The USDA provides conditional licenses for honeybee vaccines to combat American Foulbrood disease – an animal farm worker/queen approach
The vaccine was approved for use by the Department of Agriculture to help fight American Foulbrood disease, according to Dalan Animal Health.
The owner of a California Beekeepers Association and a board member said this is an exciting step forward as they use antibiotics that has limited effectiveness and requires lots of time and energy. “If we can prevent an infection in our hives, we can avoid costly treatments and focus our energy on other important elements of keeping our bees healthy.”
The honeybee vaccine doesn’t have a injection in it. Instead, it’s mixed into “queen feed,” which the worker bees consume, according to Dalan’s statement. The worker bees give the vaccine to the queen bee. The queen bee excretes vaccine fragments in her ovary after consuming the vaccineladen royal jelly. The queen will give her children immunity to the disease.
The USDA issues conditional licenses for products that “meet an emergency situation, limited market, local situation, or special circumstance” and are pure, safe and have a “have a reasonable expectation of efficacy,” according to a memo by the agency.
A USDA Conditional Violation Licensure of a Honeybee Product and Implications for American Fouldbrood Disease
The agency states that honeybees are responsible for one of every three bites of food we eat.
Bee decline can be caused by a variety of factors, including decreasing crop diversity. Pesticides weaken bees’ immune systems and can kill them. If honeybees are attacked by varroa mites they could stunt and weaken them and cause colonies to collapse.
The USDA told CNN that it issued a conditional vaccine license to Diamond Animal Health, the collaborating manufacturer for Dalan Animal Health, on December 29. The agency said that it was the first licensure of a honeybee product.
According to the USDA, American foulbrood disease is one of the most destructive honey bee brood diseases.
“Global population growth and changing climates will increase the importance of honeybee pollination to secure our food supply,” said Kleiser in the statement. We are ready to change how we care for insects and impact food production on a global scale.