The vaccine is intended to protect bees from what americana, disease caused by the bacterium Paenibacillus larvae which can weaken and kill hives.
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American beekeepers will have a new alternative to control diseases affecting bees. This is because the government has approved the world’s first vaccine for honey bees, on which the pollination of various agricultural crops depends.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has granted a conditional license to the vaccine created by the American biotechnology company Dalan Animal Health. The main goal is to protect honey bees from American foulbrood, a serious bacterial disease caused by Paenibacillus larvae which can weaken and kill the hives and which occurs sporadically in Chile and is concentrated in three regions.
“Our vaccine is a breakthrough in protecting honey bees,” said Annette Kleiser, CEO of Dalan Animal Health. “We are poised to change the way we care for insects, which will impact food production on a global scale.”
There is currently no cure for this disease, due to the high resistance that the spores confer to pathogenic bacteria. In parts of the United States, the disease has been detected in 25% of hives, forcing beekeepers to destroy and burn affected colonies, as well as administer antibiotics to prevent its spread.
Regarding its identification in beehives, Keith Delapane, an entomologist at the University of Georgia, who collaborated with Dalan on the development of the vaccine, explained that “it is something that beekeepers recognize easily because it reduces the larvae to a brown goo that smells musty.”
The vaccine, which will initially be available to commercial beekeepers, works by incorporating some of the bacteria into the royal jelly that worker bees feed to the queen, who ingests it and acquires some of the vaccine in her ovaries. The larvae of hatched bees are immune to the plague, and Dalan’s studies suggest it will lower mortality rates from the disease.
American foulbrood originated in the United States and has spread throughout the world. According to Dalan, this breakthrough could serve as a starting point for finding vaccines against other bee diseases, such as European foulbrood.
