In a paper published in Environmental Microbiology, Professor Elke Genersch and colleagues in Berlin announce what’s been reported as a “major breakthrough” in honeybee pathology. A new understanding of how the bringing bee researchers one step closer to finding a way to prevent the spread of American Foulbrood disease (AFB), the only infectious disease which can kill entire colonies of bees.

American foulbrood (AFB) is a bacterial disease of honeybee larvae caused by the spore-forming bacterium Paenibacillus larvae. Although AFB and its aetiological agent are described now for more than a century, the general and molecular pathogenesis of this notifiable disease is poorly understood.

The accepted view was that the bacteria germinate preferentially at either end of the gut of honey bee larvae, then make holes in the gut wall and enter the larval organ cavity. The organ cavity was believed to be the primary place where the bacteria grew and multiplied.

What the German research team learned is that the bacteria act to cause ABF infection in a completely different way than originally thought.

The disease-causing bacteria colonize the larval midgut and do most of their multiplying there — living from the food ingested by the honey bee larvae — until eventually the gut contains nothing but these pathogens. It is not until this point in the process that the bacteria ‘burst’ out of the gut into the organ cavity, killing the larvae.

“Now that we fully understand the way in which this disease works, we can start to look at ways of preventing the spread of infection” said Professor Genersch.

See also:
• Bees Disease: One Step Closer To A Cure
  ScienceDaily: 4 May 2008
• Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) analysis of the interactions between honeybee larvae and Paenibacillus larvae, the causative agent of American foulbrood of honeybees (Apis mellifera) (abstract).
  Dominique Yue, Marcel Nordhoff, Lothar H Wieler, Elke Genersch
  Institute for Bee Research, Friedrich-Engels-Str. 32, 16540 Hohen Neuendorf, Germany.

Thanks to CBA member Sterling Clark for spotting this item in Catch the Buzz.