Beekeepers wear protective veils. Light-colored clothes help provide protection from stings. A few experienced beekeepers handle the bees and honeycombs with their bare hands.
Credit: © Shutterstock

You may have heard the phrase “Save the bees” before, but a vaccine for bees? That is something new! Honeybees in the United States have faced diseases and pests that have decimated the population. Bees are important and affect our daily lives. Bees pollinate plants and flowers, giving us food, medicine, and of course, pretty flowers. Recently, scientists at the Dalan Animal Health based in Athens, Georgia, created a vaccine to save the bees for real!

What is the vaccine for? We know about vaccines for the flu and COVID-19, this vaccine protects bees against American foulbrood. Since American foulbrood is caused by bacteria, the scientists figured out how to put the dead bacteria in the vaccine. When American foulbrood infects a hive, it causes the larva to be darker and gives the entire hive a rotten smell. American foulbrood can spread from hive to hive, wiping out colonies of 60,000 bees.

How do the scientists give the bees the vaccine? No, it isn’t a shot, and they will not have to invent little bandaids for the bees. The scientists put the dead bacteria into royal jelly, which is a sugar feed the queen bees eat. This process exposes the queen bee’s future offspring to the bacteria so the bees can make antibodies. Antibodies are proteins that help the immune system fight off bacteria and viruses.

A typical honey bee colony may include tens of thousands of workers. This photograph shows workers tending to honey stored in the cells of a honeycomb.
Credit: © StudioSmart/Shutterstock

Honeybees are important. They are vital to agriculture around the world. Without bees, the world would deal with more food scarcity. During their food-gathering flights, bees spread pollen from one flower to another, thus pollinating (fertilizing) the plants they visit. This allows the plants to reproduce. Numerous wild plants and such important food crops as fruits and vegetables depend on bees for fertilization. Honeybees pollinate nearly one-third of all food crops grown in the United States. Popular crops like almonds, apples, cherries, and pears require pollination from bees. Nearly three-quarters of all flowering plants rely on pollination from bees and other pollinators like butterflies and moths.

American foulbrood isn’t the only bee enemy. Bees are also declining in population due to climate change, disease, habitat loss, and pesticides. Beekeepers have given entire hives antibiotics to fight off diseases. However, the use of antibiotics can decrease beneficial bacteria and weaken the bees. Animals, mites, and human activities all threaten bees worldwide. There is also a disorder called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), an unusual condition that destroys hundreds of thousands of honey bee colonies each year in the United States. While the vaccine protects against American foulbrood, bees are also in danger of dying from European foulbrood. Diseases caused by fungi, such as Nosema disease, are also a threat to bees. Scientists hope the success of this vaccine will lead to others protecting the future of the bees!

November 21, 2016

The Asian giant hornet is so large, it is sometimes mistaken for a small bird in flight. This big predator is equipped with piercing jaws, a quarter-inch-long (half-centimeter-long) stinger loaded with deadly venom (poison), and an aggressive disposition. It keeps beekeepers up at night and is responsible for the deaths of dozens of people each year.

The Asian giant hornet is the largest of its kind. Credit: Yasunori Koide (licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

The Asian giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia) is the largest hornet in the world. Workers grow up to 1.75 inches (4.5 centimeters) long, and queens can grow even larger. They are found throughout Japan and Southeast Asia. Asian giant hornets make their nests in the ground or in hollow logs in wooded regions, but they also often venture into urban areas looking for food. These flying insects are extremely aggressive and quick to sting. Asian giant hornet venom is not more dangerous than the venom of other hornets or wasps, but these giants deliver more venom when they sting. And, because of the hornets’ violent swarming behavior, victims are often stung many times at once by many different hornets. Asian giant hornet venom destroys flesh and red blood cells and, if it is delivered in a large enough dose, can lead to cardiac arrest or kidney failure. In Japan alone, Asian giant hornets kill about 40 people and injure some 1,500 others each year.

Asian giant hornets prey on such large insects as beetles and praying mantises. After the victim is stung and killed, adult hornet workers take the insect carcasses back to the nests. There, the dinner is ground up and fed to larvae (young), which in turn produce a nutritious secretion for the workers. Also, adult hornets sometimes feed on tree sap or rotting fruit.

One remarkable behavior of the Asian giant hornet is its tendency to swarm and attack beehives to eat the honey. A scout hornet will locate a beehive and then lead groups of other giant hornets in an attack. The hornets then break into the hive and, using their powerful mandibles, sever the heads of the much smaller bees. Bees cannot sting through the hornets’ thick armor, so they are helpless against such an attack. An Asian giant hornet can kill a honeybee in seconds, so a few dozen hornets can completely destroy an entire hive of thousands of bees in a few hours.

Some kinds of Asian honeybees have developed a defense, however, to stop a hornet invasion before it happens. When an Asian giant hornet scout enters the hive, the bees swarm to it. The hornet may kill the first few defenders, but the bees quickly cover and immobilize (prevent from moving) the invader. Once the bees have trapped the scout, they begin to shiver their wings and bodies, generating heat. The trapped hornet eventually overheats and dies. This strategy costs the lives of many honeybees, both from being killed by the hornet and from overheating themselves. But their sacrifice can save the hive. The hornet scout doesn’t live to reveal the location of the hive, thus preventing an invasion.

Some environmentalists fear that the Asian giant hornet will invade other continents, particularly because of the uncertain effects of global warming. Isolated sightings have already been reported in the United States and Europe. Many of these sightings may be cases of mistaken identity, however, as these areas have their own large species (kinds) of wasps and hornets. Outside the Asian giant hornet’s native range, honeybees have not evolved (developed over time) the swarming behavior to defend against scouts. Non-Asian bees are at great risk, then, from Asian giant hornets. Many bee populations beyond Asia are already severely threatened by changes in land-use patterns and a mysterious disorder that causes bee colonies to collapse. In addition, a class of insecticides called neonicotinoids has already crippled honeybee populations. Invasions of Asian giant hornets could prove the end of honeybees in general.