Mushroom Extract Could Help Save Bees from Virus

The bees are dying in massive numbers and it is mostly caused by a parasite aptly named Varroa destructor, but in a new study, researchers presented mushrooms as evidence for a surprising solution to DWV.

Mushroom extract could help save bBees from vVirus. Image credit: Louise Docker/Wikipedia (CC BY 2.0)

Years ago, in 1984, Paul Stamets had noticed a “continuous convoy of bees” traveling from a patch of mushrooms he was growing and his beehives. The bees actually moved wood chips to access his mushroom’s mycelium, the branching fibers of fungus that look like cobwebs.

“I could see them sipping on the droplets oozing from the mycelium,” he said. They were after its sugar, he thought.

Waking up one morning, “I connected the dots,” he said. “Mycelium have sugars and antiviral properties,” he said.

Stamets turned intuition into reality. The paper describes how bees given a small amount of his mushroom mycelia extract exhibited remarkable reductions in the presence of viruses associated with parasitic mites that have been attacking, and infecting, bee colonies for decades.

In the late 1980s, tiny Varroa mites began to spread through bee colonies in the United States. The mites — which are parasites and can infect bees with viruses — proliferate easily and cause colony collapse in just years.

Over time, colonies have become even more susceptible, and viruses became among the chief threats to the important pollinators for crops on which people rely.

To test Stamets’ theory, the researchers from Washington State University conducted two experiments: They separated two groups of mite-exposed bees into cages, feeding one group sugar syrup with a mushroom-based additive and the other, syrup without the additive. They also field-tested the extract in small, working bee colonies.

For several virus strains, the extract reduced the virus to almost nothing.

Because the extract can be added to syrups commercial beekeepers commonly use, researchers say the extract could be a practical solution that could scale quickly. (Tasnim News Agency)

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE

New study implicates hyperactive immune system in aging brain disorders

In a study of fruit flies, National Institutes of Health scientists suggested that the body’s immune system may play a critical role in the damage caused by aging brain disorders.

TESS Mission Scores ‘Hat Trick’ With 3 New Worlds

NASA’s newest planet hunter, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), has discovered three new worlds — one slightly larger than Earth and two of a type not found in our solar system — orbiting a nearby star.

The most reliable scientific model to date for detecting when a person is lying, based on thermography

Scientists from the University of Granada have studied the so‑called ‘Pinocchio Effect’, which causes the temperature of the nose to decrease between 0.6 ºC and 1.2 ºC while that of the forehead increases between 0.6 ºC and 1.5 ºC when a person is lying.

Deep Discoverer Discovers a Very Deep, Ghostlike Octopod

The first operational dive of Okeanos Explorer’s 2016 season, on February 27, explored depths of over 4,000 meters northeast of Necker Island (Mokumanamana) in the Hawaiian Archipelago.

Scientists unravel the mystery of the tubulin code

Cellular structures called microtubules are tagged with a variety of chemical markers that can influence cell functions. The pattern of these markers makes up the “tubulin code” and scientists have uncovered the mechanism behind one of the main writers of this code, tubulin tyrosine ligase-7 (TTLL7).

Opioid Pain Relievers May Prolong Pain

Pain can help protect the body after an injury or infection. It serves as a warning system to rest or avoid certain activities. But sometimes, pain may become chronic. This can happen when nerve cells that detect something harmful alter the electrical or molecular signals they send to the spinal cord.