Roots 'n' Shoots: Breaking News: Honey Bee - Colony Collapse Disorder

Why is RnS Moving to whiskerflowers.wordpress.com?

Google had brought out an algorithm update in May 2017. With previous updates like Panda or Penguin, Mr G had penalized blogs or websites with low quality content and those more focused on aggressive adverts (including multiple ads or pop-up ads in articles). However, many blogs/websites that weren't shady got penalized beyond recovery too and a lot of people lost their income. The May 2017 update has had wide-scale effect on blogs and websites, but without any explanation from Mr G as to why or what it does. RnS has been hit by it too and hard. RnS organic search stats (i.e. users from Google) have dropped by 75% since. Even though RnS is not a source of income, I tried to figure out why RnS is being culled. It seems that it doesn't really have anything to do with RnS per se, but likely because RnS is FREE and not paying for page ranking (via AdWords or Ad Ranking). Now it is likely being aggressively shoved to lower page rankings to accommodate the paid ads.

I cannot rely on Mr G anymore to get RnS' content where it is needed. So I am busy moving RnS to Wordpress where you can find me as Whisker Flowers @ https://whiskerflowers.wordpress.com/

I am also imposing 301 redirects from already moved posts and pages!

- The Shroom - (AKA Whisker Flowers)

Thursday, 5 January 2012

Breaking News: Honey Bee - Colony Collapse Disorder

A parasitic fly and accompanying pathogens may be one of the causes of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

Proffessor John Hafernik observed a fly that parasitizes and kills honey bees. This accidental discovery lead to research by Andrew Core and other researchers, from the Biochemistry and Biophysics Department of the University of California, to investigate the impact of such a parasite on honey bee colonies.

The honey bee is infected by the phorid fly, Apocephalus borealis, also known as the ‘decapitating fly’. The female oviposits (lays eggs) within the honey bees’ abdomen. The honey bees become disoriented, abandons the hive and eventually dies as the fly larvae hatch and develop within the bee. The fly larvae emerge from the dead bee to pupate. Up to 13 mature larvae can emerge from a single honey bee, increasing the parasite population rapidly after each successful infection. The entire process of infection to emergence of adult flies takes about 2 months.

The fly is a vector or reservoir of several debilitating honey bee pathogens, such as, Deformed Wing Virus and Nosema ceranae, another micro-parasite. The cumulative effect of the parasitic fly, pathogens and other environmental factors may be responsible for CCD observed worldwide.

This leads us a step closer to solving the CCD mystery and hopefully a cure before we are left with no honey bees to save.
Decapitating parasitic fly - Apocepahlus borealis
Wikipedia
A New Threat to Honey Bees, the Parasitic Phorid Fly Apocephalus borealis.
Core A, Runckel C, Ivers J, Quock C, Siapno T, et al. (2012).
PLoS ONE 7(1): e29639. Doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0029639
 

The Scientific Article

Core A, Runckel C, Ivers J, Quock C, Siapno T, et al. (2012).
PLoS ONE 7(1): e29639. Doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0029639  

Related Scientific Articles
Runckel C, Flenniken ML, Engel JC, Ruby JG, Ganem D, et al. (2011)
PLoS ONE 6(6): e20656. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0020656 


Online Popular Articles


The Vancouver Sun



Update: 18 Oct 2013 - Bee Colony Failures and the SLS model

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