Over the last four years, 20 to 40 percent of the honeybee colonies
in the U.S. have mysteriously collapsed. The killer has remained
unknown--until now. A team of entomologists, along with military
scientists from the Department of Homeland Security, have a new prime
suspect (or rather, suspects), as shown in a new report on the science
website PLoS One.
A tag-team of a virus and a fungus show every sign of being the
culprit. Now it's just a matter of eradicating that dastardly
partnership.
Entomologists from the University of Montana have teamed up with
military scientists from the Department of Homeland Security--an
unexpected liaison, for sure--began following the clues of the mass
deaths of the honeybees. The honeybee die-off is peculiar, and the circumstances of the illness that
collapses colonies makes it particularly difficult to analyze. Before
the bees die, they fly away from the hive in all directions, which
hampers efforts to collect large numbers of bees for analysis.
