HE global decline in bee populationsone of the largest pollinators with more than 20,000 speciesmay stabilize after recent approval of a promising vaccine in the management and control of pathologies in these insects.
This is “amazing” news, Raúl Rivas González, Professor of Microbiology at the University of Salamanca, told EFE, noting that the vaccine is a tool to prevent the spread of the disease. environmental bacteria You don’t need to infect the bees to live.
What the vaccine will do—according to Rivas— protect commercial pollinators – about fifty bee species are managed by humans – deadly diseasesIn addition to reducing the material and moral losses of beekeepers, but above all facilitating the planet’s viability.
At this point the professor states: The global economic value of crop pollination by bees and other pollinators is on average more than €200,000 million.10% of the world’s agri-food production is for humans.
Multiple diseases
Bees can get sick for more than one reason: abiotic factors -non-living components of an ecosystem such as atmospheric conditions, water resources, pesticides, pesticides…) the most important element is undoubtedly biotics -living organisms affect an ecosystem-
When the bacterium that causes American enters life-threatening situations, it develops endospore-shaped resistance structures in its interior as a survival strategy and can survive in the environment for decades. When they come into contact with the bees, the spores germinate, giving rise to a bacterial cell of this species that has the capacity to reproduce and therefore act as a bee pathogen and kill them in a matter of hours.
50% effective
But how do bees infect? “Easily“, Rivas explains: For example, when bees expel dead larvae from the hive, what they do is take bacteria or spores with them, or when nurse bees feed the larvae with food that has previously been contaminated with spores.
To administer this vaccine, which consists of dead bacterial cells, It is given to the hives together with the feed doses for the queen bees. and has been shown to act at the level of the queen’s ovaries, transmitting intergenerational immunity to the eggs she lays.
“From now on, immunization will try to prevent the spread of the disease.”Emphasizing that all tests and analyzes carried out to date point to the following fact, the expert emphasized: the vaccine has a significant percentage of effectiveness, about 50%and that’s “ugly” for this kind of vaccine.
According to him, this is an important step, but the road is long because unfortunately there are many diseases that affect beesRaúl Rivas regrets that for the time being, its use in Spain did not begin before it had to be approved by Europe.
A world without these pollinators is “unlivable, no future”The expert emphasizes explaining that a critical percentage of plants are pollinated by insects, and that without them, population and diversity would decline alarmingly with all it takes for the planet.