# General beekeeping > Bee health >  Idiopathic brood disease syndrome (IBDS)

## prakel

I've not had proper chance to read this yet (very pushed for time) but it looks like it's worth linking to:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...67587712002656

Kim Flottum's 'Catch the Buzz'




> A new long-term study of honey bee health has found that a little-understood disease study authors are calling idiopathic brood disease syndrome (IBDS), which kills off bee larvae, is the largest risk factor for predicting the death of a bee colony.
> 
> Historically, weve seen symptoms similar to IBDS associated with viruses spread by large-scale infestations of parasitic mites, says Dr. David Tarpy, an associate professor of entomology at North Carolina State University and co-author of a paper describing the study. But now were seeing these symptoms  a high percentage of larvae deaths  in colonies that have relatively few of these mites. That suggests that IBDS is present even in colonies with low mite loads, which is not what we expected. The study was conducted by researchers from NC State, the University of Maryland, Pennsylvania State University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)....

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## Stromnessbees

I have read it and these are my thoughts:

'idiopathic' means they don't know the origin of this disease, the brood dies and nobody knows why.

This appears to be another red herring story, distracting away from the fact that neonicotinoids kill masses of bee colonies worldwide with more or less similar symptoms as described above. 
- And an excuse to drag scientific research on indefinitely, whilst stalling the ban on neonics.

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## wee willy

There is no doubt that the advance of food science ,has artificially supported a human population far greater than would would have been possible otherwise .
This has to be self limiting as it is obviously non sustainable!
Meanwhile, all other species on earth are paying the ultimate sacrifice !
It would be a sad world indeed if populated only by one "superior" being ,sustained by a cocktail of chemicals!
WW


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

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## Dark Bee

[QUOTE=wee willy;16063]There is no doubt that the advance of food science ,has artificially supported a human population far greater than would would have been possible otherwise .
This has to be self limiting as it is obviously non sustainable!......................................  ..................................................  ..................................................  .


I believe it is called the green revolution. Without it much of the human population would have already died of starvation, one might say the writing is already on the wall.

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