Yanping Chen and Jay D. Evans of the USDA-ARS Bee Research Laboratory have been screening many older (pre-CCD, pre-Australian import) honey bees, and were surprised by the results. It became apparent through their work that Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV) is not new to North America.
Abstract:
High bee colony losses in the United States this past year can be attributed in part to an unresolved syndrome termed Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). An extensive genetic survey found one virus, Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV), to be strongly associated with CCD. Using DNA sequencing and phylogenetic analyses, we provide evidence that IAPV was present in U.S. bees collected several years prior to CCD, and prior to the recent importation into the U.S. of honey bees from Australia and New Zealand. While downplaying the importance of bee importation for the appearance of CCD, these results indicate an urgent need to test specific strains of IAPV for their disease impacts.
Originally it was believed that the virus may have been imported into the USA with shipments of bees from Australia. However, it now appears that IAPV has been in the United States since at least 2002, and is in approximately 10% of bees. According to the researchers, IAPV remains a strong candidate, however, due to “the near complete association with CCD in the previous surveys.”
Nevertheless, we caution that much work is still needed to absolve or implicate this virus, or specific imports, in CCD. Most importantly, experimental studies are ongoing to determine the relative virulence of imported or domestic IAPV strains, and such studies will provide the best evidence for making importation and management choices.
Historical presence of Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus in the United States will appear in the December 2007 issue of the American Bee Journal.
With the cooperation of the Journal, however, Chen and Evans are making their report public now.
This is done in the interests of putting the new information before the eyes of scientists and legislators in a timely manner, as it may have implications for regulations governing the importing of bees, as well as for future directions of research.
Download to read:
Historical presence of Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus in the United States (PDF file)
American Bee Journal, December 2007: in press.
See also:
Mysterious Honeybee Disappearance Linked to Rare Virus: Researchers isolate possible cause of “colony collapse disorder” but stress that other explanations are still in play
JR Minkel
Scientific American online
7 September 2007
A Metagenomic Survey of Microbes in Honey Bee Colony Collapse Disorder
Cox-Foster et al.
Originally published in Science Express on 6 September 2007
Science
12 October 2007
The headline of this report is misleading in the extreme.
It is true that the finding of IAPV in US bees sampled and stored in 2002 completely
refutes several claims made in the “Science” paper: (a) that IAPV is a good “marker” for CCD
and (b) that IAPV is a significant pathogen in CCD, as now it is clear that many hives with
IAPV did not get CCD, and (c) that the “metagenomic” approach was a good “model to
establish a strategy for investigating epidemics of unexplained infectious disease”.
It was a lousy approach, as it was apparently too expensive to allow the authors of the
first paper to test the samples from prior years, samples that we readily available.
But IAPV could have easily made its way to the US as early as 2002 from Australia.
How? Via Canada! Aussie bees were imported into Canada ever since the
border was closed to US bees, but bees were still free to move South to the US from
Canada, which happened often, via packages and queens, less often in the form of
complete hives on comb, and at least once in the form of an entire operation relocation
to the US.
I explained this back in October’s “Bee Culture”, reprint available here:
http://bee-quick.com/reprints/world.pdf
So, sadly, Australia is NOT off the hook for being the “source” of IAPV, but the
authors of the paper certainly have egg on their collective faces. This is why
they are publishing the facts that refute the paper in “Science” in a somewhat
obscure place like the “American Bee Journal”, rather than putting a retraction
or correction in “Science” and facing up to most of their prior speculation being wrong.