A HITHERTO unknown virus might make honeybees turn nasty, reports Takeo Kubo at the University of Tokyo.
His team set out to identify the genetic roots of aggression by looking for the genes active only in the brains of worker bees that attacked hornets. To their surprise, they found viral RNA as well as bee RNA (Journal of Virology, vol 78, p 1093) and further studies suggested the brains of the bees were infected by a new kind of picornavirus, a family of viruses that causes a wide range of diseases in humans and animals.
The researchers have named the…
