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!

January 18, 2017

For the first time in the continental United States, a wild bee has been designated as an endangered species. What was once a thriving bee in 28 states and 2 Canadian provinces, the rusty patched bumble bee is now weakly carrying on in scattered populations in just 13 states and the province of Ontario. In the past 20 years, the insect’s population has dropped 87 percent because of habitat loss, disease, pesticides, and climate change. In 2013, the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation filed a petition for the rusty patched bumble bee to be listed as an endangered species, but it took until last week to make it happen.

The rusty patched bumble bee (Bombus affinis) was listed as an endangered species in January 2017. Credit: © Rich Hatfield, The Xerces Society

The bumble bee is a large, burly bee that often has mostly black-and-yellow coloring. Bumble bees may be seen flying among flower blossoms during spring, summer, and fall. The rusty patched bumble bee lives only in the upper Midwest and northeastern United States and in Ontario. Like most bumble bees, rusty patched bumble bees have black heads, but workers and males have a rusty reddish patch on their backs.

Bumble bees are among farmers’ best friends, and protecting them is important. They pollinate (help fertilize) numerous wild plants and such food crops as blueberries, cranberries, clover, and tomatoes. The agriculture industry leans heavily on such native pollinators as bumble bees.

Now that the rusty patched bumble bee is listed under the Endangered Species Act, the Fish and Wildlife Service must assess, protect, and help restore the insect’s population and habitat.

By protecting the environment, people can help save the rusty patched bumble bee. On an individual level, you can help simply by growing a garden. A garden of plants native to your region will attract and nurture native pollinators. Bumble bees love lupines (such as peas), colorful asters, and, as its name implies, bee balm (flowers that also attract nectar-loving butterflies and hummingbirds). Choose a variety of colorful plants that flower at different times, providing nectar and pollen throughout the growing season. Limiting or avoiding the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers also helps, because they can kill or seriously harm bumble bees.

Jan. 5, 2012

A previously unknown parasitic fly found in dead and dying honey bees in northern California may be a major culprit in a mysterious condition that has ravaged honey bee colonies in the United States. This condition, known as colony collapse disorder (CCD), was first detected in 2006, when beekeepers in the United States began reporting that large numbers of bees were mysteriously abandoning their hives. Studies revealed that the bees had died away from their hives. By 2012, CCD had been blamed in the deaths of millions of honey bees. Scientists have found evidence that pesticides, mites, a fungus, or a virus that causes honey bee wings to develop abnormally may be involved in CCD.

The parasitic fly, Apocephalus borealis, lays its eggs in the bees’ abdomen. Several days later, the infected bees fly from their hives at night. Scientists have found some of the infected bees still alive but in a zombie-like state. The insects were walking in circles, with no sense of direction, and soon become unable to stand up. Scientists aren’t sure whether the bees are leaving their hives under the control of the parasite or are being kicked out by their hive-mates, who may be sensing that something is wrong. Other parasites are known for their ability to control the behavior of the creatures they infest. The bees may also be leaving on their own to prevent their hive-mates from becoming infested. After the bees die, newly born fly larvae crawl from their neck. A. borealis also infects and kills bumble bees and paper wasps. Scientists believe it is very likely that the parasitic flies spread to honey bees from bumble bees.

A bee covered in pollen sips nectar from a flower. The bee will leave some of the yellow pollen grains at other flowers it visits, pollinating them. Many flowers rely on insects for pollination. © Steve Hopkin, Taxi/Getty Images

Bees are among the most useful of all insects. They pollinate many fruit and vegetable crops, which provide about a third of the human diet. In the United States, bees pollinate more than 130 crops, with a yearly value of $15 billion. These crops include apples, nuts, soybeans, and squash.

Additional World Book articles

• Back in Time (Biology 2007)
• Frisch, Karl von
• The Latest Buzz About Honey Bees (a Special Report)