Introducing ... sublingual therapy

Sublingual therapy might sound a little riske to ignoramuses like me, but apparently it's not an uncommon way to treat allergies. And now they are experimenting with it for allergies to bee stings.

Italian researchers found that putting honeybee venom under the tongue was safe and significantly reduced reactions in people allergic to bee stings. So far they have only tested it on people who have "local allergic reactions" -- which seems seems an unusual use of the term to me. can anyone enlighten me?

But in any language, a tongue drop seems much better than a stab in the butt.

Royal jelly flicks a switch

The royal jelly secret that turns larvae into queens rather than workers may have been uncovered.

Scientists at the Research School of Biological Sciences at the Australian National University (ANU) have discovered that royal jelly flicks a genetic switch in larvae.

"Royal jelly seems to chemically modify the bee’s genome by a process called DNA methylation and disrupts the expression of genes that turn young bees into workers," explains Dr Ryszard Maleszka.

"When we ‘silenced’ a gene controlling DNA methylation without recourse to royal jelly, we discovered that the larvae began to develop as queens with the associated fertility, rather than as infertile workers."

DNA methylation is well-known in animals, but they think this has been the first time it has been observed in insects.

The process also has implications in the age-old nature-nurture debate. Here, environment (food) can be seen to be affecting genetic development.

The work grew out of the honeybee genome project.

Honey money demanded

While I have been off doing other things, you may be interested to know that the British Beekeepers Association has been kicking up a media stink about the plight of honey bees and the UK Government's refusal to invest research funding.

Brain swarm

New Scientist this week features swarming and compares it to a human brain activity. (You'll need a subscription for the link.)

Hornet in bonnet?

Lady Masson, a British peer of the realm, has set a hare -- or a hornet -- running by raising the issue of increasing number of hornets in the UK.

A relative of a friend of hers was unfortunate enough to have stood on one as he got out of the bath, was stung and died from anaphylactic shock. She wants more research -- into precisiely what I'm not sure. If it's into treatment and diagnosis of anaphylaxis generally, I'm all for it. If it's about the increase in hornets, I think there are more pressing issues.

Here's an audio interview from the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: go to the 8am slot, 20 minutes in.

As the insect expert said, it's unlikley that anyone else has been killed by a hornet in the UK for the past ten or 15 years.

Elephant scarer

Elephants will turn tail (and trunk) if they hear the buzz of bees say Oxford University researchers trying to find a way of keeping them away from villages. They set up recordings of buzzing and, for the moment, they are effective as elephant scarers, but they fear that elephants may soon understand the con.

It's not just the elephants that are smart, the bees are no dummies either -- they sting elephants inside their trunks.

Bees, pollen and electricity

Bees mighn't like power lines, but they seem to generate a lot of electricity themselves. I can't say that I understand all of the abstract below (from researchers at the University of Cambridge and Tel Aviv), but as I understand it pollen grains may be able to jump significant distances to ensure that they land on stigma and not some other part of the flower because of the electrostatic charges of honeybees. Shocking! (Thanks Slavik.)

The measurements of Yes'kov & Sapozhnikov (1976) suggest that electrostatic potentials on foraging honeybees can reach hundreds of volts. Pollen grains of oilseed rape, Brassica napus L., subjected experimentally to potentials of this order, jumped a distance that increased approximately as the square of the voltage, between two pin electrodes on which, in some experiments, were impaled an anther or stigma of oilseed rape or a freshly-killed honeybee. Most floral surfaces were insulated, but there was a low-impedance path to earth via the stigma, and the electrostatic field due to an approaching charged bee must therefore concentrate there. Thus, if electrostatic potentials of this magnitude occur in nature they may increase the chance that pollen from bees will reach the stigma rather than other floral surfaces, as well as enabling pollen to jump from anther to bee and from bee to stigma across an air gap of the order of 0.5 mm.

Queen bee passes away

I was saddened to hear that Dr Eva Crane died earlier this month, aged 95. Her obituary is in The Independent, The Times, The New York Times amongst others. She lived in the neighbouring county to me, but I regret being too late to beekeeping never to have heard her speak.

Anyone interested in bees and honey should look at her remarkable publishing record:

Crane produced more than 180 scientific papers, articles and books on bees, honey and beekeeping; her books include Honey: a Comprehensive Survey (1975), A Book of Honey (1980), The Archaeology of Beekeeping (1983), Bees and Beekeeping: Science, Practice and World Resources(1990) , The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting (1999) and, a book about her travels, Making a Bee-Line (2003).

Feverish temperature fights disease

A high temperature can indicate a fever, but in the case of bees it seems it can be an evolved approach to fighting disease. Tufts University biology Professor Philip Starks and his graduate student researchers are uncovering the secret lives of honeybees and paper wasps:

“One of our discoveries has to do with the ability of a colony to mount a group level temperature response to disease,” says Starks. ”We introduced a particular infection that impacts young, developing larvae into some of our hives and used temperature probes to measure the temperature of the brood comb. We noticed that the temperature within the hive spiked in response to the infection ... so what honeybees do is elevate the temperature of a hive to the point that the fungal pathogen can't take root in the larvae. It's sort of a preventative fever.”

Thanks to Cat for the link.

Reliable CCD statistics?

