Bees on verge of extinction in Britain - Israeli bioweapon the cause?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3333567/Plea-for-more-research-cash-as-two-billion-bees-die-from-rampant-disease.html

Plea for more research cash as two billion bees die from rampant disease The number of honeybees wiped out by virulent diseases which threaten their ultimate survival as a species reached almost two billion in the last year, experts have warned. By Patrick Sawer 01 Nov 2008They accused the Government of failing to invest in the research needed to stem diseases and parasites which are now thought to have destroyed one in three bee colonies over the past year.The British Beekeepers' Association (BBKA) has calculated that up to two billion bees succumbed to sickness between November 2007 and April 2008, with a similar number expected to be wiped out by the end of this winter.It wants ministers to increase the £200,000 currently spent on the research of bee health to £8 million over the next five years.The BBKA warns that unless the money is spent a cure will never be found - leading to the ultimate extinction of Britain's honeybees.Tim Lovett, President of the BBKA, said: "Bees are probably one of the most economically useful creatures on earth, pollinating a third of all we eat. They provide more than 50 per cent of pollination of wild plants on which birds and mammals depend. We must identify what is killing them and that means research.[...]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003873009_bees07.html

Culprit found in billions of bee deaths?By Sandy BauersThe Philadelphia InquirerFriday, September 7, 2007 PHILADELPHIA — Researchers have fingered a prime suspect in a disorder causing massive die-offs of honeybees, insects with the monumental job of pollinating $14.6 billion worth of the nation's fruit and vegetable crops annually.After freezing bees, grinding them up, extracting the DNA and using genetic sequencing to identify every organism present, researchers have settled upon a little-known virus discovered three years ago in Israel.There, symptoms of a mysterious bee malady came in the form of shivering wings. The bees became paralyzed and died. Thus the name: Israeli acute paralysis virus, or IAPV.[...]"What we have at present is a marker. We do not think IAPV alone is causing this disease," said W. Ian Lipkin, director of the Center for Infection and Immunology at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. "It may require IAPV plus other stressors," such as mites, bacteria or other viruses.What researchers do know is that IAPV was present in bees that had succumbed to the new disorder and that it was not present in healthy bees."The only candidate that was left standing at the end of this rigorous analysis was, in fact, IAPV," said Lipkin, one of a team of researchers led by Pennsylvania State University entomologist Diana Cox-Foster and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Jeffrey Pettis.Their findings were published in Thursday's online edition of the journal Science.

http://articles.latimes.com/2007/sep/07/science/sci-bees7

Virus is called primary suspect in bee deaths By Thomas H. Maugh IISeptember 07, 2007 [...]The virus, Israeli acute paralysis, may have been introduced by bees from Australia whose importation was first permitted in 2004, about the same time that the disease, Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, began appearing in the United States.[...]Israeli acute paralysis virus was discovered in 2002 in dead bees from Israeli colonies by virologist Ilan Sela of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In experiments reported this summer, Sela found that 98% of the bees that were injected with the virus died within days.