US approves world’s first vaccine for honeybees

The US government has approved the world’s first vaccine for honeybees.

The vaccine is designed to prevent fatalities from American foulbrood disease, caused by the Paenibacillus larvae bacterium, which can weaken and even destroy hives. It is hoped that it could serve as a “breakthrough in protecting honey bees”, said its manufacturer, Dalan Animal Health.

“As pollinators, bees play a critical role in many aspects of the ecosystem”, explained the BBC, but the US “has seen annual reductions in honey bee colonies since 2006”, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

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The vaccine contains an inactive version of the bacteria and is administered by “mixing it into queen feed that’s consumed by worker bees”, said the manufacturer.

The queen “ingests it, and fragments of the vaccine are deposited in her ovaries”, the company said in a statement. “Having been exposed to the vaccine, the developing larvae have immunity as they hatch.”

“In a perfect scenario, the queens could be fed a cocktail within a queen candy – the soft, pasty sugar that queen bees eat while in transit,” Keith Delaplane, an entomologist at the University of Georgia who worked on the vaccine, told The Guardian. “Queen breeders could advertise ‘fully vaccinated queens’.”

“This is an exciting step forward for beekeepers, as we rely on antibiotic treatment that has limited effectiveness and requires lots of time and energy to apply to our hives,” Trevor Tauzer, from the California State Beekeepers Association, told Axios.

Another expert though was more cautious. “They have shown a proof-of-concept,” Ramesh Sagili, a professor of apiculture at Oregon State University who was not affiliated with the study, told Popular Science.

However, he noted that the study was conducted in an isolated, lab-controlled setting and this type of technology has suffered from a lack of success when tested in the field.