425BBKA News Incorporating e British Bee Journal December 2016

Chronic Bee Paralysis:The History and Biology

By Dr Giles Budge and Kirsty Stainton, National Bee Unit

Paralysis has an ancient associationwith honey bees, with a diversearray of wonderfully descriptive

names littering the literature. eseinclude ‘black robbers’ and ‘little blacks’ inBritain; ‘Schwarzsucht’ (black addiction),‘maladie noire’ and ‘mal nero’ (blackdisease) in continental Europe; and‘hairless black syndrome’ in the UnitedStates. It was in the 1960s that one of ourpersonal heroes, Leslie Bailey, firstidentified the causative organism as a virusand named it chronic bee paralysis virus.

SymptomsIn a valiant attempt to unite disparatemalaises from across the literature, Baileyclassified symptoms of individual bees intotwo ‘types’. Type 1 syndrome was describedas the most commonly observed inBritain1 and included an abnormaltrembling motion with paralysis of thewings and bodies (affected bees can beseen in Figure 1). Affected bees are unableto fly and they sometimes crawl on the

ground. ey are oen misplaced in thehive, appearing on top bars and lugs,leading some researchers to deem them tobe ‘stupid’. Abdomens can be bloated andthe bees may suffer from dysentery anddislocated wings. Type 2 syndrome unitedobservations such as hairless bees,appearing almost black, and shiny, greasybees suffering from nibbling attacks byhealthy bees. is gives them theappearance of robber bees (Figure 2). Aera few days, these individuals also sufferfrom paralysis and die.

Given our modern acceptance thatChronic Bee Paralysis Virus (CBPV) cancause both types, there seems little benefitin continuing to distinguish between them;symptoms are not mutually exclusive to ahoney bee colony and type 1 and type 2symptoms frequently occur in tandem.e symptoms of a severely affected colonycan be startling, with dead bees on thefloor, inches deep, and thousands piled upjust outside the hive entrance, producing arancid smell as the bees decompose. esecolonies can sometimes recover but, moreoen, the colony will lose so many adultbees that it will enter terminal decline. Arecent example of a severe outbreak ofchronic bee paralysis led to the loss of 150out of 400 colonies in a single bee-farmoperation.

Diagnosis and cases ofmistaken identity Individually, many of the symptoms can beconfused with other afflictions. Nosemacan cause dysentery, acarine may causebees to become flightless, deformed wingvirus may cause dislocated wings, andthere are at least four other paralysisviruses of the honey bee. However, takentogether, the symptoms are mostfrequently confused with pesticidepoisoning.

Andy Wattam, the former National BeeInspector, kindly highlighted twoimportant differences between pesticide

Finding your beestrembling, crawlingon the ground, ordenuded with chewedwings, or even dead,piled up, outside thehive would be verytroubling. But wouldyou know what youwere looking at? GilesBudge and KirstyStainton explain whatthis is likely to be.

Figure 1. Bees with ‘Type 1’ chronic bee paralysis symptoms. Photo courtesy of e Animaland Plant Health Agency (APHA), Crown Copyright.

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poisonings and CBPV infections. First,adult bees afflicted with chronic beeparalysis virus never do the ‘dying fly’ act,where individuals spin in circles on theirbacks seemingly unable to fly. issymptom is found exclusively withpesticide poisonings. Second, chronic beeparalysis is associated with piles of deadbees directly outside the front of the hives,whereas pesticide poisonings sometimesshow a carpet of dead bees more evenlyspread across the apiary, perhaps caused bybees not quite making it back to the colony.It is worth noting that there is help at handif you suspect a pesticide poisoning. Simplycontact your local National Bee Unit(NBU) inspector and, if they also suspectpesticides, your samples could be enteredinto a national monitoring scheme knownas the Wildlife Incident InvestigationScheme; for more details seewww.nationalbeeunit.com/index.cfm?sectionid=33 Diagnosis in the field requiresseveral of the above mentioned symptomsto be observed together. However, giventhe opportunity for misidentification, theonly definitive diagnosis comes fromconfirming the presence of the virus usingsensitive molecular tests.

