FILAMENTOUS VIRUS OF HONEY BEE

A common and widespread disease of honey bees, Apis mellifera, is caused by an unoccluded, Feulgen-positive, filamentous nuclear virus. Ovoid viral particles seen in diseased bee hemolymph consisted of a folded nucleocapsid within a viral envelope and were 0.40 by 0.10 μm. Virions with unfolded nucleocapsids were about 3060 by 60 nm. The disease was transmissible to bees both per os and by injection, but efforts to infect oriental cockroaches, Blatta orientalis, and the greater wax moth, Galleria mellonella, failed. The disease is apparently the same as that described as a rickettsial disease of European bees. © 1978.