Recently, The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has granted a conditional license for a vaccine for honeybees to curb American foulbrood (AFB).
What is ‘American Foulbrood’?
- It is a fatal bacterial disease which affects insects and it is caused by the spore-forming bacterium Paenibacillus larvae.
- Infected honeybee broods usually die at the pre-pupal or pupal stage.
- The disease cannot be cured, meaning that the destruction of infected colonies and hives or irradiation of infected material is the only way to manage AFB.
Key facts about honeybees –
- There are almost 20,000 different species of bees in the world.
- In each bee colony, there are three types of bees, the queen bee, the worker bee, and the drone.
- The worker and the queen bee both are females, but only the queen bee can reproduce and all drones are male.
- India is home to four of the seven known bee species.
- Domesticated — Apis cerana (oriental honey bee) and Apis mellifera (European honey bee).
- Wild — Apis dorsata (giant/rock honey bee) and Apis florea (dwarf honey bee).
- Recently, a new species of endemic honeybee named Apis karinjodian has been discovered in the Western Ghats after a gap of more than 200 years.
- Common Name — Indian black honeybee.
- IUCN Red List — Near Threatened (NT)
- It is distributed from the central Western Ghats and Nilgiris to the southern Western Ghats, covering the States of Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
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