What viruses affect bee colonies

Do bees get viruses or fungal infections?

There are many viruses that infect honey bees, some that have an impact on the developing brood and others that show themselves in the adults. One particular virus, aptly named the Deformed Wing Virus, results in adults with crumbled or shrunken wings. This problem only shows up in colonies that have very high levels of infection - even bees that look normal can test positive for the virus. Since the naming of colony collapse disorder in 2007, scientists are learning a lot more about viruses and how they affect bee behavior and colony health.

The primary fungus that affects honey bees appears in the brood but doesn't affect the adults. The infection is known as "chalkbrood" because it turns the larval bees into white, chalklike pieces that beekeepers call "mummies." Adult bees will try to remove these dry larval remnants, and in the process they pick up spores from the fungus and accidentally spread it around the colony.

Otherwise healthy colonies with good numbers of individuals in the hive can usually keep their colonies clear of chalkbrood infection, but if they are stressed by cold or wet conditions, it can become a big problem.

How are bee diseases spread?

Insects, like humans, face a greater risk of catching and spreading diseases when they are crowded together. Biologist Adam Stow and his colleagues in Australia washed off the protective coatings from the bodies of a variety of bees that ranged from very social to solitary. They applied a solution made from each species' coating to staph bacterium, Staphlococcus aureus, and found that the antimicrobial coating from the most social bees was 314 times stronger than that from the most solitary bees. Even the most mildly social bees were 10 times better protected than the solitary bees.

Even though bigger colonies may tend to have better immune defenses, because there is almost constant physical contact between individuals in a colony, the risk of diseases being spread is still a major concern. Once a colony has an established infection or infestation, it is likely that nearby colonies will also show signs of disease. The actual routes of infection are often not known, but because bee diseases do spread so readily, it is assumed that foraging bees are the likely carriers.

There is some evidence that bees can pick up a disease or a pathogen from a flower if they visit it after it was visited by an infected bee. When food sources are limited, honey bees sometimes will steal food from nearby colonies, and in the process they can pick up infections and bring them home.

1. Can bees be intelligent and do they have hearts
Are bees intelligent? A honey bee brain has fewer than one million neurons, while a human brain has around one hundred billion neurons. Bees are capable of a ...

2. Can bees see well and distinguish colors
Like many insects, bees have more than two eyes - they actually have five. The two largest are compound eyes that are set on either side of the head, each containing 4...

3. How do bees hear and feel different tastes
Can a bee hear? Honey bees do not have ears, but they are able to sense certain frequencies, picking up the vibrations from the air or from the physical struc...

4. Do bees buzz to communicate with each other
Why do bees buzz? Sometimes buzzing is just the sound of bees at work, and sometimes bees use buzzing and other noises to guide their nest mates The sounds ...

5. What is piping behavior of honey bees
Piping behavior describes a series of high-pitched sounds that reverberate through the colony. Karl von Frisch and others originally identified these noises as part of ...

6. How do bees sleep and perceive magnetic fields
Do bees sleep? The short answer is yes, indeed, bees do sleep, and they exhibit some of the same characteristics as humans when they are asleep: their muscles...

7. How do bees use light and get away from predators
How do bees sense and use polarized light? The sun generates patterns of polarized light, especially in the ultraviolet range, and these patterns indicate the...

8. How exactly is a queen bee mating
How do bees mate? A virgin honey bee queen mates early in her life, having sex "on the fly" with as many as twenty drones over a period of a few days, and the...

9. What is royal jelly and why do only queen bees eat it
Some people believe that the bitter-tasting, nontoxic royal jelly is a healthful component of the human diet, but scientific studies do not support that belief. But for a...

10. How many bees are there in a hive and how do they build their nest
How many bees are in a colony? Honey bee colonies can contain from ten to fifty thousand bees and sometimes more. Bumblebee colonies are much smaller, contain...