Cool Stuff: Bee Biotech
.jpg)
Colony Collapse Disorder (CDD) a mysterious syndrome that kills adult worker bees outside of the hive has been plaguing Europe and the US in recent years. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports that American beekeepers have lost 37% of their hives to CCD in 2008 after losing 31% the year before. The government estimates that a third of the US food supply may be at risk--$15 billion annually in vegetables, nuts and fruits from plants that depend on bee pollination. The cause of CDD is still hotly debated but many scientists believe that it is caused by a virus
A start up company in Miami FL (my old stomping grounds) called Beeologics is developing a vaccine against all of the apiary viruses that could be responsible for CDD. The company was started by two Israelis, Eyal Ben-Chanoch at tech entrepreneur who helped design the first Intel Pentium chip and Ilan Sela a bee genomics expert.
The vaccine is pending FDA approval and Beeologics expects it to hit the US market this summer and sell it for $2 per dose. A hive will need one dose per month and current estimates suggest that there are 2.5 million hives in the US. Not a bad revenue stream!
For those of you who may not know, bee keeping is big business and can be lucrative for beekeepers. I learned everything I know about bee keeping as an undergraduate at Cornell when I took Introduction to Beekeeping in my senior year. It was one of the best courses that I ever took at Cornell because it was taught by an entomologist who was also a commercial beekeeper! Since then, I have always been extremely fond of honey bees—they are fascinating creatures.
Until next time…
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!
