Vaccine for Honeybees Against American Foulbrood | Hacker News Reader

Vaccine for Honeybees Against American Foulbrood

dalan.com

69 pointszdw18 comments

This is one of several uplifting stories - especially for beekeepers - the past few years around bio controls for pests.

In Australia we've recently had (yet another) incursion of Varroa (a tiny mite that invades brood, resulting in deformed bees that can't fly, slimed honeycomb that typically ends with the colony either dying out, or giving up and leaving). We're the last remaining large landmass that doesn't have this pest, but we do have small hive beetle, foulbrood, wax moth, etc, that are common around the world.

There's some promising work on a fungus-based control[0] for Varroa (that might then translate to controlling other parasites), or a highly targeted hormone based pesticide [1].

[0] https://www.science.org/content/article/scientists-evolve-fu...

[1] https://canberraweekly.com.au/australian-scientists-buzzing-...

Varroa doesn’t cause deformed bees or slimy comb; it just weakens the bees such that they can’t effectively maintain the health of the hive, especially over winter, causing the hive to die out. While Varroa can also be a vector for other pathogens, it’s the effect on hive population before the winter where it’s most harmful.

(I’m a beekeeper in the US, so Varroa is something I’m unfortunately too familiar with.)

That said, I’d much rather deal with Varroa than AFB any day as it stands today. The current required action for AFB in my area is burning the entire hive including the woodenware. A vaccine to prevent AFB would be fantastic, as it’d remove the one thing that I’m actually concerned about from getting into my apiary.

You're absolutely right - the virus that causes deformed wing is typically carried by Varroa, so the two effects tend to be seen in parallel.

Either way, not something we have a problem with in Australia today, though the most recent incursion on the east coast (middle of 2022) is still being brought under control, with new sightings periodically, resulting in 10+ km radius red zones where, similar to the AFB control, full eradication of hives as well as feral nests, is our only remedy.

And as to slimed comb, yes, my apologies, I was thinking SHB (Small Hive Beetle) which we only got in Australia about 15 years ago. Over-wintering for most beekeepers here isn't anywhere near the problem it is for you guys - our winters are much less severe, of course.

Can someone explain to me how this works?

I don’t understand the mechanism.

https://www.dalan.com/package-insert

Indications

For the vaccination of queen honeybees to prime larvae against mortality due to Paenibacillus larvae. This product license is conditional; efficacy and potency have not been fully demonstrated. For more information regarding safety data, see productdata.aphis.usda.gov.

Each vial contains 3 ml of bacterin, which is sufficient for 50 doses when mixed into queen candy. DIRECTIONS

Shake well before using. To be administered with queen feed (queen candy) 8 days prior to placing the queen in a new hive. Mix the contents of one product bottle with 300 g of prepared queen candy. Add 6 g of product/candy mix to each queen cage. Do not mix with other products, except as specified on the label.

Gee, what could possibly go wrong?

mankind doesn't have a particularly strong track record of messing with mother nature without all kinds of unintended side-effects down the road.

Hm, at first I thought you were being unnecessarily dramatic, but vaccines have caused huge problems in chickens, where an unvaccinated chicken is now almost guaranteed to die. You could easily create a similar situation.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/leaky-vac...

It's not just vaccines - lots of examples where we do one thing to solve one problem, and it causes several problems down the road that then need to be solved for.

draining the everglades, using ddt, importing asian carp, lionfish, releasing pythons in the everglades etc - mother nature keeps telling us that she already figured a lot of things out over millions of years, so tread carefully. Not all of those things were done deliberately to solve a problem - but they were all done by mankind, and we are still trying to recover from the after effects.

That particular vacinne was unique, in that the virus still survived:

> Infection of the host and the transmission of the virus are not inhibited by the vaccine. This contrasts with most other vaccines, where infection of the host is prevented.

Leaky vaccines are a serious problem but only a small group of vaccines fit that definition and, so far, that's the only real example of it happening in animals at scale.

https://www.livescience.com/51682-vaccines-evolve-deadlier-v...

As far as I know it's rare for vaccines to actually prevent transmission for viruses. This is why quite a few vets were extremely cautious about the covid vaccine. I think we got lucky that it didn't turn into a marek situation with covid. And it still could.

>Leaky vaccines are a serious problem but only a small group of vaccines fit that definition and, so far, that's the only real example of it happening in animals at scale.

One problem is that BigPharmaCo has an extreme financial incentive to induce this scenario. They could turn every person on earth into a lifelong subscriber.

> Leaky vaccines are a serious problem but only a small group of vaccines fit that definition and, so far, that's the only real example of it happening in animals at scale

There is some evidence that one of the most common childhood vaccines, the acellular pertussis vaccine, may be in this category.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1314688110

this seems great for vaccine producers though, you just create an arms race which means infinite revenue

That would be fitting, because, at least in North America, neither has any meaningful ecological role outside of being livestock. If anything, it's ecologically problematic to make honeybees even more competitive against native pollinators. Let the Paenibacillus do its work!

What natural pollinators exist in north america and are they adapted enough to an agriculture based society that they will meet our pollinating needs?

If you have a cheap, easy solution to pollination in america for various industrialized crops, you can go make bank right now.

Of course not. Agriculture in the US is an industrial process, not an ecological one. Nature doesn't want California to be producing all these almonds, but that's what the bees are there to help happen.

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