Bees naturally vaccinate their young, scientists find

Humans like to brag about their brilliant use of vaccinations to prevent diseases, but bees just roll their eyes and shrug. After all, they’ve been doing it naturally for much longer.

That’s what a team of international scientists found while studying proteins in the blood of bees. They suggest the discovery, published this week in the journal PLOS Pathogens, may lead to innovations that could benefit how we make food.

The underlying concept of how bees vaccinate their offspring is the same as that used by humans: small amounts of a pathogen are introduced to a body so that cells in the immune system can produce the right weapons to fight the disease when the real thing comes around.

In a bee colony, the queen gives birth to all the insects in a hive, but she rarely leaves the nest. Worker bees bring her a “royal jelly” of pollen and nectar, mixed with pathogens, which she eats and breaks down in her gut.

Bits of the pathogens are then transferred to the queen’s “fat body,” an organ similar to a liver, where they are packaged with a protein called vitellogenin and delivered to eggs through the queen’s bloodstream. The result: newly hatched bee larvae already immune to the nasty germs that could have plagued the colony.

Scientists have yet to discover any bees that are opposed to this form of mandatory vaccination, but they do note that this process certainly does not protect bees against all diseases. There are a handful of afflictions devastating bee colonies, such as the American foul brood bacteria, the deformed wing virus and the nosema fungi. They also face invading beetles and a phenomenon called colony collapse disorder, in which worker bees mysteriously disappear and leave the queen to fend for herself.

Dwindling bee numbers have worried scientists and economists alike, who say a reduction in the world’s bee populations could severely hurt ecosystems and agricultural businesses in need of pollinators. Over the past half-century, the number of managed honey bee colonies has plummeted, to 2.5 million today from six million in 1947, although data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have shown a slight bump up in the numbers.

Now that scientists understand this mechanism for natural bee immunity, researchers say they hope to come up with edible vaccines to help the insect out.

They also suggest that the discovery could extend to other species throughout the animal kingdom. All egg-laying animals have the vitellogenin protein in their bodies, including fish, poultry, reptiles, amphibians and other insects.