

Possible Cause of Bee Die-Off Is Found - jamesbressi
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/science/07bees.html

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jacquesm
The paper:

[http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone...](http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0013181)

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moshezadka
Thanks! The article was long on CSI-style antics and short on actual science.

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jemfinch
Entomologists don't do bee autopsies, they do bee necropsies. The only animal
that can be autopsied is a human. </pedant>

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omaranto
The definition I had heard for autopsy was "examination of a cadaver to
attempt to determine the cause of it's death". I guess you're saying that's
wrong. What's the proper definition? I'm guessing it does have something to do
with examining cadavers but there are restrictions. Is the restriction that
the cadaver be human? Or that both the examiner and cadaver be human? Or
possibly that both cadaver and examiner be intelligent creatures of the same
kind in some sense (that's what "auto" sort of sounds like to me)?

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davidw
Dict/wordnet says cadaver is "the dead body of a human being", so if an
autopsy only deals with cadavers, then it's only people, I suppose.

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mian2zi3
How funny. Twenty years ago I worked for a summer for that guy at the
University of Montana grinding up bees and writing data collection/analysis
software.

edit: One of the projects I worked on looked at to what extent bees aggregated
environmental pollutants into the hive. To prepare the bee samples for mass
spectrometer, we ground them up, mixed them with aqua regia (mixture of nitric
and hydrochloric acids) in a nonreactive teflon container (a teflon bombs) and
then microwaved them! Science is awesome. One of the bombs exploded once and
the acid gutted the inside of the microwave.

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nfriedly
The last I had heard, researchers believed that cell phones were at least
partially to blame, but the article doesn't seem to mention it at all. Does
anybody know if that has been disproved?

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JulianMorrison
From the article: "suspected culprits ranged from pesticides to genetically
modified food".

Q. What do pesticides, GM food and mobile phones have in common?

A. Technophobic nature-romanticists hate them.

Those things are just the "usual suspects". They get blamed for anything.

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ahi
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesticide_%28toxic_to_bees%29>

I haven't read GMO as a possible culprit, but I have seen monoculture, made
possible by pesticides and GMOs, as a possibility. Industrial agriculture is
rather sterile, not really providing a balanced diet for bees (or us for that
matter). The cell phone thing is just batty though.

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rflrob
Skimming through the paper (
[http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...](http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0013181)
), I don't know that the mass spectrometry they did really required a
military-academia connection, as the article seems to imply. While the
machines certainly aren't everywhere, I would imagine that there are quite a
few in the hands of researchers who aren't paid by the DoD.

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jacquesm
This bit might have something to do with that:

> using a new software system developed by the military for analyzing proteins

and in the paper:

> with data processing and statistical analysis by the US Army Night Vision
> Laboratory

So while not strictly speaking necessary (because knowledge can be
transferred) the mass-spectrometers are not the whole story here.

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jared314
I thought they figured that out at least a year ago. I guess it was just a
hypothesis then.

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jeromec
Was it the same cause of a double-whammy virus teamed up with a fungus?

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bosch
I was going to post the same thing as the poster above you as I heard about
this last year, but I wasn't sure if it was the combo or not. I know it
involved fungus for sure though.

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jeromec
I see... from the article:

 _Research at the University of California, San Francisco, had already
identified the fungus as part of the problem. And several RNA-based viruses
had been detected as well. But the Army/Montana team, using a new software
system developed by the military for analyzing proteins, uncovered a new DNA-
based virus, and established a linkage to the fungus, called N. ceranae._

Maybe this is what the OP refers to. Thanks.

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code_duck
Very much a 'symptoms and not the causes' analysis. This doesn't really answer
anything. It's like finding out a virus causes AIDS and not noticing it's
spread through frequent promiscuous sexual contact.

What they should be reporting on is: if this is dietary in some way, what has
changed the diets of bees? Why are they catching this disease now, and not 20
years ago? What has been changing regarding the environment of bees?

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davidw
> This doesn't really answer anything

Yes, it does; it tells us what is actually killing the bees. We didn't even
really know that with any certainty before hand. You're correct that there are
some important "why"'s, and "how"'s that aren't known, but one thing at a
time.

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code_duck
Not determining the root causes of why the bees are actually experiencing this
plague is like thinking aspirin cures someone with chronic headaches.

