WASHINGTON D.C. — A report from Reuters highlighted research that a newly discovered virus may be killing bees or may be making some bees vulnerable enough to disappear.
While the virus probably does not alone account for what scientists call colony collapse disorder, or CCD, it could help explain what is happening to bees across the United States, they said.
The virus, called Israeli acute paralysis virus, or IAPV, was discovered in Israel in 2004 and is new to science. IAPV can by transmitted by the varroa mite, a parasite known to affect U.S. bees.
CCD hit an estimated 23 percent of all beekeeping operations in the United States during the winter of 2006-7. “These beekeepers lost an average of 45 percent of their operations,” the researchers wrote in their report, published in the journal Science.
Beekeepers do not find bees dead — they simply find the hives nearly empty, with the queens alone and workers gone.
“Whether it (IAPV) is a causative agent or a very good marker is the next major question that we need to address,” said Diana Cox-Foster, an entomology professor at Penn State. A marker might mean that something else that was making the bees disappear also helped them become infected with the virus.
The researchers said they still have no definitive answers and this problem is far from solved. They also dismissed popular theories that cell phones and genetically modified crops as the cause of CCD.
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