According to a new report in the journal Science, the Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV) may be a potential cause of the epidemic that has afflicted between 50 and 90 per cent of commercial bee colonies in the U.S. The earliest reports of colony collapse disorder date to 2004, the same year the virus was first described by Israeli virologist Ilan Sela. That also was the year U.S. beekeepers began importing bees from Australia - a practice that had been banned by the Honeybee Act of 1922. Now, Australia is being eyed as a potential source of the virus. That could turn out to be an ironic twist because the Australian imports were meant to bolster U.S. bee populations devastated by another scourge, the varroa mite. Officials are discussing reinstating the ban, said the Agriculture Department's top bee scientist, Jeff Pettis. In the new study, a team of nearly two dozen scientists used the genetic sequencing equivalent of a dragnet to round up suspects. The technique, called pyrosequencing, generates a list of the full repertoire of genes in bees they examined from U.S. hives and directly imported from Australia. Sela, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said he will collaborate with U.S. scientists on studying how and why the bee virus may be fatal. Preliminary research shows some bees can integrate genetic information from the virus into their own genomes, apparently giving them resistance, Sela said in a telephone interview. Sela added that about 30 percent of the bees he has examined had done so. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ******************************************************