Viruses in Bees

Diana Cox-Foster who is the lead scientist for the study of the honey bee viruses came the conclusion that the bees who had CCD “’were harboring every known virus that we could detect using our methods,’” she explained.  Cox-Foster theorized that because of the “rapid spread of colony collapse disorder and on the variety of infections found, … [that] a fast-spreading and powerful virus had infected the bees”.

The scientists discovered “that one of the known honey bee viruses was present in almost all CCD samples”, they also found that the “virus was absent from almost every healthy sample”.  The name of the virus that they found is the “Israeli acute paralysis virus or IAPV”.  IAPV provides scientists with a way to diagnose honey bees who are infected with CCD.  Cox-Foster proposed an experiment to infect a colony with the virus and find out if it caused CCD.  She didn’t want to just introduce the virus to a colony because “bees live outside and are, for the most part, free to roam anywhere”.  This means that an infected control bee in the experiment could potentially pass the virus on to a healthy colony that resides in the wild.  Cox-Foster then concluded that it is possible to have a hive in a controlled environment, that is, in a green house.  The green house also serves the purpose of trapping the bees because bees that are infected with CCD are rarely found.  Once the bodies of the bees are recovered, the scientists can do further research.  The scientists came to the conclusion that IAPV is just a factor that causes CCD (Burns, 2010, pp. 36-38).