By Susan Milius
A little-known virus has been tagged as a suspect, or maybe just an opportunistic marker of disease, in the recent unexplained disappearances of honeybees.
During the past year, an estimated 23 percent of U.S. beekeeping operations saw worker bees vanish over the course of a few weeks for no obvious reason, a phenomenon dubbed colony-collapse disorder (SN: 7/28/07, p. 56).