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davidw
You can't get to the root cause or find a cure without first finding the
cause, can you?

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code_duck
Sure. But what I'm saying is that finding the pathogen is not finding the
'cause', it's more like a symptom. I would have preferred if the article and
headline took that attitude. That's all.

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jashmenn
Checkout Michael Schacker's book 'A Spring Without Bees.' Though it is a bit
one-sided, he makes a compelling case for the pesticide Imidacloprid (IMD)
being a significant factor in the honey-bee decline (I don't have it on hand,
but I think he cites a study that shows that IMD "intoxicates" bees at as low
as 6 ppb).

French beekeepers have been saying it was IMD for years and even though the
"official" studies (from Bayer, the manufacturer of IMD) say there is no
negative effect on bees.

That said, since the French banned IMD in 1999 (for use on sunflowers and
other crops) they've seen a decline in CCD.

I'm a part of a few online beekeeping groups and the general feeling about
this NYT article is that yes, probably a fungus + virus is what is killing the
bees, but why are they weakened to such a point that it is spreading so
disastrously? And here pesticides, migratory stress (i.e. driving them all
around the country to pollenate crops), feeding them large amounts of hfcs,
and general overwork all seem to play a part in weakening colonies.

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geebme
I became a beekeeper the end of August when I collected a swarm on the end of
our block. I've since become keenly aware of the extent to which beekeeping
has become "commercialized". Ignoring (external) factors like pesticides,
etc., pollination activities subject them to intense pressures (monoculture,
hive movement, sick bees from remote geographies, etc.). Varroa, for example,
is pretty much endemic in hives throughout the US after having been
"introduced" in the late 80s.

The University of Minnesota, known for the Minnesota Hygienic line, instructs
fledgling beekeepers to follow a "two-year" plan. The first year involves lots
of chemical treatments (routine use of "nasty" chemicals is now the norm in
the hive), the second year more chemicals and (hopefully) lots of honey. After
two years? Kill the hive.

The end-game in all of this seems unsustainable (highly-evolved diseases and
highly-chemical-dependent hives). I've been trying to work out a better plan
for myself: one that does not tolerate chemical treatments (but is willing to
let weak hives die), works with the bees, and fosters reproduction of thriving
stock. I'd appreciate any resources you'd be able to share to aid in this.

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bcl
I don't think you need a login for the printable page -
[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/science/07bees.html?_r=1&#...</a>

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turnersauce
Unfortunately, it still asks for a login.

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d_r
BugMeNot to the rescue!

<http://www.bugmenot.com/view/nytimes.com>

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earl
I worked in a wetlab or for a bioinformatics company writing software for 4
years. One of the things that completely shocked me when I started working
there, and I think most people don't appreciate, is that taking a liquid and
figuring out what proteins are in there is a very hard thing to do. Then the
next step -- how much does my sample have of the things I've identified -- is
also hard to do. Doing either of them inexpensively is harder still. People
still work hard on those two questions today, and there is still room for
significant innovation around those two questions.

Also, CSI style science, where you drop a sample into the magic machine and an
answer pops out is... nonsense. These are some of the most finicky machines
you've ever encountered -- you always end up doing baselining / calibration
runs, etc. Often they involve skilled lab work to set up, calibrate, run, and
determine whether answers are significant.

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abalashov
I always had my suspicions about those machines they show on "House," where a
vial of serum or blood is popped into the machine and out comes a printed
checklist of tests run and positive or negative results.

It seems very doubtful that something like a rapid ELISA test for HIV can be
done within a machine, in combination with many other tests.

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zeugma
It does exist : [http://www.bio-
rad.com/evportal/evolutionPortal.portal?_nfpb...](http://www.bio-
rad.com/evportal/evolutionPortal.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=productsPage&catID=a82cd166-67ca-4696-91a8-a98a550936f2)

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pitdesi
[http://articles.sfgate.com/2007-10-14/living/17265958_1_cali...](http://articles.sfgate.com/2007-10-14/living/17265958_1_california-
almonds-almond-growers-almond-trees) Great article on Almonds and Bees in case
you weren't aware... over 50% of the bees in the US are shipped to California
during growing season... pretty crazy. Wonder what the impact will be on
almond prices.

