Description: This is
a VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
See text below
Text:
Colony collapse disorder first struck honey bees in
the United States in late two thousand six. Over the
next two years, beekeepers lost more than one-third
of their honey bees.
Scientists in the United States and other countries
have been working to explain the mysterious
disappearances of bees. Now, a new study suggests
that several viruses may act together. Scientists
from the University of Illinois and the United
States Department of Agriculture did the study.
Their report appeared in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences.
The team compared bees from affected colonies with
those from healthy colonies. They were looking for
differences in gene expression in the guts of the
bees.
The scientists found that the affected bees had a
number of viruses from a group called picorna-like
viruses. The infections observed in the bees
included Israeli acute paralysis virus and deformed
wing virus.
Tiny insects likely play a big part in spreading the
viruses. Varroa mites have been causing serious
problems in bee colonies in the United States since
the late nineteen eighties. These mites carry
picorna-like viruses.
The viruses appear to harm the bees' ability to use
their genetic material to produce proteins needed to
fight infections. Researcher Reed Johnson, now at
the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, says the study
suggests that the damaged proteins are unable to
respond effectively when attacked.
University of Illinois Professor May Berenbaum says
it appears that bees could deal with one or two
viruses at the same time, but not three or four.
She says the picorna-like viruses "hijack" the
ribosome in cells. Ribosomes are structures in which
proteins are made. As a result the ribosome produces
only viral proteins.
The professor says ribosome is central to the
survival of any organism. If it is compromised, then
the bees could not defend themselves against
pesticides, fungal infections, bacteria or poor
nutrition.
These have all been identified as possible causes of
the collapse disorder. Spanish researchers, for
example, recently said they suspected a parasitic
fungus which has been found among affected bees in
Spain.
Bees add billions of dollars in value to many crops
worldwide. For now, beekeepers have been doing their
best to try to protect their colonies.
And that's the VOA Special English Agriculture
Report.
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the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
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