It seems that we are getting closer to the truth about CCD losses in the USA over the past year.

A survey by the Apiary Inspectors of America estimates that between 651,000 and 875,000 of the nation's 2.4 million honeybee colonies were lost over last winter. While most losses were from known causes, over one fourth were attributed to CCD.

So it seems that the figure might be 8-10% of the total population.

Bee sniffer dog

A Southampton University (UK) postgraduate student is using a sniffer dog to find bumblebee nests. His supervisor says that finding nests has always been a very tricky part of the research, but he thought that perhaps foxes and badgers, bumblebee predators, found their prey by sniffing. It seems that he could be right as Quinn, a springer spaniel is doing a good job. (Report on BBC Countryfile.)

Piping the queen out

As most beekeepers know, the queen doesn't actually control her colony, though she appears to react to signals from her workers. Now Andrew Pierce and Stanley Schneider of the University of North Carolina have documented what actually happens -- or at least a later stage in the swarming process:

workers use the vibration signal to prepare the queen for swarming by making intrusions into her “court” and vibrating her hundreds of times an hour. She responds by changing her behavior -- reducing her food intake, slowing egg laying and becoming more active. At this point, the workers begin to send a second signal that researchers call “worker piping” at a fevered pitch. Piping, which consists of bees making contact and vibrating their wing muscles rapidly, appears to be a general instruction to fly.

Just what we always expected: big sisters always get their way.

Mobile phones and bees -- the researchers speak

“It's not my fault if people misinterpret our data,” said Kimmel. “Ever since The Independent wrote their article, for which they never called or wrote to us, none of us have been able to do any of our work because all our time has been spent in phone calls and e-mails trying to set things straight. This is a horror story for every researcher to have your study reduced to this. Now we are trying to force things back to normal.”

No further comment from me necessary! Full story here. Thanks to Martin for the link.

CCD's silver lining

Since CCD hit the news, Toni (a regular reader) is noticing how many people have become more honeybee-aware. Her friends keep pointing out interesting bee news. Like the friend who sent her this link about how honeybees have helped to develop a model for allocating web hosting resources http://www.isye.gatech.edu/eemag/pdfs/20041Spring.pdf.

MacPropolis

It's early days yet, but there may be a new role for propolis (the sticky substance, not the blog) as a food preserver. In experimental conditions, it's been found that propolis may inhibit the development of the dreaded e-coli. It could be used in ground beef.

On the trail of the cause of CCD

Following the news release (reported below) announcing that CCD may be caused by a virus and a parasite comes the -- ahem -- clarification:

But the results are “highly preliminary” and are from only a few hives from Le Grand in Merced County, UCSF biochemist Joe DeRisi said. “We don't want to give anybody the impression that this thing has been solved.”

Nonetheless things are looking interesting. Researchers are using

a powerful combination of a “virus chip” — a microarray with DNA samples of most known viruses and fungi — and “shotgun” sequencing, which identifies telltale DNA from random samples of the biological sample.

CCD finger-pointing at imidacloprid

The search for the cause of CCD continues and there is some finger-pointing at the neonicotinoid group of chemicals, particularly imidacloprid, a seed treatment commonly used in Europe and the United States, as a possible cause, says the New York Times and others. Imidacloprid is a systemic treatment that finds its way in minute traces into pollen, and, I think, nectar.

In the late 1990s, French beekeepers blamed Gaucho, a brand name for imidacloprid, for disorienting and indirectly causing bee colony deaths. The chemical was banned for use with sunflowers and later maize. Apparently, Bayer's internal research says the chemical is harmless to bees, but independent French researchers disagree.

Bees and mobile phone research uncovered and er ...

At last, someone has uncovered the research that led to the press frenzy on mobile phones and bees. An enterprising soul on Bee_L has managed to get links to two papers on the web (in German and in English). He is distinctly underwhelmed.

The studies (a pilot study and a follow-up) were actually about electromagnetic fields, especially DECT phones, on the learning ability of bees. It said nothing about CCD, the methodology seems dodgy and and and ... but you can read them for yourself.

Or there is a very good report (in English)in Spiegel Online.

Bees and hares

Now that the Day of the Mobile Phones Kills Bees has gone (with headlines in nearly every British national newspaper, but without anyone yet managing to find the research or even quote the researcher), should Propolis start another hare running? Please vote for one of the following and I'll dig up some under publicised academic somewhere to support the thesis:

CCD caused by bees copying reality TV shows -- they vote each other out of their hive until crisis point is reached.

CCD caused by bees' distress over ongoing British monarchy crisis.

CCD caused by smoker bans in western world.

Feel free to offer your own theories.

How the media works Part One

The British press has grabbed on to the speculation that mobile phone radiation might be the cause of CCD by affecting bees' navigation. Tabloids and broadheets have joined in: The Independent, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail and The Sun.

The Sun of course overlooks the speculation part: “Mobile phones have wiped out millions of bees, scientists warned last night.”

And all because a German researcher is reported to have found that when he placed mobile phones (I don't know if it's one or more) beside a hive the bees didn't return to the hive.

About a month ago, I heard from an American suggesting HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) as the cause.

UPDATE: I cannot trace the research paper that sparked this story -- and other people have been looking without success too. I think the original journalist needs to give their source!

Further update: journalist rumbled.