? Of course, *if* the vaccine prevents the infection altogether, it helps to fight the disease, but if it on

    • So many incorrect assumptions. Basically, everything you said is wrong.

      You need to read up on how vaccines actually work and then read the linked article.

    • Vaccines for X don't cause more X. They cause less.

      Also, vaccines put evolutionary pressure on pathogens to be less lethal, so they have time to spread before being detected.

      • Lethality and expression of illness are unrelated. The ideal genocidal virus would spread through the entire population over a long period of time and then change to "kill the carrier" mode. Even if it wasn't a 100% wipeout, it could be close and certainly a mass death would end civilization as we know it, globally.

        • That's kind of the mode for HIV, spread a long time and then kill. A couple of hundred years ago it might have been a bigger problem than it was.

          • Yes. And thankfully the hiv methods of transmission are not as widespread as say the common cold.

            There are a lot more people breathing near others everyday than having unprotected sex with multiple partners, getting unfiltered blood transfusions or sharing drug needles.

            If hiv did transmit like the common cold it would likely eliminate us as a species. The handful of people with natural immunity would eventually be living in a giant morgue of billions. It took decades before prep and similar control drugs

  • Hitting the bee's knee with a syringe is no small feat.

  • The really amazing thing must be getting the bees to line up for injections.
  • Honey Bees do not belong here. This bacteria is present in the wild bee population. You will have to eradicate wild bees. Fuck off.

  • Else it will not have much impact..

  • Here's an idea (Score:4, Informative)

    by EmagGeek ( 574360 ) on Friday January 06, 2023 @08:30AM (#63184454) Journal

    Here is an idea... how about the US stop spraying neonicotinoid pesticides everywhere, weakening the bees and/or outright killing them?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

      What? And destroy (2) profitable businesses; the pesticide companies and the bee vaccine companies!

      It's better to follow the existing model for human health. Put HFCS and sugar in everything and then sell people weight loss drugs.

  • Imagine trying to inject a bee hive with a tiny little needle, going to take along time.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • So, scientists have bred bees to be resistant to Variola mite:

    https://www.science.org/conten... [science.org]

    Why not do the same approach here? Instead of vaccines, breed resistant varieties of bees? The generation time of bees is relatively quick, so it seems like this could be done.

    Won't work through if there isn't any natural resistance to foulbrood.

  • You can think of American Foulbrood as anthrax for bees.
    Indeed, the bacteria was classified as Bacillus larvae until 2006 when it was reclassified as Paenibacillus larvae.
    The bacteria which causes anthrax is classified as Bacillus anthracis.
    The bacteria form spores which are hard to kill and can be easily transported between hives.
    Hence, the need to burn infected hives as they spores will always be there.
    In Maryland, they used an ethylene oxide chamber instead of incineration of infected hives until recent

  • Humans could survive without bees.

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