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SEATTLE – The epiphany that mushrooms could help save the sick bee colonies of the world hit Paul Stamets while he was in bed.
"I like to make dreams," he says. "It's a moment when you come back to consciousness."
Years ago, in 1984, Stamets had noticed a "continuous bee convoy" coming from a field of mushrooms that he was growing and his hives. The bees have actually moved wood chips to access the mycelium of its mushroom, branched fibers of mushrooms that look like cobwebs.
"I could see them sipping droplets coming out of the mycelium," he said. They were looking for his sugar, he thought.
Decades later, he and a friend began a conversation about the collapse of the bee colony that left Stamets, the owner of a mushroom mercantile, perplexed about a problem. Bees around the world are disappearing at an alarming rate. Parasites such as dust mites, fast-spreading viruses, agricultural chemicals and lack of fodder surface have stressed and threatened wild and commercial bees.
Waking up one morning, "I've connected the dots," he says. "The mycelium has sugars and antiviral properties," he said. What if it was not just sugar that was useful to these mushroom-sucking bees so long ago?
In a study published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports, Stamets turned intuition into reality. The document describes how bees have shown a remarkable reduction in the presence of parasitic mite-associated viruses that have been attacking and infecting bee colonies for decades, provided they consume a small amount of their mushroom mycelium extract.
In the late 1980s, tiny Varroa mites began to spread in bee colonies in the United States. Mites – which are parasites and can infect bees with viruses – proliferate easily and cause colony collapse in just a few years.
Over time, colonies became increasingly vulnerable and viruses became the main threat to pollinators important to the crops on which people depend.
"We think that's because the viruses have evolved and become pathogenic and virulent," said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, professor of entomology at the University of Maryland, who did not participated in research on mycelium. "Varroa viruses kill most colonies in the country."
He compared the mites to dirty hypodermic needles; mites are capable of transmitting bee viruses to bees.
The only practical solution to date has been to maintain the number of varroa mites in hives "within manageable populations".
Stamet's idea about mycelium helping bees could give beekeepers a powerful new weapon.
Steve Sheppard, professor of entomology at Washington State University, over the years has heard a lot of crazy ideas for saving bees, such as the exploitation of static electricity to stick to bees with small balls of polystyrene foam coated with anti-mite chemicals. Stamets' speech was different: he had data to back up his claims about the antiviral properties of the mycelium, and his company, Fungi Perfecti, was able to produce it en masse. "I had a compelling reason to look further," Sheppard said.
To test the Stamets theory, the researchers conducted two experiments: they separated two groups of bees exposed to mites in cages, feeding a group of sugar syrup with a mushroom additive and l '. other, a syrup without additives. They also tested the field extract in small bee colonies operating near WSU.
For several strains of virus, the extract "reduces the virus to almost nothing," said Brandon Hopkins, assistant research professor at WSU, another author of the newspaper.
Since the extract can be added to syrups that commercial beekeepers routinely use, researchers say it could be a practical solution that can evolve rapidly.
Meanwhile, Stamets has designed a 3D printable feeder that provides an extract of mycelia to wild bees. He plans to launch the product and an extract-subscription service to the public next year.
"The loss of biodiversity has ramifications that echo throughout the food web," said Stamets, comparing each species to parts of an airplane, which keep the Earth united, until it does not matter. either more the case.
"Which rivet are we going to lose and have a catastrophic failure?" I think the rivet will lose the bees, "he said. "More than a third of our food supply depends on bees."
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