+
Science

U.S. approves world's first vaccine for honeybees to stave off deadly 'foulbrood' disease

The way the bees receive the vaccine is fascinating.

bees, honeycomb, vaccines

Honeybees are getting their first vaccine.

Without bees, the human race would be screwed. We rely on those little buggers to pollinate most of the crops that feed most of the world—they're a critical link in the food chain that sustains human existence.

But scientists have been worried about bee populations in recent years, as colony collapse disorder, habitat loss and various bee diseases have threatened the planet's primary pollinators. There's good news for our fuzzy, buzzy friends, however. The world's first honeybee vaccine has been approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help stave off American foulbrood, a deadly disease that's spread through bacterial spores and can take down entire colonies.

So how does a bee colony get vaccinated? Are we talking 50,000 teeny-tiny syringes or what?


The process is actually quite ingenious. According to a press release from Dalan Animal Health, the vaccine, which contains dead Paenibacillus larvae bacteria, gets mixed into the queen bee's feed, which is then consumed by worker bees. Those worker bees incorporate the vaccine into the royal jelly they feed to the queen. After she eats it, the vaccine gets deposited into her ovaries, which provides immunity to the larvae she produces. Thus, all her little baby bees are born already vaccinated for American foulbrood.

Pretty nifty, eh?

The vaccine was developed by the University of Georgia’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences in collaboration with biotech company Dalan Animal Health, and researchers are hopeful this breakthrough will lead to similar vaccines.

“They are taking a stab at this one because it’s such a historically important bee disease,” Keith Delaplane, CAES Department of Entomology professor and director of the UGA Bee Program, told Georgia Public Radio. “With the good results, which we anticipate based on lab work, we can expand the product line to other diseases.”

There is currently no cure for American foulbrood and, despite its name, it has become a global issue. According to Delaplane, beekeepers have been using antibiotics to fight off the disease, but the USDA is trying to cut down antibiotic use in all food-producing animals. This vaccine helps eliminate the need for them in the honeybee population.

The Guardian reports that the vaccine will first be made available to commercial beekeepers. American foulbrood has been found in up to a quarter of hives in some U.S. regions, forcing beekeepers to burn infected colonies and use antibiotics to limit the spread.

Annette Kleiser, CEO of Dalan Animal Health, pointed out that population growth and climate change make honeybee pollination all the more important to protect. “Our vaccine is a breakthrough in protecting honeybees,” she said. "We are ready to change how we care for insects, impacting food production on a global scale.”

The development and approval of this vaccine is also a good reminder that vaccine technology is always evolving and it's not just humans that benefit.

Of course, good news for honeybees is good news for humans. According to the FDA, honeybees specifically pollinate a third of the food Americans consume. We need them more than they need us, but helping them thrive is a win-win for us both.

Yay, science.

Sponsored

ACUVUE launches a new campaign to inspire Gen Z to put down their phones and follow their vision

What will you create on your social media break? Share it at #MyVisionMySight.

True

If you’ve always lived in a world with social media, it can be tough to truly understand how it affects your life. One of the best ways to grasp its impact is to take a break to see what life is like without being tethered to your phone and distracted by a constant stream of notifications.

Knowing when to disconnect is becoming increasingly important as younger people are becoming aware of the adverse effects screen time can have on their eyes. According to Eyesafe Nielsen, adults are now spending 13-plus hours a day on their digital devices, a 35% increase from 2019.1. Many of us now spend more time staring at screens on a given day than we do sleeping which can impact our eye health.

Normally, you blink around 15 times per minute, however, focusing your eyes on computer screens or other digital displays have been shown to reduce your blink rate by up to 60%.2 Reduced blinking can destabilize your eyes’ tear film, causing dry, tired eyes and blurred vision.3

Keep ReadingShow less
Joy

18-year-old took her college savings and bought the restaurant where she was a dishwasher

Samantha Frye, the newest owner of Rosalie's restaurant, is proving there's more than one way to invest in your future.

Canva

There are many way to invest in your future

Eighteen year old Samantha Frye has traded college life for entrepreneurship, and she has no regrets.

Frye began working at Rosalie's Restaurant in Strasburg, Ohio at 16 as a dishwasher, working up the ranks as a kitchen prep, server, then line cook. All while working a second job, sometimes third job.

After graduating high school, Frye started college at Ohio State with plans of studying business or environmental engineering. But when she came back to work a shift at Rosalie’s for winter break, an opportunity arose—the owners had planned to sell the restaurant.
Keep ReadingShow less
Family

My family of 5 traveled the U.S. for nearly a year, and it cost us less than staying home

It's amazing what a little creativity and willingness to step outside the box can do.

Photo courtesy of Annie Reneau

We made countless memories during our slow travel year.

Whenever people share money-saving life hacks like living on a cruise ship or exploring the country via the #vanlife, I see comments like, "That might work for a single person or a couple, but what if you have kids?"

