Bees on Drugs

Beekeepers use antibiotics. Antibiotics can be hazardous, and a Yale researcher finds it interesting that a switch to a new antibiotic coincided with current problems for bees that began six years ago.

“No one pathogen or parasite is responsible for the mass die-offs, and many factors seem to be involved,” said Nancy Moran, senior author of the paper and the Regents’ Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale and the Microbial Diversity Institute at West Campus. “But it is interesting that major problems with these colonies began at the same time as the introduction of a new antibiotic in 2006.”

Context of quote.

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Wiki-image by Merdal at tr.wikimedia of honey comb by CC BY-SA 3.0.