Worth the buzz? USDA conditionally approves first vaccine for honeybees

Matthew Burkhart Staff Writer

In late December, the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved the conditional use of a vaccine for honeybees, the first of its kind for insects. Offering a chance to remedy one of the most devastating diseases to hives, campus experts weighed their opinions on this new development.

David Tarpy, professor of applied ecology and extension specialist in apiculture at NC State, said the vaccine aims to provide immunity to one of the most deadly bacterial diseases to honeybees, American Foulbrood disease.

Although NC State was not directly involved in the research of the new vaccine, Tarpy said the University’s research on the underlying phenomenon, transgenerational immune priming, could have been used in understanding how to administer the vaccine.

Prior to the vaccine’s approval, Tarpy said colonies with American Foulbrood would have either been burned, along with all the bees and equipment, or treated with antibiotics, which only stop the production of new spores, and do not kill existing spores.

Tarpy said American Foulbrood was given its name due to the stench it produces in its wake.

“It is called foulbrood because the developing bees are called brood,” Tarpy said. “When they die, they have the wonderful aroma of sweaty gym socks.”

Tarpy said the phenomenon was first discovered in beetles. If a female egglaying insect is exposed to a pathogen, its genetic information can be spread to the eggs she lays in the future, giving the offspring a chance of immunity to the particular pathogen.

Ben Regester, a fourth-year studying environmental sciences and president of the Beekeeper’s Club, said the vaccine is administered through royal jelly, a protein-rich mixture of sugar and water that is fed to larvae and queens. Regester said once the queen ingests jelly that is incorporated with dead versions of American Foulbrood, the vaccine settles in her ovaries and is passed down to her offspring.

Tarpy said although less than 1% of colonies in North Carolina have been diagnosed with American Foulbrood, he and the State Department of Agriculture refuse to call it rare because of the highly infectious nature of the disease.

“Even though it might be less than 1%, it has the capacity to spread like wildfire,” Tarpy said.

Regester said NC State’s hives on the agroecology campus are at low risk of infection due to the location and size of the farm.

“It’s fairly well tucked away because it’s a farm in the middle of Raleigh, so there aren’t a lot of agricultural areas nearby there,” Regester said. “It’s also not as much of a concern for us because we don’t have a ton of bees. If you have a huge apiary with hundreds of hives, then that can be a big problem if one hive gets it and it spreads.”

Tarpy said the vaccine has been conditionally approved, meaning it will not be available for full approval until additional testing.

“I think the data that show how efficacious it is is still pretty scant and limited,” Tarpy said. “It really shows that when exposed to the offspring of primed queens versus unprimed queens, it decreases the likelihood of getting disease by 30% to 50%. So it certainly is not causing total resistance by any means. They also showed it in a petri dish, not in an actual hive, so we don’t know how long this priming effect lasts. We don’t know if it really stops disease at the colony level or just at the individual level.”

Regester said bees are often overlooked for their importance in the agriculture industry, and he is hopeful that the vaccine’s approval will warrant precedent for insect care in the future.

“Even though they are so important, they haven’t gotten the same attention that like cows get,” Regester said. “There’s not a lot of veterinary care for honeybees. There’s not as much research going into medicine for them. Whether or not it is effective, I’m glad that there’s work going on towards creating this vaccine and hopefully others in the future.”