Peter pointed out an interesting paper:
> Meanwhile, a very competent paper
> comes out showing very clearly how
> IAPV rapidly multiplies in bees' brains,
> causing them to either get lost or
> abandon the hive, leading to colony collapse.
Li, Z., Chen, Y., Zhang, S., Chen, S., Li, W., Yan, L., ... & Su, S. (2013).
Viral Infection Affects Sucrose Responsiveness and Homing Ability of Forager
Honey Bees, Apis mellifera L. PLOS ONE, 8(10), e77354.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0077354
http://tinyurl.com/nf45s5k
Here's a quote from the paper cited, in the "Homing Experiments" section:
"Honey bees that could not take off within five minutes were discarded from
the study"
This caught my attention.
I tend to be very interested in results that are "discarded" or "excluded",
as they would tend to be data points that put the work in an entirely
different light if they are addressed as valid results. One does not
discard data points without very clear criteria, in my view.
I've not seen prior studies of homing ability mention that any of the
control or test bees "could not take off" after being treated by the
researchers, in this case with the IAPV or a placebo.
I wonder if the methods used were a greater factor than the IAPV for the
homing experiment. It would be better to see an infection-response curve,
where lower doses caused lower infection rates, and a range of behavioral
impact could be shown, perhaps from "late arrival home" to "missing in
action". Post-mortems comparing the extent of viral infection between
"could not take off", and "late to come home" would show us a rough
infection-response curve.
I'm going to send an e-mail to the authors, and see if they can explain the
"unable to take off" result of their work. It is tough to disable a bee so
completely that it cannot take off, even a bee getting more than a lethal
dose in a pesticide kill flies off, I've seen very few that kill foragers in
the crop.
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Sent from my not-so smartphone
My typo rate may vary
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