Is it possible that it is Israel?
I can't find it, but I read yesterday that a chemical weapons plant is near where the virus showed up in Israel.
Huh?
There is nothing I wouldn't put past these lying, land-stealing, genocidal killers!
And remember, if Israel is behind it, the Zionist-controlled press will cover it up!
"Virus Is Seen as Suspect in Death of Honeybees" by ANDREW C. REVKIN
Scientists sifting genetic material from thriving and ailing bee colonies say a virus appears to be a prime suspect — but is unlikely to be the only culprit — in the mass die-offs of honeybees reported last fall and winter.
The die-offs, in which adult bees typically vanished without returning to hives, were reported by about a fourth of the nation’s commercial beekeepers. The losses captured public attention as rumors swirled about causes, like climate change, cellphone signals and genetically-modified crops. Scientists have rejected those theories.
Now, one bee disease, called Israeli acute paralysis virus, seems strongly associated with the beekeeping operations that experienced big losses, a large research group has concluded, although members of the team emphasized that they had not proved the virus caused the die-offs.
Jeffrey S. Pettis, an entomologist with the Department of Agriculture and co-director of a national group working on the puzzle, which has been given the name colony collapse disorder: “I hope no one goes away with the idea that we’ve actually solved the problem.”
The project involved an unusual partnership between entomologists and scientists working at the leading edge of human genetic research. It employed the same technology being used to decode Neanderthal DNA and the personal genome of James Watson, a co-discoverer of the structure of DNA.
The research was described yesterday in Science Express, the online edition of the journal Science. Details are available at eurekalert.org/bees.
Even with the caveats, the possible identification of a virus involved in large bee die-offs is “exceptionally important.”
May Berenbaum, who heads the entomology department at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and was not involved in the study: “Among other things, figuring out where this one came from will help us prevent future problems.”
[Yeah, if the bees disappear, we are all dead!]
Dr. Berenbaum, who led a 2006 National Academies study of problems with bees and other pollinators, said that finding ways to swiftly home in on novel diseases is ever more important in a globally linked economy. She noted that the first reports of the latest bee die-offs in the United States came in 2004, the first year the country allowed the import of honeybees — from Australia in this case — since 1922.
The new study found evidence of the virus in some Australian bee samples, although that country has not reported die-offs like those seen in the United States.
Dr. Pettis said that even if the virus was involved, it was likely that more than one factor had to align for a hive to collapse, with another possible influence being poor nutrition. Most of the colonies that had big losses last winter were in areas that experienced drought a few months beforehand, and thus a lack of nectar in flowers, he said.
Another factor, Dr. Pettis said, could be the stress that comes from the increasingly industrial-style beekeeping operations in the United States, in which truckloads of hives crisscross the country to pollinate California almonds or Florida orchards each season.
But the virus stands out as a top suspect. While seven viruses and a host of bacteria and parasites were identified in the genetic screening, only the Israeli bee virus, first identified in 2004, was strongly tied to the samples taken from keepers who reported the collapse disorder.
While the virus was first identified by scientists in Israel, it appears to exist in many parts of the world, said W. Ian Lipkin, an author of the new study and director of the Center for Infection and Immunology of Columbia University. In Israel, the virus also seems to produce bee symptoms not reported in the United States, including a pattern of finding dead bees near hives.
Dr. Lipkin, whose focus is human disease, became involved because the quest for a cause for the beehive collapses employed new genetic sifting techniques that he said might also prove useful in investigating outbreaks of human diseases.
One hint of the involvement of an infectious agent, he said, was the recent finding that abandoned hives sterilized with radiation could be repopulated with healthy bees.
The study initially examined bees from four beekeepers who reported die-offs, as well as healthy bees from Hawaii and Pennsylvania. Genetic material was extracted and analyzed with a machine from 454 Life Sciences, a company immersed in the race to make gene sequencing a fast, cheap technology.
Statistical analysis showed that a colony with the Israeli virus was 65 times more likely to have had the collapse disorder than one without it. To try to clarify cause and effect, the researchers said they were preparing a new suite of tests in which isolated bee colonies would be intentionally infected with the virus, both with and without possible secondary causes like certain parasites."
[Something stinks about this whole story!
I was under the impression it was the GM-modified crops that is causing this.
Who knows?]
