| Acute bee paralysis virus (ABPV) occurs commonly in adult honey bees (Apis mellifera Linnaeus) in Britain. The amount of the virus in different bees differs, as does the proportion of infected bees in different colonies. No organ or part of a bee, or feces, was found to be invariably free of virus. Bees fed either by other bees that had been infected with pathogenic doses of ABPV, or with food containing up to 10(10) particles of ABPV, did not become obviously diseased but the virus content of their tissues temporarily increased. However, bees either fed with at least 10(11) ABPV particles each, or injected with at least 10(2) particles, became diseased and died, and their abnormal behavior was possibly attributable to the changes observed in their brains.... |
