Virus behind decline of UK bumblebees
March 7, 2014
From: Horticulture Week
By Gavin McEwan
Honeybees share diseases with wild bumblebees while pesticides’ danger remains unknown.
Two diseases of honeybees are spreading to wild bumblebees, Royal Holloway University of London researchers have found.
Wild insects infected with deformed wing virus (DWV) and the single-cell parasite Nosema ceranae were present across England, Scotland and Wales, they found. The decline of the UK’s bumblebees over recent decades has been attributed to habitat loss, but this latest finding suggests an additional factor.
Professor Mark Brown from Royal Holloway, University of London said: “These pathogens are capable of infecting adult bumblebees and they seem to have quite significant impacts.”
In honeybees, the effect of DWV is exacerbated by the presence of another widespread parasite, the varroa mite, which bumblebees do not carry. Despite this, the new research shows that bumblebees infected with DWV had “a significantly shorter lifespan”, Brown pointed out.
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