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The Thing With The Bees: a differential equations point of view on honeybees, varroa destructor, associated deadly viruses, and colony collapse disorder
by
Hermann J Eberl
Dept. Mathematics and Statistics, University of Guelph, Guelph, On
While the famous quote on bees and mankind that is commonly attributed to Albert Einstein is almost certainly not authentic, it is nevertheless true: No bees, no pollination, no crops, no humans.
Honeybees are under threat. Recent years saw an alarming increase in numbers of honeybee colonies collapsing in North America and Europe. Several stressors have been proposed or identified as causes of and contributors to this phenomenon. Among the most important and powerful ones are infestations of bee hives by varroa destructor and infections of the bees by deadly viruses that these parasites carry, such as the deformed wing virus (DWV) or the acute bee paralysis virus (APV). In this presentation we will give an overview of the existing modeling literature on the bee-mite-virus complex (yes, 10 minutes will suffice to do so) and present some minor new results.
Date received: January 21, 2009
Copyright © 2009 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # caxp-26.