Fungi Reduce Viruses and Provide Medicinal Value for the Declining Honey Bee

Honey bees have long been regarded as a creature of sacredness and healing and play a vital role in our earth's cycles of pollination, resilience, and abundance. Honey bees have been observed foraging on mycelium, suggesting that they may derive medicinal or nutritional value from fungi, expanding our scientific understanding of the web of fungal relations. Paul Stamets and researches with Washington Sate University (WSU) have published a study showing that extracts of four polypore wood conk species (Fomes fomentarius, Ganoderma applanatum, Ganoderma resinaceum, and Trametes versicolor) reduce major viruses in honey bees through oral treatment in dozens of small WSU beehives infested with Varroa mites. The four fungi used in the mycelial extracts are in the order Polyporales (polypore mushrooms), which contains many species with antiviral properties including activity against pox virus, HIV-1 and H1N1 influenza, broadening the medicinal benefits fungi can provide to many species of life.

Honey bees have been in noticeable global decline since the 1990s. The main threat to honey bees is lack of habitat linked to industrial agriculture, loss of biodiversity due to monocultures, parasites/pathogens, and climate change. Over the past decade, beekeepers have experienced a dramatic increase in annual colony losses, typically averaging well over 30%. The pollination of almonds in California alone requires relocating over 75% of the managed honey bee colonies (nearly 2 million) in the U.S. during this single crop bloom.

Viruses are recognized to play a contributing role in widespread colony losses, especially Deformed Wing Virus (DWV) and Varroa Destructor Virus-1 (VDV1). Varroa mite infestations are now associated with at least 10 honey bee viruses including VDV1 and Lake Sinai Virus (LSV; first identified in 2010 but is now widespread across North American honey bees). DWV is a devastating virus that causes shriveled wings, reduced worker life span, reduced foraging, and immunosuppression in honey bees. Currently, there are no approved antiviral materials available for beekeepers and they are only able to indirectly control virus levels by using miticides to reduce mite infestation rates in managed honey bees. This effort doesn't work with much success as the Varroa mites have developed resistance to synthetic miticides. The healing potential of fungi and their many connected interactions holds a wide range of possibilities for healing across many Queendoms of life.

In Stamets' lab experiment, the overall effect of mycelial extracts from all four polypore mushroom species eaten by the the bees was highly significant in only 12 days. With DWV, all four mycelial extracts exhibited effective antiviral treatment, but Fomes fomentarius (Amadou conk) was the strongest performing extract, 44 times greater than in control colonies where bees were fed sugar syrup.

Unrelated (yet entirely related) Italian honey bees (Apis mellifera ligustica) from a hive in Utah (2018).

The treatment effects from the mycelial extracts were more pronounced with LSV. While F. fomentarius treatments lowered LSV levels 87.9 times greater than the control colonies, the largest reduction in viral levels in these experiments were from G. resinaceum, where LSV levels were decreased 45,000 times greater than in the control colonies.

In addition to the antiviral activity of the polypore mushroom mycelial extracts in the experiment, extracts from non-inoculated fungal growth substrate comprised of birch wood sawdust also showed some activity against DWV and LSV. The birch sawdust didn't show any visible signs of fungal colonization, but many forest trees have endophytic (bacteria or fungus living within a plant) and saprophytic (bacteria or fungus eating/decaying a plant) fungal associations and many of these symbiotic endophytes provide a multiplicity of health advantages to host organisms like Birch. Three common birch associated fungi accounted for 99.5% of all mapped reads: Graphostroma platystoma, Chondrostereum purpureum, and Trametes versicolor. This raises the possibility that saprophytic and endophytic fungi may have contributed to the activity found in the extracts, including in the un-inoculated birch wood. Lots of citizen science experiments waiting to happen!

Looking at other components of an ecosystem, there is a growing body of scientific evidence indicating that honey bees self-medicate using plant-derived substances like resin, propolis, nectar, honey, honeydew, pollen, wood, and algae. The scientific understanding of the honey bee's self medication is largely unexplored, but the suggestion of honey bee dependence on disappearing plants that bear important medical materials and properties could explain some of the honey bee colony losses around the world. In these plant sources, honey bees also contact secondary metabolites, fatty acids, essential oils, and microorganisms that are active against the causative agents of many diseases. The honey bee's ability to self-medicate is only one of the ways in which we can gleam wisdom about the connections of our ecosystems and connections to the honey bee itself.

Both the honey bee and the fungus invite us to live somatically, that is, in our bodies, and use our senses to be present in observation and coexistence. Experiencing the honey bee is being in total presence, not caught in the past, future, but entirely aware of the hum of the hive in front of you. Experiencing the fungus is being tuned into its fruiting -- to smell, see, taste, touch, and listen to its unique and temporary existence that invites us to become aware of the movement of mycelium and its relationships with the whole of the cosmic earth.

The honeybees are a sacred creature, they can represent the relationship between something that's not totally domesticated and yet not entirely wild. They offer us a portal between our wild self and our wild world. Many cultures connect the heart chakra with honey bees and the Path of Pollen Shamanic tradition couples the womb with the honey bee. Beekeeping is used with PTSD prisoners and veterans to remedy healing through being aware and respectful of what you're doing and how you're being in the present moment. 

The Honey Gatherer cave painting, estimated to be 15,000 years old. Discovered in the early 1900s in Valencia, Spain, in the Cave of the Spider (Cueve de la Araña) on the river Cazunta. (rvcoutdoors.com)

Humans have had a relationship with bees since prehistoric times. There are cave paintings of honey hunters gathering honey on ladders from 15,000 years ago in Valencia, Spain. The bee was so revered that it was the symbol of sovereignty in lower Egypt, where there are hieroglyphics of bees and beekeeping. Throughout traditions, the honey bee has a strong connection with the female body. The beehive is seen as a representation of the womb, as the place behind the veil. In Ancient Greece, the most famous priestesshood was the Temple of Delphi (also known as the Delphic Bee) who spoke prophecy in hexameter (hex = 6; 6 sided cells of the honeycomb). Apollo is considered the father of beekeeping, but it was his wild sister, Artemis, who was considered the keeper of the bees. In many traditions, there is an understanding that the beehive is a place that stores the memory -- the seasons, nectar, and stories of the people that came before.

Bee sting therapies have existed for thousands of years using the medicinal properties of products made by honey bees such as honey, pollen royal jelly, propolis, beeswax, and bee venom. In Shamanic traditions, honey bee stings have been used as potent doses that bring initiation or healing to the area where the sting occurs. While some people are truly allergic to bee stings, there are reports of healing physical ailments like arthritis, multiple sclerosis, HIV, Lyme's disease, and a large degree of spiritual and emotional healing. In an energetic sense, bees can read energy meridians and imbalances, often stinging in places that need attention. 

So what can we do with this knowledge? There is great potential for this scientific research to impact the future practices of industrial agriculture and beekeeping practices. However, we can't rely solely on large scale patents and procedures to eventually become available for industrial beekeeping. Talk to your neighborhood beekeepers and ask them if they have mite problems. Experiment with inoculating Fomes fomentarius, Ganoderma applanatum, Ganoderma resinaceum, and Trametes versicolor in wood chips, trees, substrate next to hives or even in the hive itself. Spread wood chips around each other's yards and inoculate the ground. Inoculate for the bees!

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15. Ross, Natalie. Bee Priestess Ariella Daly on shamanic dreaming with bees and honeybee hives as wombs - August 22, 2018  https://www.dreamfreedombeauty.com/replay-bee-priestess-ariella-daly-on-shamanic-dreaming-with-bees-and-honey-bee-hives-as-wombs-episode-60/