Today
we live in a world that has been paralysed by the Covid19 virus, but are we
alone or are other species under equal pandemic attack?
It
is estimated one third of the world’s crops depend on pollinators, so bees are
a crucial part of the food chain. With loss of their habitat and climate change
the Honey Bee is in decline, not just in the UK but globally and it now appears
that this is being compounded by a virus attack which is killing their numbers
and wiping out whole colonies.
A
study published in the respected scientific journal ‘Nature’ has highlighted
that Honey Bees are under a threat from a virus called Chronic Bee Paralysis
Virus (CBPV). The worker bee first shows signs of hair loss and erratic
behaviour becoming somewhat discombobulated, balding and then shunned by his
fellow workers before he dies.
Like
Covid 19 in humans, the infected bees can carry the virus for up to six days before
showing symptoms, raising the chance that they interact with others at forage
sites and spread the virus to other colonies. There is no social distancing, no
face mask, no glove and sanitiser. There is also no known treatment for
CBPV and beekeepers who suspect they have signs are simply advised to increase
the space around the colony to create some ‘social distancing’. The undertaker
bees will of course try to remove dead bees from a hive but at some point, like
with the Health Service and humans they can be overwhelmed by the quantity of
corpses they need to evict and may also succumb to the virus themselves.
Bees
are a global farming business with colonies and queens often crossing borders.
In the US only 0.7 per cent had CBPV in 2009, but by 2014 it was 16%. Italy
experienced a rise from 5 per cent in 2009 to 10 per cent only a year later.
China has seen a jump from 9 per cent to 38 per cent. A third of the bee
population has been lost over the past decade. The disease has spread across
England and Wales in only a decade and is now being reported in Scotland.
Since
2000, one sixth of the England and Wales 230,000 colonies have imported queens
and analysis by a team at Newcastle University of Honey Bee imports from 25
countries suggested that the virus was nearly twice as likely to occur in
apiaries using imported bees. Data collected from 24,000 beekeepers show that
the virus was first recorded in 2007 in Lincolnshire.
Honeybees
and Bumble bees are ‘social bees’ and are the best known or recognised bee
species today and are the bees that are farmed in apiaries. However, there are
some 250 species of bee in the UK with some 90% of bees being ‘solitary’ not
‘social’. Importantly there is little known today on the impact of CBPV on the
250 odd species of Solitary Bees be they mining, mason, cavity, cuckoo or leaf
eating bees.
It
is sobering to realise what virus attack similarities exist today between man
and the bee.
Below: Pictures
of some of the little pollinators at work on the plot this year.
