Sick Honeybees Find Lifeline In Covid Vaccine Technology (bloomberg.com) 48
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Technology used to develop Covid-19 vaccines may also help combat a honeybee-killing pest. GreenLight Biosciences is developing an RNA-based syrup to attack varroa mites, a parasite that attaches itself to honeybees and feeds off them while spreading diseases. [Varroa mites are thought to be one of the reasons behind the staggeringly high death rates that have become so common among honeybees.] The RNA acts as an "off switch" that interferes with the mites, disrupting their ability to lay offspring that attach to bees, said Mark Singleton, chief commercial officer and general manager of plant health at the Boston-based firm. "We are really putting a dent in the ability of mites to reproduce," he said. Anecdotal feedback shows that hives using his company's treatment are healthier and have a higher survival rate, according to Singleton, whose biotech firm worked with large-scale US beekeepers to test the technology.
Moderna and Pfizer used experimental messenger RNA technology to develop Covid-19 vaccines that instruct the body to make the spike protein the coronavirus uses to enter cells, which in turn stimulates production of antibodies. GreenLight Biosciences acquired the RNA technology from Bayer in 2020 and it is the first RNA regulation that directly targets the mites, which reproduce in the same cells as bee larvae. Unlike chemical options that exist to control the mites, RNA is naturally occurring and degrades without causing any harm to the bees, Singleton said. The product is placed in an envelope with holes that beekeepers put in a hive. The bees do the rest -- ultimately delivering it to where mites produce. GreenLight plans to submit its product for approval to the US Environmental Protection Agency by year end and, if approved, it could be commercially available by 2024.
Moderna and Pfizer used experimental messenger RNA technology to develop Covid-19 vaccines that instruct the body to make the spike protein the coronavirus uses to enter cells, which in turn stimulates production of antibodies. GreenLight Biosciences acquired the RNA technology from Bayer in 2020 and it is the first RNA regulation that directly targets the mites, which reproduce in the same cells as bee larvae. Unlike chemical options that exist to control the mites, RNA is naturally occurring and degrades without causing any harm to the bees, Singleton said. The product is placed in an envelope with holes that beekeepers put in a hive. The bees do the rest -- ultimately delivering it to where mites produce. GreenLight plans to submit its product for approval to the US Environmental Protection Agency by year end and, if approved, it could be commercially available by 2024.
Obvious (Score:2)
I, for one, welcome our new mutant bee overlords.
I think I've seen this movie before... (Score:2)
The one I was didn't go so well.
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If we get giant killer bees, at least we get bees
If we get giant killer mites, well, I don't know if you've looked around but the bees are kind of fucked lately, they're going away if we don't do something. I hardly ever even see a fucking bee any more, and I am surrounded by woods and we have a flower garden.
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I still see bees a bunch... usually struggling to get out of my swimming pool. It's odd how many are trapped in our skimmer and seems to be a growing number each year...
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Yeah, but if they're giant bees - killer or not - then they're damned-all use for pollination. Except of giant flowers, which are conspicuous by their absence, and in any case would probably produce grain that falls to the ground and rots rather than ripening (I saw the harvest being brought in over a month early at the weekend ; probably the farmers don't want to lose moisture, and crop weight, to the deepening drought.)
You do realise that the major concern
re: bee sightings (Score:2)
I've seen a lot of bees too. Granted, what I've also seen is a big increase in the number of people interested in trying their hand at bee-keeping. I've never seen so many people selling "locally produced honey" as I've seen in recent years at farmer's markets and vendor booths.
Personally, I think the bee population is going to be alright, as long as more people are motivated to make an effort to raise bees. There were several theories on why the bee population was in such sharp decline (first blamed on cer
Have they (Score:4, Funny)
tried thoughts and prayers for the bees?
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Or perhaps a few bee-atitudes.
Re: Have they (Score:2)
No, they're being poisoned by neo-nicotinoids. The people bringing that to light, including a very prominent Dutch toxicologist, have not fared well. The toxicologist was blacklisted and is now on welfare. But the evidence for the pesticides being lethal to bees (and more) is pretty conclusive. Hence the EU ban on those pesticides.
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No, they're being poisoned by neo-nicotinoids.
Neonicotinoids kill bees but don't appear to be the main reason for colony collapse disorder.
