Strapped into a small holding device, the honeybee amiably wiggles its antennae. Like a toddler in a highchair, it seems to reach greedily for the dropper with sugar water that appears over its head. As its mouth opens, its tongue darts out for a taste of the sweet liquid.

As part of Ramesh Sagili's experiments to understand honeybee behavior, bees wait in this feeding tube to receive sugar solutions. (Photo courtesy of Ramesh Sagili)

This isn’t just a strange way to treat a honeybee to lunch. It’s all part of Ramesh Sagili’s effort to understand honeybee behavior, and in particular, the reason for their sudden disappearance. Since the emergence of Colony Collapse Disorder in 2006, entire hives of honeybees have been dying with no obvious explanation.

Honeybee decline could seriously damage agricultural crops across the nation. Take the $2 billion California almond industry, which depends heavily on domestic honeybees to pollinate almond crops. Every February, 1.5 million honeybee hives are trucked from all over the country to pollinate the thousands of acres of almonds.

“Without honeybees, there is no almond crop in California,” says Sagili, an assistant professor in horticulture and the OSU Extension honeybee specialist. “In the U.S., it would be highly improbable to rely on hand pollination because the work is so expensive and labor intensive. These plants have coevolved with bees, and the bees do a much more efficient job than humans.”

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, honeybees pollinate 90 percent of the country’s apple and blueberry crops and are partially responsible for pollinating oranges and peaches. In fact, honeybees play a part in pollinating at least 130 U.S. crops. Since about one-third of our food depends on bees for pollination, a decline in honeybee hives would be disastrous.

Vanishing Act

And yet, that’s exactly what is happening. In late 2006, honeybees began to vanish from their hives at unprecedented and inexplicable rates. Beekeepers around the country were mystified when they opened their bee boxes, finding all the adult bees missing and only the queen and larvae remaining. Even stranger was that the absent bees were nowhere to be found, dead or alive. They were simply gone.

Researchers were hard-pressed to explain this phenomenon. Colony numbers were dropping 30 to 60 percent in some areas of the country, and the future of a $20 billion industry was at stake. That was four years ago, and scientists are still searching for a solution to the mystery.

When Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) first gained attention, Sagili was working at Texas A&M University. At the time, researchers were not focusing on honeybee sustainability. “Because we weren’t seeing big losses, we were trying to increase colony productivity for the farmers,” Sagili says.

As CCD hit, Sagili realized that he needed to shift gears and focus on honeybee health. Oregon State University hired him in 2009 to work with Oregon beekeepers and to study colony health and vitality.

“I had to change direction completely,” Sagili adds, referring to his new studies that revolve primarily around diagnosing what is wrong with the bees.

At OSU, Sagili is the Sherlock Holmes of honeybees. He searches for clues in the insects themselves, collecting honeybees from around the state. He keeps in touch with about 25 of the state’s commercial beekeepers through email or conferences. Twice a year, he and his colleagues at the OSU Honey Bee Lab examine the collected bees for levels of mite infestation, fungal spores and protein content in food-producing glands.

The first two categories seem relatively straightforward. It makes sense that mites, Nosema (a type of fungus) spores or other parasites would harm bee health and make them less successful. But glandular protein content is particularly important because it deals with nutrition, and as Sagili says, “Everything boils down to nutrition.”

Stress in the Orchard

Modern agriculture may put stresses on honeybees that they don’t face in nature. For example, almond trees in California are practically the only plants blooming in February when bees are trucked in for pollination. Consequently, the bees acquire little but almond pollen for an entire month.

Ramesh Sagili, Oregon State University entomologist, is investigating bee nutrition (Photo: Lynn Ketchum).

That’s a problem, says Sagili, because just like humans, bees require a balanced diet. Some amino acids, the building blocks of protein, must come from food; neither people nor bees synthesize all the ones they need. Bees need 10 amino acids in their diet for full development, and since their only protein source is pollen, collecting a variety of pollens is crucial to proper nutrition.

