KPPC - The United States Department of Agriculture has approved a vaccine for honeybees, which play an integral role in our food system. The vaccines could help prevent American foulbrood disease, which is a bacterial disease that can spread quickly between hives. In the past, the disease has been handled by burning the infected hives or using antibiotics. But the new vaccine is groundbreaking and will be given to the queen bees in a jelly form, that will be ingested and then be passed down to her offspring. Bees pollinate one-third of our food crops in the United States. Their demise may be ours too.
Joining us this morning on AirTalk to discuss the bee vaccine is Margarita Lopez-Uribe, associate professor of entomology at Penn State and Hollis Woodard, associate professor of entomology and wild bee biologist UC Riverside.