Hi all
Once again, people point to a poorly understood phenomenon and carry it forward to conclusions that may not be warranted. The discovery of viruses in bees other than honey bees does not mean that the honey bee is the source of them, just because they were seen in HB first.

> Since the most well-studied viruses were originally identified in A. mellifera, it has often been assumed that A. mellifera are
the primary hosts and other bees are only secondarily infected. However, because many viruses seem to be so readily shared, it
is not possible to determine which bee species, if any, serves as the primary host. Indeed, based on sequence analyses, the
viral species that have been examined thus far seem to be shared within a geographic region rather than within a particular bee
species, suggesting that there may not necessarily be bee species-specific viral strains. Thus, it is likely that non-Apis
populations also harbor viruses which can spill over into A. mellifera.

> Together with our results, more than 30 viruses have been found in bees, however, this number likely represents a small subset of the viral diversity present in bee communities. Our results suggest, however, that viral communities are generally shared globally across species, with species from geographically distant locations hosting similar suites of viruses and viral families.

Galbraith, David A., et al. "Investigating the viral ecology of global bee communities with high-throughput metagenomics." bioRxiv (2018): 243139.
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