A vaccine for bees? You’re POLLEN my leg.
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Our food supply depends on honey bee pollination. However, bees are threatened by climate change and diseases. We want to protect bees from infection, death, and eventual colony collapse. Can we vaccinate bees against illnesses?
Problem? Bee immunity is vastly different from our own! Some diseases, like American Foulbrood, infect larvae and pass from generation to generation.
Enter Franziska Dickel from University of Graz, Austria. Dickel’s team took advantage of bees’ unique ability to pass on immunity through generations.
Heat-killed bacteria was suspended in a sugar water and fed to queen bees. This passed immunity onto the queens’ larvae, which were then exposed to live spores.
The outcome?
Vaccination saved up to FIFTY PERCENT of larvae compared to control.
This vaccine could protect both commercial and wild bee populations.
Now that’s something to BEE buzzin’ about!
Reference: Dickel, F., Bos, N. M. P., Hughes, H., Martín-Hernández, R., Higes, M., Kleiser, A., & Freitak, D. (2022). The oral vaccination with Paenibacillus larvae bacterin can decrease susceptibility to American Foulbrood infection in honey bees—A safety and efficacy study. Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 9.