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BorgesBorgesBorges60 OP t1_j376qqq wrote

Some hopeful news that might avert the mass extinction of our insectoid friends, at least from American Foulbreed disease. And no, it doesn't involve beekeepers marching to every hive armed with tiny needles between their thumb and forefinger:

>The disease is caused by Paenibacillus larvae, a type of bacteria that affects the bee's larvae. The vaccine contains some of that bacteria, and it will be mixed in with the royal jelly, which worker bees secrete from their heads and then feed to the queen and larvae. When the queen eats the jelly, she will ingest fragments of the vaccine that will grant her offspring some immunity against the bacteria.

Could inspire other vaccines and prevent the need for swarms of mechanical bees servicing our fields and gardens and doing the occasional human murder.

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MisterDecember t1_j390jl5 wrote

Ah - they will ingest the vaccine that is mixed in with royal jelly. Make a lot more sense than what I was visualizing with a line of bees waiting for their tiny jabs.

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JDubNutz t1_j3ab8id wrote

Well well well how the turn tables

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hair_brained_scheme t1_j3am7xn wrote

Man, y’all got me on this one. I get that we use this phrase a lot here on Reddit, but this was a really good use of it. If I had gold I would give it to you.

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Oni_Imports t1_j3b5g89 wrote

Something about that execution, 99% of the time someone says that I think “this is kind of a dumb meme, I don’t even remember why we say this” but damn it just feels right here.

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295DVRKSS t1_j3av8s4 wrote

Imagine if they had tiny bee epipens

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Oni_Imports t1_j3b5nxc wrote

My very first thought was imagining oversized cartoon syringes with teeny tiny needles and each bee getting like 1/1,000,000 of the syringe by a line a nurses that have unreal fine motor skills.

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ConnieTheLinguist t1_j3amweg wrote

So, all we need to do is mix covid vaccines into sugary breakfast cereal and we’ve got most of the US population covered, right?

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AdolinKholin1 t1_j39kgsp wrote

"I thought we were BEES not SHEEP. I'm personally not taking that vaccine and neither will my kids" - Karen Queen Bee, 2023

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SuperDurpPig t1_j39tgde wrote

>Foulbreed

Foulbrood*

It's a disease that afflicts brood nests inside the hive. The vaccine is ingested by the queen and passed down into the eggs as she lays them.

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maretus t1_j3bmwnf wrote

There is a guy in Asia experimenting with bubbles as a method to disperse pollen. And it’s working really well.

And it’s remarkably cheap. I know this is only tangentially related but I thought it was interesting anyway.

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