Comments on: Disappearing bees are lost in translation

By: Monado

Monado — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 04:27:42 +0000

Sorry, that didn’t make sense. I meant maybe it’s many little factors each reducing bee viability. Good on them for persevering.
I got one of those “too many comments in a short time” errors. I don’t know about Scienceblog’s management, but when I make a mistake I want to correct it right away so that it directly follows the comment with the error.

By: Monado, FCD

Monado, FCD — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 04:25:12 +0000

Interesting! I do hope they solve it before we run out of flowering plants. The carpenter bees seem to be doing most of the pollination around here (Toronto area; not sure what’s happening in the country–perhaps white-faced hornets).
Maybe it’s just one too many factors. I’m worrying about the trees. Foliage seems to be restricted to a smaller length of the tip of each twig, year by year–but to the inobservant they still look normal. They’ve gone from opaque to see-through in the last 30 years. In a few years they won’t be making any leaves at all.

By: Dan Milton

Dan Milton — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 04:03:13 +0000

“Marie Celeste” is a common error; the ship was the Mary Celeste.

By: MPG

MPG — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:25:03 +0000

I'd like to think this is what's really happening to all the bees.

By: Ed Yong

Ed Yong — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:39:25 +0000

Yeah, I can do science AND history!

By: Carlie

Carlie — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:37:29 +0000

I love you for the Marie Celeste reference. I read a book about that as a kid and always wondered why it wasn’t as famous as other doomed ships.

By: Sigmund

Sigmund — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 12:53:07 +0000

It’s a rather common tactic for organisms to switch off protein translation when they detect viral infection. Infection with viruses is often detected as the presence of double stranded RNA particles or messages which appear physically or biochemically different to standard cellular mRNAs (perhaps differing in their 5′ or 3′ elements).
Is there a comparison to a separate type of virus attack to show that the things they noticed were specific for this particular virus rather than simply generalized symptoms of viral infection?