Hence the EU ban on those pesticides.
Well, that's the thing: The EU banned neonicotinoids, yet they still have colony collapses.
Disclaimer: My mom is a beekeeper.
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You missed the joke.
The joke was that the offering of thoughts and prayers are the typical conservative American's response to our outrageous gun violence. This is of course exactly the same as doing absolutely nothing about gun violence and there's the joke, thoughts and prayers arent going to help the bees either.
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tried thoughts and prayers for the bees?
Not yet, but they already tried blaming it on global warming.
Re:Have they (Score:5, Insightful)
they're gonna put up "no mite zone" signs at the border, that always works
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tried thoughts and prayers for the bees?
You still mock thoughts and prayers? There is no good forum for this discussion here. If you can let your guard down for just a moment, do you understand that thoughts and prayers are meditation? Sure, some people think meditation with a goal is counterproductive, but it isn't for those who practice it. If you "pray" about something, then spend time in a calm quiet area contemplating the subject, thoughts arise that our busy minds often miss.
It doesn't matter what religion you pray under or if you meditate
I, for one, welcome our new bee overloads (Score:2)
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As long as Mr. B Natural [youtube.com] is among them..
Re: Next target... (Score:2)
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But this is going to require more scratch.
Re: The means of reproduction (Score:2)
Re:The means of reproduction (Score:5, Informative)
The experimental mRNA drugs in humans likely tanks fertility and reproduction
No evidence of such and evidence that show the contrary [nih.gov]. Additionally, there have been plenty of example of people who have received the vaccine and gone on to have children, and during the initial study before the product came to market, 23 participants became pregnant AFTER receiving the vaccine.
This whole "it makes you infertile" is the same crap they said about small pox vaccines along with "it'll turn you into a cow" and so on. I swear you all have had over 200+ years to come up with new scary things vaccines will do to us and it's always the usual gotos of "you can't have kids", "you'll become a mutant", "your blood will turn to jello", and other great hits. It gets old if you all just keep saying the same thing over and over and over. It's like when politicians say "think of the kids". It just instantly hits my eyeroll reflex.
so we'll know for sure in a few years
I love this argument of "it'll make you not be able to have kids" a process that takes nine months juxtapose with "we won't know for sure until a few years from now." And the awesome thing is the "final results" for you all is like fusion energy, it's always thirty years down the road, for the last forty years. I mean it gets so old at some point.
Of course people will deny it, just like they deny absolutely all the devastating side-effects from the current experimental drugs
Well let's look at that.
All three have suffered tremors and debilitating neurological problems after receiving their injections
Correlation is not causation.
The Utah medical examiner said the vaccine was not the root cause
Kassidi Kurill, died of multiple organ failure caused by unknown underlying condition. She had a disease that was not diagnosed, millions of people on this planet are in this bucket and just seemingly randomly die and people think whatever last "big" thing they did was the cause. While in reality, this is why you should go do your annual check up. . . annually.
Baseball legend Hank Aaron died at the age of 86, a few weeks after getting his COVID vaccine
Dude passed away in his sleep of natural causes. Additionally, plenty of 86-year olds who are still with us today after receiving the shot.
the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) has reports of over 10,000 vaccine related deaths
Yes because literally anyone can report [hhs.gov] and we've been down this road of where just to show how useless this system is.
James Laidler submitted an alarming report to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Laidler wrote that after he got his annual influenza vaccine, his muscles began to grow in size, his skin became green, and he turned into the Incredible Hulk
And the reason why VAERS became so useless is because we passed a law in 1986 that anti-vaxxers couldn't clogged the courts any longer, so that's where all the anti-vaxxers went to feel like they were doing something useful, but the reality is that VAERS just now exists to keep anti-vaxxers busy.
We'll be in Children of Men before long
You know, I think people fall in doomer love with these kinds of works of fiction, but the reality is usually a boring dystopia. Like, let's say we get to a point of massive population decline, boring dystopia tells me it won't be some genetic thing where we can't, it'll be something along the lines of "nobody can afford a fucking kid and given how the US is slowly sliding towards Handmaid's Tale (see I can do that whole thumping a work of fiction), nobody r
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Evidence.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov]
They hope it's temporary.
