Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus: Nothing Cute About It

Back in June we posted about the bee colony collapse thingamajig, the upshot of which was that no one knew what the hell was killing 23% of the commercial honey bee force dead. (50% to 90% of the U.S. commercial bee population was affected.) Today (via MSNBC) the journal Science is reporting (though it doesn't look like it's up on the site yet) that a major factor could be:

Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus, or IAPV -- a little-known bug that sets bees' wings shivering and eventually causes paralysis. IAPV-afflicted bees are typically found dead outside their hives. IAPV was also detected in the Australian bees as well as two of the four Chinese royal jelly samples.

These initial clues led the researchers to look for IAPV and other suspected pathogens in more bee samples. They checked the genetic sequences for bees collected over the past three years from 30 colonies that suffered a collapse and 21 healthy colonies. The presence of IAPV was found to be the best indicator for Colony Collapse Disorder, with a 96.1 percent correlation.

This is big news, but it's far from conclusive. Nature adds that there's plenty more work to be done before the champagne starts popping:

The researchers stress that this doesn't prove that IAPV is causing CCD; it is possible that the virus is infecting bees while they are in a vulnerable state. But they have found a good suspect, the researchers say. "The real test will be introducing the virus to healthy bees," says Lipkin.

"I think that multiple factors are involved in CCD," adds co-author Jeffery Pettis of the USDA Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland. The bees from collapsing colonies were generally in much worse shape than the healthy controls, he notes. The disorder could represent the cumulative effect of the virus, parasitic mites, and external stressors, including pesticides on crops and the bumpy rides the bees take on trucks between pollination gigs.

You might ask what this has to do with Seattle. Have you ever seen what happens when four Seattle drivers arrive at a 4-way stop? We think the bug may have jumped to humans here some time ago. We say have the whole damn town tested for "Acute Paralysis Virus."