> Since bees don't live very long, the question would be how much
> malformed protein builds up in their systems from a prion problem,
> and is that enough to kill them before they die of "bee old age"?

Thanks Christine.  I also received some other interest accompanied by 
some literature today.

A preliminary and somewhat superficial initial perusal of the material 
indicates -- to my overactive imagination at least -- that
the idea is not as improbable as it might appear at first glance.

I think I could make a case for this hypothesis that would convince 
others -- at least others as ignorant on the topic as myself like The 
Media -- and one that would stand up at least until some middle school 
science project destroyed it utterly -- or made international headlines 
and saved the neonic manufacturers from bankruptcy by providing an 
alternate explanation for the immanent extinction of all bees, climate 
change (previously Anthropogenic Global Warming) and rising ocean 
levels. (Had to mention neonics and AGW.  After all this is BEE-L).

Your comments run along the same line as my own thinking.  There are
some obvious reasons to doubt the idea -- as you pointed out -- but as 
you also pointed out, we just don't know enough about this to discount 
the idea.

The next step is to write some science fiction, fleshing our a plausible
scenario for testing, and am hoping to tease someone else into doing the
grunt work -- and win the Nobel Prize when it proves out.

I may get around to it, but writing anything worth reading is very hard 
work.

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