Re:The means of reproduction (Score:4, Informative)
Evidence
T2 (CI -25.5%-3.9%, p = 0.01) leading to total motile count 22.1% reduction (CI -35% - -6.6%, p = 0.007) compared to T0
This is mostly the same temporary drop that happens in any infection. Also, many other vaccines like the flu vaccine affect sperm production temporarily. That's not unheard of since you're body is directing resources to fight a disease. It's literally something we've seen in over thousands of vaccines and diseases. That's also a completely different ballgame than "Children of Men". Nobody is going sterile over the vaccine, instead they're getting the usual dip that happens with literally being alive and coming in contact with something your body needs to devote resources to fighting.
And also, anytime you have a fever, that affects sperm production as the sperm will die off rapidly due to the heat. That's literally why your testicles are outside of you, your own body heat is enough to start killing the boys off. You can literally get in a hot tub and get a greater reduction in sperm than the TMC that's being listed here in your paper.
They hope it's temporary
They literally say it's temporary in the thing you cited.
T3 evaluation demonstrated overall recovery without. Semen volume and sperm motility were not impaired.
Y'all have to stop going so hard for the doom porn.
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Couter-evidence [macrotrends.net] that is far more relevant. Birth rates are essentially the same as 2019 before the pandemic started and 0% of the US was vaccinated. Now 2 in 3 people in the US are vaccinated, and the birth rate is slightly higher.
So where's this infertility actually happening if large-sample statistics are showing no change whatsoever, or even a change in the opposite direction of what you claim?
Your argument is unequivocally counter to actual statistical evidence, and thus horseshit.
Re: The means of reproduction (Score:2)
They don't hope it's temporary, they *know* it's temporary. Stop trolling, or learn how to read scientific results.
"T3 evaluation demonstrated overall recovery without. Semen volume and sperm motility were not impaired."
"Long-term prognosis remains good"
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You linked to a preprint article which means it hasn't gone through peer review.
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"The experimental mRNA drugs in humans likely tanks fertility and reproduction. "
You do realize you are full of shit, yes? I'll bet you loaded up on the hydroxychloroquine.
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Very likely, but unlike most, he didn't blunt it's effectiveness by removing it from the wooden chipping crate before shoving it up his arse.
Vital factor, which is well known to Big Pharma and is how the managed to sabotage all those other "trials".
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You know that US birth rates have actually risen [macrotrends.net] since the introduction of these vaccines, right? 67.6% of the US population is fully vaccinated, and the birth rate in 2022 is equal or slightly higher than in 2019 before the vaccinations existed (11.979 per 1000 people in 2019, 12.012 per 1000 in 2022).
Math and actual statistics say you're full of shit and have no idea what you're talking about.
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And the downside would be?
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The experimental mRNA drugs in humans likely tanks fertility and reproduction.
Likely? Why is it likely?
Most of those animal reproduction studies were skipped or are still ongoing, so we'll know for sure in a few years.
So when all those studies come back and show it's perfectly safe, are you going to apologize to everyone you slandered or will you delve deeper into conspiracy to protect your ego?
When this first started, I was told their would be a great die-off in six months which came and went. The story changed to two years which also passed by. Now they are saying it takes a decade. Are you not seeing the pattern here?
and, if it backfires (Score:1)
and all the bees die off, think of the job creation! Get your tiny paintbrush and get out there and pollinate!
Backfires? (Score:2)
You mean like how the hacked GMO plants and the recklessly untested chemistry and the industrialization we've been using didn't backfire already in many ways with more collateral damage than just the bees??
I've read years ago that in China they already have people manually pollinating due to the lack of pollinators.
The mites are an easy target to blame like they are new when we've abused the bees to the point they are so weak that any problem kills them so then things like mites have an amplified impact. Th
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Interesting. I wasn't aware of that one! Duh!
https://grist.org/food/entomol... [grist.org]
https://www.smithsonianmag.com... [smithsonianmag.com]
https://www.honeybeesuite.com/... [honeybeesuite.com]
Next story... (Score:2)
I'm waiting for the next story where the rejection level of this treatment within beehives is going to highly correlate with the bees' political views and where they source their political news. Then the bees will start trying other hoax cures for dealing with these mites and dropping like, well, bees - all because they put their trust in a bunch of hacks that have no scientific justification for their purely contrarian political populism.
Just wait, we're going to hear of honeybees getting into veterinary