Chise: HOW COOL IS THIS? A vaccine for honeybees? More likely than you think! Not only did the vaccine protect bees from a fatal BACTERIAL disease, it ALSO protected them against from a VIRAL disease spread by varroa mites! Now that’s a BUZZWORTHY solution! 🐝 Let’s talk about that! 🧪🧵⬇️

HOW COOL IS THIS? A vaccine for honeybees? More likely than you think! Not only did the vaccine protect bees from a fatal BACTERIAL disease, it ALSO protected them against from a VIRAL disease spread by varroa mites! Now that’s a BUZZWORTHY solution! 🐝 Let’s talk about that! 🧪🧵⬇️

The first vaccine designed for insects may make honeybees healthier overall. Honeybee hives vaccinated against a bacterial disease had much lower levels of an unrelated viral disease than did unvaccinated hives.

Researchers at Dalan, based in Athens, Georgia designed the bee vaccine to protect against American foulbrood- a fatal disease caused by a spore-forming bacterium called Paenibacillus larvae. Adult bees don’t get sick but can spread spores in the hive, where the disease infects

and kills larvae. Spores can remain viable for more than 50 YEARS, so beekeepers with infected colonies must destroy hives by irradiating or burning them to keep the disease in check. A vaccine may save bee lives and beekeepers’ livelihoods.

Foulbrood disease is just one of many problems plaguing bees. Pesticides, parasites, climate change, nutritional stress- these all make bees more susceptible to infectious diseases. From April 2022 to April 2023, U.S. beekeepers lost an estimated 48% of their colonies.

So, how does the vaccine work? Psst, it doesn’t rely on tiny syringes. 💉

Beekeepers who had been using the vaccine told Dalan that vaccinated colonies seemed to have all-around improvements in health that couldn’t be explained just by reducing the incidence of foulbrood disease. The company decided to look at a variety of diseases, honey production

"Testing the vaccine wasn't easy" oh because of the meticulous procedure on a small organism with limited populations? Nope, because of hurricanes and bears.

I suppose not needing tiny syringes is a good thing. I couldn’t imagine that getting an entire bee colony to patiently line up would be at all easy. Plus filling out all the little medical records.

"no tiny syringes" is very disappointing TBH

Shout out to those scientists who persisted through the research despite those setbacks! I hope they glean more data to improve the vaccine!

Kinda disappointed by the lack of tiny syringes… But man, bears *and* hurricanes? This might as well be an apocalypse novel/movie

Bees already have tiny syringes LOL.

.... so we're hiding it in little bits of cheese and peanut butter crackers, got it.

For the record, I had nothing to do with this :P

Literally bears??

"The Bears have breached the research compound."

That's a horrific period of infectivity. Anything that helps our bees bounce back helps our flowers bounce back, so this is unexpected wonderful news.

Absolutely agree! 🐝

.... sorry can you define irradiated in this context?

Probably a similar procedure to what is used to sterilize some supermarket food products. We're talking bursts of intense UV radiation, not something that's going to produce fallout or radioactive particles.

Dang, I also invented a vaccine for insects but it's not set to be published until next month...scooped again ;P

Doctor Who is going to be so happy.

I think a lot of us are! 🐝

Through a bit of complicated stuff I'm able to make sure wildflowers grow, so I do so, for the bees.

Make sure they're local and native to your zone.

I'm sorry, I do not understand. They're near my yard so I get them with the hose when it's hot.

Wildflowers are not always native plants. Some are invasive species choking native plants out. A field guide can help. There's ways to plant them so they support bees.

Bees!! 🐝 This is indeed good buzz in the news.

Indeed! Quite buzzworthy! 🤭🐝

There was a bee chilling on my windshield this mornin and i thought of this post~

🐝🐝🐝

I want to pet them but finger so big and b so small

They’d probably be a little angry too haha.

"How do you pet a bee? Very carefully."

My grandpa used to pet bees :3

Some other slightly good (bad part is how few of the species are left) animal news re: diseases. Isn't vaccine related, but hopefully they can determine what gives the surviving frogs their resistance and work from there. bsky.app/profile/tcco...

Have some small bit of good amphibian news. Some critically endangered "mountain chicken frogs" in the Caribbean seem to have a resistance to the chytrid fungus. Also the London Zoo has successfully bred the species after five years @robinbobcat.bsky.social @tkingfisher.bsky.social

Glimmer of hope for mountain chicken frog which was once a national dishwww.bbc.com Frantic efforts are being made to save the endangered mountain chicken frog, native to just two Caribbean islands.

Thank you for this my friend! I’ll read it now!

I've been trying to post some good news animal article links lately to combat the doom and gloom in my feed. :) Think that was the only disease-related one I've come across lately tho

I've been reading about colony collapse syndrome for like a decade, is there finally a cure?

If it’s in relation to the foulbrood infection, this is the solution! 🐝

OH and the mites!

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