> Are there studies showing contrary results?
This is from: "Import Risk Analysis: Honey Bee Products." Biosecurity New Zealand, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Wellington, New Zealand. Available online at: http://www. biosecurity. govt. nz/regs/imports/ihs/risk (2004).
Quoted material follows:
Although little work has been done on degradation and loss of infectivity of DWV per se, the
survival of most bee viruses outside the body of their host is very limited, particularly in the
case of the small non-occluded RNA viruses like DWV (Ball, 1999). For example, in hives
with clinical signs consistent with the parasitic mite syndrome, while most samples of adult
bees taken from brood combs within the colony were positive for Egypt bee virus and DWV,
most samples from crawling and dead bees outside the hive were negative for viruses
(Calderon et al., 2003). This suggests that these viruses survive away from live bees for at
most a day or two.
Researchers working with DWV in the USA have found that the virus is quite difficult to
work with owing to its fragile nature when it is isolated from bees. One such researcher has
commented to MAF as follows (de Miranda, personal communication):
"DWV is pretty unstable when we extract it from bees. The particles fall apart during extraction
and it does not keep long in the fridge or freezer. As a consequence, the viral RNA also degrades
rapidly outside bee tissues, even in extraction buffers used in research laboratory"
Therefore, it is considered unlikely that honey bee products stored away from honey bees
would carry infective virus.
Citation:
Calderon RA, Van Veen J, Arce HG, Esquivel ME (2003). Presence of deformed wing virus and Kashmir bee
virus in Africanized honey bee colonies in Costa Rica infested with Varroa destructor. Bee World 84(3), 112-
116.
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