Hi All,
 
someone recently was mentioning the bee immune system, and in the absence of any comment from the
list assumed that bees don't have one, and that any resistance is therefore genetically determined.
 
 
Most of what is known on insect defences has been discovered in the fruit fly Drosophila
melanogaster
 
in 1972 Boman found that a vaccine prepared from dead Enterobacter cloacae protected flies against
a subsequent injection of live bacteria. These flies also showed cross-resistance to Pseudomonas
aeriginosum.
 
In the silkmoth immunity involves the induction of a number of bacteriocidal proteins, cecropins
and attacins, that protect the individual from a subsequent challenge of virulent bacteria.
 
If this is similar in the honeybee then it shows that although the battery of defence mechanisms
will be determined genetically, these mechanisms are not expressed all the time, and therefore
there must be a certain scope for an individual colony to aquire resistance, to a given infection,
even after being knocked down, by the initial infection.
 
The details above are quoted (not exactly) from Ashburner "a laboratory handbook"
 
Hope this stimulates discussion, and please note I am a plant biologist with little knowledge in
the entomological field (but it is growing)
 
 
best wishes
 
Steve Pearce
Scotland