permaculture

["Joan Huyser-Honig" <joan@hhcreatives.com>]

So nice to read a good news story. Thank you! All the best, Joan Huyser-Honig

-----Original Message-----
From: permaculture <permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org> On Behalf Of 
Lawrence London
Sent: Monday, October 8, 2018 10:56 PM
To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [permaculture] Mushrooms could help save the world's bees - News - 
Tuscaloosa News - Tuscaloosa, AL

https://www.tuscaloosanews.com/news/20181006/mushrooms-could-help-save-worlds-bees?template=ampart

Mushrooms could help save the world's bees By Evan Bush The Seattle Times 
Posted Oct 6, 2018 at 8:53 PM Updated Oct 7, 2018 at 8:50 PM Paul Stamets, a 
renowned expert on mushrooms, nurtures fungi near his home in Shelton, Wash., 
in a 2010 file image. [John Lok/Seattle Times/TNS]▲

SEATTLE — The epiphany that mushrooms could help save the world's ailing bee 
colonies struck Paul Stamets while he was in bed.

"I love waking dreams," he said. "It's a time when you're just coming back 
into consciousness."

Years ago, in 1984, Stamets had noticed a "continuous convoy of bees"
traveling from a patch of mushrooms he was growing and his beehives. The bees 
actually moved wood chips to access his mushroom's mycelium, the branching 
fibers of fungus that look like cobwebs.

"I could see them sipping on the droplets oozing from the mycelium," he said. 
They were after its sugar, he thought.

Decades later, he and a friend began a conversation about bee colony collapse 
that left Stamets, the owner of a mushroom mercantile, puzzling over a 
problem. Bees across the world have been disappearing at an alarming rate. 
Parasites like mites, fast-spreading viruses, agricultural chemicals and lack 
of forage area have stressed and threatened wild and commercial bees alike.

Waking up one morning, "I connected the dots," he said. "Mycelium have sugars 
and antiviral properties," he said. What if it wasn't just sugar that was 
useful to those mushroom-suckling bees so long ago?

In research published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports, Stamets 
turned intuition into reality. The paper describes how bees given a small 
amount of his mushroom mycelia extract exhibited remarkable reductions in the 
presence of viruses associated with parasitic mites that have been attacking, 
and infecting, bee colonies for decades.

In the late 1980s, tiny Varroa mites began to spread through bee colonies in 
the United States. The mites — which are parasites and can infect bees with 
viruses — proliferate easily and cause colony collapse in just years.

Over time, colonies have become even more susceptible, and viruses became 
among the chief threats to the important pollinators for crops on which 
people rely.

"We think that's because the viruses have evolved and become pathogenic and 
virulent," said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, a University of Maryland professor in 
entomology, who was not involved in the mycelium research. "Varroa viruses 
kill most of the colonies in the country."

He likened the mites to dirty hypodermic needles; the mites are able to 
spread viruses from bee to bee.

The only practical solution to date has been to keep the number of Varroa 
mites within beehives "at manageable populations."

Stamet's idea about bee-helping mycelium could give beekeepers a powerful new 
weapon.

Steve Sheppard, a Washington State University entomology professor, has heard 
a lot of wild ideas to save bees over the years, like harnessing static 
electricity to stick bees with little balls of Styrofoam coated in 
mite-killing chemicals. Stamets' pitch was different: He had data to back up 
his claims about mycelium's antiviral properties and his company, Fungi 
Perfecti, could produce it in bulk. "I had a compelling reason to look 
further," Sheppard said.

To test Stamets' theory, the researchers conducted two experiments: They 
separated two groups of mite-exposed bees into cages, feeding one group sugar 
syrup with a mushroom-based additive and the other, syrup without the 
additive. They also field-tested the extract in small, working bee colonies 
near WSU.

For several virus strains, the extract "reduced the virus to almost nothing," 
said Brandon Hopkins, a WSU assistant research professor, another author of 
the paper.

Because the extract can be added to syrups commercial beekeepers commonly 
use, researchers say the extract could be a practical solution that could 
scale quickly.

Meanwhile, Stamets has designed a 3D-printable feeder that delivers mycelia 
extract to wild bees. He plans to launch the product, and an 
extract-subscription service next year, to the public.

"The loss of biodiversity has ramifications that reverberate throughout the 
food web," Stamets said, likening each species to parts of an airplane, that 
hold the Earth together — until they don't.
"What rivet will we lose that we'll have catastrophic failure? I think the 
rivet will be losing the bees," he said. "More than one-third of our food 
supply is dependent on bees."
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