Prevalence and transmissionChronic bee paralysis is found on everycontinent where honey bees are kept. Alarge-scale survey, completed by the NBUin 2011, suggested that CBPV was notcommonly detected when random apiarieswere tested; only seven in 1,000 apiariestested positive. Interestingly, the prevalencewas found to be far higher when apiariesshowing poor health were targeted; in thiscase 160 in 1000 apiaries tested positive.2All stages of the honey bee life-cycle maybe infected with CBPV, but it is most

concentrated in adult bees. When an adulthoney bee is infected, its nervous systemand brain are ‘hijacked’ by the virus for thepurposes of viral replication, causing thecharacteristic trembling and paralysis. Asingle individual showing paralysis mayharbour up to ten trillion virus particles.e infected bee secretes the viruses fromits epidermis and in its faeces, turning itinto a ‘mobile virus factory’. e hive-matesof the infected bees can be infected bysimply brushing up against the infectedbees or through contact with faeces fromcontaminated individuals.1

CBPV can spread rampantly in crowdedconditions and so can be associated withlarge populous colonies and exacerbated byprolonged periods of confinement due tobad weather.3 CBPV is not transmitted byvarroa. As is oen the case with honey beeviruses, CBPV is able to infect and replicatein other hymenopteran hosts, in this caseants.4 For a wonderfully complete review ofvirus biology, please see the articlepresented by Magali Ribière.1

ControlHistorically, chronic bee paralysis has beena very difficult disease to study because theonset of symptoms can be sudden andoutbreak location unpredictable. As such,there are no scientific papers that providerobust evidence to demonstrate successfultreatments. Queen replacement has beensuggested, but given that all races of beeappear to be susceptible, any success by thismethod could be attributed to a drop inadult bee population due to the broodbreak associated with queen replacement.A recent promising management methodappears to be a modification of the shookswarm, described by Chris Neel.5 e

method is as follows: n e queen is caged.n e colony is moved at least 50 m and

the bees emptied into the air, ratherthan onto the ground.

n e colony is replaced in its originallocation and only the healthy beesreturn. is method probably breaksthe bee-to-bee transmission route andcould need to be repeated again sixdays later to remove previoussymptomless carriers of the virus. It isearly days, but some, if not all, havefound this method to be helpful.

SummaryTo summarise, chronic bee paralysis can bea very severe disease that is seeminglyincreasing in prevalence in recent years.e reasons for this increase are currentlyunknown, but they could be driven bymore changeable weather causingconfinement in populous colonies. ereappears to be a clear need to extend ourknowledge of chronic bee paralysis andprovide more useful tools for beekeepers tomanage this damaging viral disease.

References1. Ribière M, Olivier V, Blanchard P.

Chronic bee paralysis: a disease and avirus like no other? Journal ofInvertebrate Pathology 2010; 103:Suppl 1, S120–31.

2. Budge GE et al. Pathogens aspredictors of hHoney bee colonystrength in England and Wales. PlosOne 2015; 10(7): e0133228.

3. Bailey L et al. Honey bee paralysis: Itsnatural spread and diminishedincidence in England and Wales.Journal of Apicultural Research 1983;22(3): 191–5.

4. Celle O et al. Detection of chronic beeparalysis virus (CBPV) genome and itsreplicative RNA form in various hostsand possible ways of spread. VirusResearch 2008; 133: 280–4.

5. Neel C. Chronic bee paralysis virus.Bee Farmer 2016; 2(2): 11.

426BBKA News Incorporating e British Bee Journal December 2016

Figure 2. Bees with ‘Type 2’ chronic bee paralysis syndrome. Photo courtesy of e Animal andPlant Health Agency (APHA), Crown Copyright.

"Chronic beeparalysis virusinfection of a colony,can lead to terminaldecline ... but amodified shookswarm method mayshow some promisein its management."

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