Paul Stamets New Lecture - fungi, bees, trees, bears and resistance to viruses and colony collapse.

Very profound, Real science done by real people ! I am posting this here' it will need to be posted to multiple Forum Threads ! A must read for any one who wants
to save All The Bees

http://youtu.be/DAw_Zzge49c?list=UU7MRhTq4E2CYwXNIwDjA3NA

For the Good of the craft ! Big AL

this is great, Al! I went ahead and embedded it here.

Nice! I sure hope there are folks in "power" who are sitting up and noticing and getting behind Pauls work!

So the picture he showed of the "birch" trees looked like my aspen. