Honey trap: using bees’ own guts

Worth almost $20bn to American agriculture, honey bees are well worth looking after. But 2018 saw the largest colony losses on record.

Beekeepers have constantly battled pests and pathogens; the main threats are Varroa destructor, a parasitic mite that devours bee pupae, and deformed-wing virus, which the mites carry.

• pathogen 【医】病原体；致病菌
• parasitic 寄生生物引起的；寄生的；依附性的；寄生虫似的
• mite 螨虫
• devour 吞灭；狼吞虎咽地吃；吞没；舐光
• pupae 【虫】蛹

This duumvirate of doom is the main cause of colony collapse.

• duumvirate 二人共职；二人执政

However, as reported this week in Science, American scientists have developed a powerful new weapon to combat them.

They engineered strains of bacteria specifically to target both the mites and the virus.

Once delivered to the bees, these bacteria become biological factories, producing molecules that harm the two.

The results were a resounding success—the mites died off after ingesting the new bacteria, while the bees’ own immune systems fought off the virus.

• resounding 巨大的；令人瞩目的；响亮的；嘹亮的

If the technique works when scaled up to full colonies, it could be a silver bullet for the parasites.

• scaled up (按比例)增加，扩大

Feb 1st 2020