Beleaguered bees hit by 'deformed wing virus'

A wing-deforming virus shortens the life-span of wild honeybees already contending with a startlingly long list of existential threats, researchers said on Wednesday.

Spread by microscopic mites, the microbe disrupts bees' foraging and curtails their lives, experiments confirmed for the first time.

"Deformed wing virus strongly reduced the chances for workers to survive to foraging age," scientists reported in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B.