The world’s first vaccine for honeybees has been approved for use by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Key points
- The USDA has granted a conditional license for a vaccine created by Dalan Animal Health, a US biotech company, to help protect honeybees from American foulbrood disease.
- The vaccine aims to curb foulbrood, a serious disease caused by the bacterium Paenibacillus larvae that can weaken and kill hives.
- The US has seen annual reductions in honey bee colonies since 2006, according to the USDA. The USDA says many, sometimes overlapping, factors threaten honey bee health, including parasites, pests and disease, as well as a phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder, which occurs when worker bees abandon a hive and leave behind the queen.
- The vaccine works by incorporating some of the bacteria into the royal jelly fed by worker bees to the queen, which then ingests it and gains some of the vaccine in the ovaries.
- The developing bee larvae then have immunity to foulbrood as they hatch, with studies by Dalan suggesting this will reduce death rates from the disease. American foulbrood originated in the US, and has since spread around the world.
Facts about Honeybee colony
- A honey bee colony typically consists of three kinds of adult bees: workers, drones, and a queen. Worker is a sterile female and the drone is a male insect.
- Several thousand worker bees cooperate in nest building, food collection, and brood rearing. Each member has a definite task to perform, related to its adult age.
- Each colony has only one queen, except during and a varying period following swarming preparations or supersedure.
- But surviving and reproducing take the combined efforts of the entire colony.
- Because she is the only sexually developed female, her primary function is reproduction. She produces both fertilized and unfertilized eggs.
- Queen and worker develop from fertilized egg while drone develops from unfertilized egg.
- The second major function of a queen is producing pheromones that serve as a social “glue” unifying and helping to give individual identity to a bee colony.
- Drones (male bees) are the largest bees in the colony. They are generally present only during late spring and summer. The drone’s head is much larger than that of either the queen or worker.
- Their main function is to fertilize the virgin queen during her mating flight. Drones become sexually mature about a week after emerging and die instantly upon mating.
- Workers are the smallest and constitute the majority of bees occupying the colony.