Bees eating only almond pollen are like people living only on French fries. A diet composed of single source pollen does not provide enough nutrients, and, suggests Sagili, may weaken the bees’ immune system.

Poor immune systems leave honeybees greatly susceptible to parasites and disease. While these threats are nothing new, unhealthy and nutritionally deficient bees could be falling prey to old pests as their defenses are being drained.

That’s why Sagili is interested in finding a connection between bee protein and immune systems. Poor nutrition might help to explain why bees are disappearing. The other pressures on bees — parasites, viruses and pesticides — are potential contributing factors, and CCD may be the ultimate result of all of them.

Taste Test

Sagili is performing experiments to narrow down the possibilities. In one, he places bees in a “containment tube” and offers them different concentrations of a sugar solution. This taste test, with the bees waiting patiently and wriggling their antennae in anticipation, allows Sagili to learn more about their ability to detect sugar concentrations. Because worker bees have specialized jobs in the hive, some can detect higher concentrations better than others. It’s possible that nutritional stress may affect important foraging behavior of honeybees.

“Once we gather some good information from the past two years, we can see if there’s a correlation between survival status of the hive and all the problems that we found in the hives, such as protein content,” Sagili says.

Meanwhile, as Sagili and other scientists learn more about honeybees and their behavior, the number of hives continues to dwindle, from about 5 million in 1950 to 2.4 million in 2010. If Sagili is right and nutrition is the most significant problem, then beekeepers, farmers and orchard managers may be able to reverse that trend by ensuring that their pollinators are well fed.

Steve Strauss, OSU Distinguished Professor and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

EXZACT™ provides a versatile and comprehensive toolkit for targeted genome modification, according to the company, and has already been licensed for use in research elsewhere on algae, maize and other plants.

As part of the agreement, Strauss and his team will make modifications to essential genes for flowering and reproduction. Dow AgroSciences is providing its technology as well as access to intellectual property, to validated, high-quality compounds known as zinc-finger reagents and to scientific expertise.

“Tree biotechnology is an exciting new field for agriculture and represents an important opportunity for both traditional industries like lumber and paper and newly emerging bioenergy companies,” says Kay Kuenker, Vice President for New Business at Dow AgroSciences.

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The Society of American Foresters honored Steve Strauss in 2011 with the Barrington-Moore Memorial Award.

The new covered arena at the OSU College of Veterinary Medicine will enable Stacy Semevolos and other OSU veterinarians to diagnose horse inguries under a greater variety of conditions. (Photo: Karl Maasdam)

When a horse develops an infection, its owners usually turn to a rural veterinarian. But when lameness strikes an Oregon Appaloosa or quarterhorse, rural vets increasingly refer their patients to OSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine for treatment.

And with good reason. A team of highly qualified surgeons, working in facilities that just underwent a $12 million expansion, is providing Oregon’s large-animal industries and independent owners with some of the best care available anywhere.

Among the new diagnostic and animal-care resources available are a “64-slice” CT scanner, a covered arena for evaluation and isolation units for cattle and horses suspected of carrying contagious diseases. The Wayne and Gladys Valley Foundation of Oakland, California, laid the groundwork for the expansion with a $5 million gift. This is the most recent capital improvement project to be completed during the The Campaign for OSU, which has a goal of raising $625 million to support students, faculty, programs and facilities.

By summer’s end, a new equine treadmill will let large-animal specialists like Stacy Semevolos test animals in motion. “The treadmill will be extraordinarily helpful to clinicians and researchers because animals may show signs of lameness or restricted breathing at performance speeds that they don’t while standing still,” says Semevolos, an assistant professor and large-animal surgeon in the college.

According to a 1998 estimate, treating lameness cost horse owners between $678 million and $1 billion annually. Expenses are much higher now, adds Semevolos. She and her colleagues perform about 300 surgeries a year on large animals. Most of the patients are horses, but the surgeons also use their skills on llamas, alpaca, cattle, goats and even the occasional pot-bellied pig. OSU veterinary students benefit from training with the latest techniques for detecting and treating lameness.

