ScienceDaily
(Oct. 30,
2012) — Bacteria in the guts of honeybees are highly resistant to the
antibiotic tetracycline, probably as a result of decades of preventive
antibiotic use in domesticated hives. Researchers from Yale University
identified eight different tetracycline resistance genes among U.S. honeybees that
were exposed to the antibiotic, but the genes were largely absent in bees from
countries where such antibiotic use is banned.
The study appears on October
30 inmBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for
Microbiology.
"It [resistance] seems to
be everywhere in the U.S.," says Nancy Moran of Yale University, a senior
author on the study. "There's a pattern here, where the U.S. has these
genes and the others don't."
Honeybees the world over are
susceptible to the bacterial disease called "foulbrood," which can
wipe out a hive faster than beekeepers can react to the infection. In the U.S.,
beekeepers have kept the disease at bay with regular preventive applications of
the antibiotic oxytetracycline, a compound that closely resembles tetracycline,
which is commonly used in humans. Oxytetracycline has been in use among
beekeepers since the 1950s, and many genes that confer resistance to
oxytetracycline also confer resistance to tetracycline.
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