>These findings suggest that gamma irradiation may function as a broad treatment to help mitigate colony losses and the spread of pathogens through the exchange of comb across colonies, but raises the question why some viruses appear to be unaffected. 


Is it possible that those irradiated viruses that "appear to be unaffected" can actually be mutated into a more virulent strain? 


>Radiation Preservation of Foods

>Proceeding of an International Conference, Boston, Ma. September 1964


>An induced mutation may prove lethal or not, depending upon the hose system with which the virus particle is next confronted. Only some of the steps in the infectious of even the best-known viruses have been characterized, but it can be stated conservatively that the genetic information in the viral nucleic acid directs the synthesis of proteins that control the species and cell types which the virus can infect, the portions of the host cell's normal metabolism  which are altered or abolished in the course the viral replicative cycle, and the serologic specificity of the virus in relation to host organism's immune response. Thus, a radiation-induced mutation might result in a change in one or more of these properties of the virus. 

>In practical terms, a virus normally infectious in particular organs in one host species might be rendered capable of infecting another species or other tissues within the same species. Alteration of the effect of the virus upon the normal metabolism of the host cell might result in a change in mode of pathogenesis or in a change in virulence. A mutation expressed phenotypically in the coat protein of the virus might result in the emergence of an entirely new serotype. 


Bill Hesbach
Cheshire CT.

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