The new facilities are not only a boon to large-animal treatment; more laboratory space and sophisticated instrumentation have increased the research potential for the college. With funding support from the American Quarter Horse Association, the Willamette Valley Llama Foundation and the College of Veterinary Medicine, Semevolos studies muscular-skeletal issues in horses and llamas, particularly equine osteochondrosis, a developmental condition that affects the joints. She is looking at equine gene expression in hopes of finding the cause.

“As affected horses exercise, their joints become swollen, and it can lead to lameness in the hock and stifle (rear-leg joints),” she points out. “If it progresses, it can become debilitating. Horses that grow rapidly seem more prone to the condition, so it’s important that we learn to identify the disease in its early stages.”

Horses are rarely far from her mind. At home, Semevolos and her husband, a horse trainer, have six Belgian draft horses that perform in pulling contests and exhibitions around the Pacific Northwest.

• Lois Bates Acheson Veterinary Teaching Hospital, Large Animal Services
• College of Veterinary Medicine
• The Campaign for OSU

By identifying how a deadly strain of bacteria causes Johne's disease in cattle, Luiz Bermudez and Marta Alonso-Hearn, hope to provide the basis for new treatments and shed light on human illness.

Little matters more to dairy farmers than the purity of their product and the health of their animals. So when Warren “Buzz” Gibson, co-owner and herd manager at the Lochmead Dairy in Junction City, Oregon, heard six years ago that an incurable cattle disease called Johne’s (pronounced “yo-knees”) could threaten his reputation for quality, he had all of his cows tested and continues to monitor annually, despite never having had a positive test.

Across the Oregon Coast Range at the Tillamook Creamery Association, Mark Wustenberg works with farmers to test for Johne’s and manage their herds to reduce other disease risks. “Our goal is to make sure this disease does not adversely affect our milk supply,” says the association’s vice president for dairy services.

Statewide, more than 50,000 cows in 200 of Oregon’s 350 herds are tested annually for the disease, according to the Oregon Department of Agriculture. Of herds tested in Oregon, Johne’s appears to be present in 60 to 70 percent at a low level (1 to 2 percent) of infection, says ODA field veterinarian Bruce Mueller. While other cattle diseases such as brucellosis have waned, the Johne’s threat has stimulated a national research and education campaign funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) at universities across the country, including OSU.

Gibson, Wustenberg and their peers have good reason to be vigilant. The cause of Johne’s — a bacterium known as Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis (or MAP) — can survive for years in soil without losing its ability to infect. The organism lives in manure left by infected animals in pastures and barn stalls. When it reaches a newborn calf, it spreads slowly through the animal’s system with no apparent ill effects. But within two to five years, growing intestinal distress leads to diarrhea, weight loss and reduced milk production. By the time symptoms appear, death is imminent.

The MAP bacterium infects dairy herds worldwide and has been estimated to cost the U.S. industry $200 million annually in lost milk revenues alone. The financial impact soars to $1.5 billion when reduced milk production, decreased feed efficiency and expenses for replacement cattle are taken into account.

Moreover, a possible association between Johne’s in cattle and Crohn’s disease in people raises human health concerns. For now, studies to determine whether the same organism causes both diseases have reached differing conclusions. According to the Johne’s Information Center at the University of Wisconsin, no cases of Crohn’s have been linked to milk consumption.

Before he came to OSU in 2002, microbiologist Luiz Bermudez studied the Johne’s pathogen in wild and domesticated animals. Because of its importance to the animal agriculture industry, he now leads a research team that has discovered new details about how the organism goes about its dirty work in cattle. While a vaccine and other treatments can now reduce the severity of the disease, what Bermudez and his colleagues are learning could lead to more effective medications.

