Honeybees can now get vaccinated, USDA says. Company aims to ‘protect our pollinators’

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has authorized the use of the world’s first honeybee vaccine in an effort to prevent the spread of a deadly bacterial disease.

Dalan Animal Health, a Georgia-based biotech firm focused on insect health, announced the USDA’s conditional two-year license for the vaccine Jan. 4, according to a company news release.

The aim is to inoculate bee populations against American Foulbrood disease, one of the most pervasive and destructive diseases plaguing honeybees, according to the company.

The illness spreads through spores that kill larva and slowly infect entire colonies, according to the USDA.

Currently, beekeepers have no tools at their disposal for stemming the tide of infection, the company said.

“It is the most costly and detrimental (disease) because it’s so contagious and spreads so rapidly that when a beekeeper finds a case they have to burn the hive and all the associated equipment and also quarantine all hives in the vicinity of 7 miles,” Annette Kleiser, CEO of Dalan Animal Health, told McClatchy News.

The vaccine, which will be available for purchase later this year, is administered through a multi-step process involving the bees’ food supply, the company stated.

First, the vaccine is added into the “queen feed,” which is consumed by worker bees and then added to the royal jelly, a nutritious secretion fed to the queen. She then consumes it, depositing particles of the vaccine into her ovaries, which give immunity to future larvae.

“It’s a unique feature in insects that the maternal insect will take up a pathogen and pass a piece of it into the ovaries and the egg and developing larvae will build an immune response, so we are just building on this natural pathway,” Kleiser said.

Studies have shown that the vaccine, considered a breakthrough by the company, may minimize larval death caused by the American Foulbrood disease.

The vaccine comes at a critical time for honeybees as bee colonies are being lost at alarmingly high rates. American beekeepers lost nearly half of their managed colonies between 2020 and 2021, according to Auburn University research, citing a nationwide survey.

In recent decades, other diseases, such as gut parasites, in addition to pesticide poisoning, habitat changes and other factors, have contributed to a widespread phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder, where worker bees disappear, though cases have declined in recent years, according to the EPA.

Honeybees alone pollinate the vast majority of all flowering plants, accounting for roughly $15 billion in annual added crop value, according to the FDA, meaning their disappearance would have a major impact on food supplies.

“We know from data that about half of our losses are supposedly due to brood diseases,” Kleiser said, meaning the vaccine could be an effective measure for boosting bee populations. “This is a very critical industry, an industry we depend on every single day, and we have to do all we can to help protect it.”

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