Truemors
A study done by British researchers shows that bees can get sick and recover after the immune system actively fights off viruses or parasites. Researchers said on Wednesday that bumblebees can get ill and seems to lose a bit of their buzz in that duration.
Like humans, the bee will also have a tougher time doing daily tasks when it's sick, and will revert back after recovery. However, the study also finds that bees have memory problem when the immune system kicks into action. This might be a huge problem since most bees fly to places where their memory tells them food is at (through scent).
Honeybees with activated immune systems also have memory problems, according to evolutionary biologist Eamonn Mallon of the University of Leicester, who said his findings can boost efforts to save dwindling bee colonies.
"This is an animal that lives on its memory," he said. "If even a minor infection hurts its memory that is a major cost."
This was how the research went:
The researchers divided bees into two groups and injected half with a substance that stimulated the immune system. They then offered the bees the choice of blue and yellow flowers but only one color contained sugar water.
Eventually all the bees spent their time feeding from the correct flower but it took the stimulated bees 10 percent longer to reach this point, showing that an active immune response when ill affects memory, the researchers said.
Maybe this is one of the reasons, apart from the farming methods that have deprived bumblebees of their traditional food sources, that explains why bumblebee populations are declining and under threat.
Three of Britain's 25 native species of bumblebees have been lost in the past fifty years, with several under threat. However, sickness in bees most likely have prevailed for thousands of years. There is certainly a lot of ambiguity when one is trying to find out why the bee population is declining. We should watch out for more possibilities in upcoming studies.
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