Seattle man's dream mushroom could save world's bees

SEATTLE – The epiphany that mushrooms could help save the world's ailing bee colonies Paul Stamets struck 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", he was growing up and his beehives. The bees actually moved wood chips to access his mushrooms' mycelium, the branching fibers of fungus that look like cobwebs.

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

Stamets, the owner of a merchantile mushroom, puzzling over a problem. Bees across the world have been disappearing at an alarming rate. Parasites such as mites, fast-spreading viruses, agricultural chemicals and lack of drilling have been reported to have been reported.

Waking up one morning, "I connected the dots," he said. "Mycelium have sugars and antiviral properties," he said. What if it was not just that which has been useful mushroom-suckling bees so long ago?

In research published in the journal Scientific Reports, Stamets reported how to reduce the incidence of mycelia extract in the presence of viruses and parasitic infections.

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

Over time, colonies have become more susceptible, and the virus has become more important.

"We think that's because the viruses have evolved and become pathogenic and virulent," said Dennis van Engelsdorp, a University of Maryland professor of 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.

Varroa mites within beehives "at manageable populations."

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

At first, mushrooms were a hard sell.

When Stamets, whose fascination with fungi began with "magic mushrooms" when he was a "long-haired hippie" undergraduate at The Evergreen State College, reaching reaching out to scientists, some laughed him off.

"I do not have time for this. You sound kind of crazy. I'm gonna go, "he recalled California researcher telling him. "It was never good to start a conversation with scientists you do not know saying, 'I had a dream.'"

When Steve Sheppard, a Washington State University entomology professor, received a call in 2014 from Stamets, however, he listened.

Sheppard has heard a lot of wild ideas to save the world, like harnessing static electricity to stick with little balls of Styrofoam coated in mite-killing chemicals.

Stamets' pitch was different: Fungi Perfecti, could produce it in bulk. "I had a compelling reason to look further," Sheppard said.

Together with other researchers, the unassisted and uncompromising nature of the pastoralist and the future of colonialism.

"This is a pretty novel approach," vanEngelsdorp said. "There's no scientist who believes there's a silver bullet for bee health. There's too many things going on. … This is a great first step. "

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