Alright, we're gonna spend the next few
minutes talking about bees, not the birds.
And the bees. Don't worry, just bees.
About a third of all crops we grow in
the country need insects to pollinate.
And honey bees are the beekeepers that
that beekeepers manage, are one of
the most common pollinators in the US.
The USDA even put a value to their work,
saying their pollination contributes
$15 billion to our economy every year,
before even accounting for the
honey that they produce.
But you probably also know
bees are pretty delicate.
Pesticides, extreme weather,
air pollution, parasites have all played
a role in dwindling bee populations,
really everywhere.
And knowing that now,
there's been a lot of Buzz,
pun intended, about something
the USDA talked about recently,
a first of its kind B vaccine to help
bees fight off one type of infection.
But does it work, Gordon,
you ask those questions, right?
Yeah, I did. And, you know,
this vaccine isn't what you might think.
They're not going around with tiny
needles and injecting bees one at a time.
It's basically food that's laced with.
Some dead bacteria that
eventually gets fed to the queen.
She develops an immunity and then
passes it on to all of her eggs
and eventually the entire hive.
But beekeepers locally say it's not the
end all be all cure to this problem.
Whenever there is a news story about bees,
it gets a lot of buzz online,
especially when it involves saving the bees.
So when a company announced
a new B vaccine to help,
it got a lot of attention. This vaccine
helps reduce the amount of disease they have.
Doctor Marla Spivak is an entomologist at
the Bee Lab at the University of Minnesota.
She says the vaccine is designed
to protect honey bees from a deadly
bacteria called American foul Brood
if a colony gets this. Disease.
It is highly infectious to
other bee honeybee colonies,
not to people, not to other bees.
And so it's problematic.
And they either needed to be treated
with an antibiotic or killed.
The vaccine created by Dalen Animal
Health is the first ever B vaccine
approved by the USDA, Spivak says.
It's an exciting step forward,
but it's not exactly a cure for
this problem. It didn't completely
cure or eliminate it.
I'll say the efficacy of this particular.
Vaccine against American cell Brood was,
you know, only up to 50%.
If it were a human vaccine,
it wouldn't be good enough.
Let's just put it that way.
He is itself isn't a major
problem for local beekeepers.
How often do you come
across this American foul brood?
I honestly have never seen
it. He Travis Travis Bolton
owns Bolton Bees where they
raise around 2000 hives a year,
selling the hives themselves and
producing around £75,000 of honey.
He has seen European foul brood
a few times in his career and
it has been a big problem,
but he and doctor Spivak say this vaccine
only works on American foul brood.
Do you foresee yourself possibly using
this vaccine with your bees in the future?
I would say we probably wouldn't
be the first ones to do it.
I think that we would probably maybe sit
back and just just see some practical,
use some practical data.
Doctor Spivak agrees. It's
not commercially available yet and it
really has not been field tested at,
at a level where I would feel comfortable
advocating to any beekeeper to use it yet
and overall. Says American foul
brood is a drop in the bucket
compared to the other problems
that honey bees are dealing with.
Honey bees major problem are varroa mites.
It's a parasitic mite that sucks on their
tissues and somewhat of their blood.
And when they do that,
they can transmit viruses.
Also the environment,
dwindling food supply,
pesticides, herbicides. Dr.
Spivack says the problems are almost endless,
but seeing this new vaccine gives her
hope that more companies are focused on.
This issue of saving the bees and the
research behind this vaccine could
be used to create even more vaccines
and treatments down the road. I think
it's definitely a stepping stone.
Whether it's a huge stepping
stone is to be determined.
According to Dale and Animal Health website,
they have other vaccines and
treatments already in the pipeline,
including a vaccine for
that European foulbrood.
So this new vaccine could
just be the beginning,
the first of many in the coming years.
The company says this vaccine should
hit the market later this year.
Every time you say American
foul brood, I think that we
should start a new soccer team.
That sounds a lot like a soccer team,
right? And then there's European foul
brood. And so it could really be,
you know, some good football.
Yeah. And from what I was hearing
from these beekeepers, you know,
this is something that you
know can just be detrimental.
If they do find this American foulbrood,
they basically have to burn the entire
hive and some of their equipment,
any other equipment that goes near it.
So it's rare, but when it does happen,
it's a very big deal.
It's a, it's a foul brood indeed.
Thank you so much, Gordon.