Understanding the tricks that MAP uses to evade an animal’s immune system could also improve treatment for other infectious diseases. That’s because as a class of microorganisms, Mycobacteria are responsible for scourges such as tuberculosis, leprosy, chronic lung problems and secondary infections in AIDS patients. Some Mycobacteria are common in soil and water. Others live harmlessly in humans until stress compromises our immune systems, giving the microbes an opening to multiply and cause further harm.

Most Deadly Infection

Conventional wisdom about Johne’s holds that transmission most commonly occurs through the consumption of manure-contaminated grass and hay. However, in 2006 Bermudez and his colleagues reported in the journal Infection and Immunity that it may be through another route — when a newborn calf first sucks at its mother’s udder — that the most deadly infection occurs. They compared the infectious ability of MAP cells grown in milk to those grown in a standard laboratory broth. The result: Those milk-raised cells were more than 10 times as effective in entering a model animal cell. “This is the most infectious form of the microorganism that the calf can get,” says Bermudez.

That report followed a series of papers describing the ability of Mycobacteria to invade host cells and to thrive inside those cells without being destroyed by the host’s immune system. Now, unconfirmed results of further research suggest that the OSU team has identified a mechanism that could prove to be the organism’s Achilles heel: the genes and proteins involved in binding the pathogen to a host cell and getting it inside the cell. Like a Trojan horse, once inside cell walls, MAP subverts the cell’s own machinery, eventually killing it and releasing a new wave of infection (see sidebar illustration). The new work was conducted by a team including lead author Marta Alonso-Hearn, Lia Danelishvili and Lisbeth Meunier-Goddick at OSU and Dilip Patel, a former OSU scientist now at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

“The bacteria are not supposed to get inside those cells,” says Bermudez. “For the first time, we have shown that the bacterium has a mechanism that interacts with the host cell and makes the host cell ingest it. This is a very sophisticated mechanism.”

Until a more effective vaccine or a less costly treatment is found, however, monitoring and prevention through good sanitary practices are still a farmer’s best protection, adds Bermudez. He serves on the scientific advisory board of a national research initiative known as the Joint Integrated Johne’s Disease Program at the University of Minnesota, a collaboration of 21 universities funded by the USDA.

For Buzz Gibson, testing for Johne’s amounts to good insurance. Annually, he insists that his veterinarian take blood and fecal samples from 35 to 40 cows and send them to the ODA Animal Health Lab in Salem for analysis. “I want to be ready. I don’t want to wake up one morning and see a headline linking Johne’s and Crohn’s,” he says.

The Lochmead dairy milks 580 Holsteins daily, supplying the company’s 44 Dari Mart stores from Cottage Grove to Corvallis. The herd is now one of four in Oregon — in addition to those owned by Dean and Patti Tohl in Tillamook, Jack Perrin in Woodburn and OSU in Corvallis — to receive the state’s highest level of certification for those that have tested negative for Johne’s.

“My parents gave me my first cow when I was eight,” she says. Eventually, young Dana had a herd of 35 beef cattle, which she raised on the family farm in Klamath Falls. Tuition for her undergraduate education in animal science and agricultural business management was thereby assured.

But it wasn’t until she had spent seven years as a veterinary technician that Hoyt decided to return to school to earn her DVM. Now 34, she aspires to a practice in small-animal medicine, specializing in cancer care. It was her late Rottweiler, Astro, who spurred her interest in veterinary oncology. “He got lymphoma,” she says. “The chemotherapy he received extended his life by two years before we had to put him down.”

Hoyt — whose working style is a straight-ahead efficiency punctuated with well-timed wisecracks — softens visibly when she talks about her own menagerie: a cattle dog named Joe, a “mutt dog” named Greg, and a feline duo dubbed Billy and Dharma. The objectivity she brings to her work enters into her personal pet relationships not at all. In a burst of affectionate hyperbole, she insists: “Joe is the cutest dog in the world.”