U.S. Approves First Vaccination of Honeybees
upstart writes:
A bacterial infection called American foulbrood can destroy an entire colony:
The bees are having a rough go of it, and that's news bad for humans-we need bees to pollinate our crops. Now, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has given the green light to a biotech company to vaccinate honeybees against a fatal infectious disease, one of the major threats to these creatures.
Dalan Animal Health developed the vaccine, which recently received a conditional license from the USDA and is designed to protect honeybees against infections of American foulbrood. American foulbrood is a fatal disease caused by the bacteria Paenibacillus larvae; it can kill honeybees in the pre-pupal or pupal stage of their life cycle. The disease is spread through bacterial spores and can take down an entire colony.
[...] It would be a challenge to give shots to baby bees, so a dead version of the bacteria will be added to the food eaten by worker bees. Those bees then pass the vaccine into royal jelly, a milky secretion that is fed to the colony's queen. From there, the vaccine will transfer to the queen's ovaries, granting immunity to developing larvae.
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