USDA to Investigate Disappearing Disease

The USDA is providing $34,097 for scientific sleuths to see if they
solve the mystery of "disappearing disease" in honeybees.

One problem is that disappearing disease is hard to identify -- if it
exists at all -- because no dead bee bodies are left in the hives as
evidence.

Another that it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to diagnose
accurately the onset of disappearing disease in living bees. That may
be because they have not disappeared.

But bees do disappear, and the $34,097 will help scientists at the
Ohio State University Research Foundation ...

The researchers plan to compare bees from known healthy colonies with
those from families that have had the disease in hope of finding a
genetic clue, perhaps *a trait in some bees' ancestry* that makes them
disappear.

Representing USDA's agricultural research service, will be Dr. Thomas
Rinderer, a geneticist with the Bee Breeding and Stock Center, Baton
Rouge, LA

-- 
IN: The American Bee Journal, September 1977

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