When our kids were 12, 8 and 4, we packed up all of our earthly belongings and spent a year living around the U.S. And no, we didn't live in a van or RV. (Nothing wrong with that life, it just wasn't for us.) We traveled from coast to coast, seeing and experiencing the vast array of gorgeous landscapes and fascinating sites America has to offer, and the best part is we did it for less than what we would have spent staying home.

Was it easy to plan and execute? Not exactly. But was it worth it? Absolutely, hands down, 100%.

Here's how we did it and what we learned.

Keep ReadingShow less
Joy

13-year-old uses a slingshot to rescue his little sister from being abducted

He had two projectiles and both hit the suspect, forcing him to drop the little girl.

Owen Burns, 13, rescued his sister from a would-be abductor using a slingshot.

A parent never wants to imagine what would happen if their child were confronted with someone meaning them harm. We do everything in our power to mitigate the risks of things like that happening, but scary situations still occur that can leave a family irreparably broken.

A Michigan family had an extremely close call when their 8-year-old daughter was nearly abducted while playing in their backyard. The little girl was outside picking mushrooms when a 17-year-old boy picked her up with his hand over her mouth. Owen Burns, 13, was inside playing video games when he heard his sister scream. A lot of kids in his situation may not have known what to do, but Owen quickly jumped into action.

The teen saw what was happening out the window and picked up his slingshot and a marble before taking aim at the boy who had his sister.

Keep ReadingShow less
Pop Culture

'Recovering Doomscroller' shares how he was able to break his news 'addiction' in revealing post

He was scrolling through the news during dinner with his family and knew he had to stop.

A man sits in his chair apathetically scrolling through social media.

Keeping up with the 24-hour news cycle in real time can be overwhelming. It can lead to a negative cycle known as “doomscrolling,” or endlessly scrolling through negative news, usually without realizing the emotional impact it's having.

Doomscrollers can get fixated on various topics, such as politics, crime, social justice, celebrity news, and even the personal lives of people they know on social media.

A Reddit user named Max wrote a revealing post about his doomscrolling habit on the Taoism subreddit. It explained how he got wrapped up in the vicious cycle, how it affected him on a biochemical level, and how he freed himself from the addiction. Taoism is a 1,900-year-oldphilosophy developed in China centered around balance, harmony with nature, simplicity and spontaneity.

Keep ReadingShow less
Pop Culture

Simon Cowell 'broke the rules' for tear-jerking 'Unity' dance on Britain's Got Talent

The judges had reached their Golden Buzzer limit, but Cowell decided the "astonishing" act deserved a special honor.

The Unity dance troupe wowed the BGT audience and judges with their moving performance.

Simon Cowell may have made his U.S. debut as a hard-nosed grump on "American Idol," but anyone familiar with him knows he's a big ol' softie inside. When a performance moves him, he's not ashamed to say so, and when an act deserves accolades, he's not afraid to go above and beyond to make sure they get their kudos.

Such was the case with the dance troupe Unity and their emotional performance to the Wrabel song, "The Village," on "Britain's Got Talent." The group of 16 to 25-year-olds, wearing all black, began by standing together on stage as one of them explained who they were.

"We're all friends in college, so we decided to put this group together to perform a piece called 'I Will,' which is about being told that you can't or you're not enough, and how as a group that we come together and power through that," said the group's spokesperson.

As the music cued up, a screen behind the dancers read, "In nature, a flock will attach any bird that is more colourful than the others because being different is seen as a threat…" Then Emma, a girl with Down Syndrome, began to speak about how people say she "can't," while the troupe spoke in sign language along with her.

Following Emma came Declan, who stretches gender boundaries. Then came Steph and Libby, who are in love, a boy who was bullied growing up for his love of dance and a young woman who has been underestimated due to her body shape. As each person shared their personal story, the lyrics of "The Village" highlighted their struggles to be accepted.

At the same time, the group's dancing showed the support a group can give someone who feels excluded or ostracized. Ultimately, it was an incredibly moving performance with a beautiful message of inclusion: "It is not our differences that divide us, it is our inability to recognize, accept, embrace and celebrate those differences.”

The judges were unanimously impressed, and the audience chanted for them to give the group the Golden Buzzer, which would send them straight to the finals. However, the judges have a limited number of Golden Buzzers per season, and they had already used them all up.

Simon Cowell felt inspired enough by the performance to "break the rules," however, and gave them a delightful surprise ending.

Watch what moved him, the other judges and the audience so much:

Empowering, inspiring and impactful. Congratulations, Unity, on making a memorable impression on us all.

Things you would tell your 13-year-old self

There are so many times we look back on our lives and think about things we would change or do slightly differently. But many people say they wouldn't change anything because it would change who or where they are in their life now. The mystery around changing something that happened in the past is so woven into our psyches that there are entire sci-fi genres around time travel and what would happen if you altered the past.

While science fiction movies like "The Butterfly Effect" warn us against tampering with events of the past no matter how small, it doesn't stop people from wondering. A user on Reddit decided to pose a question asking what three words you'd tell your 13-year-old self, and some of the answers were surprisingly heartbreaking. (At 13, you'd think most people would want to tell themselves something silly, like the user who wrote, "Pull my finger.")

Keep ReadingShow less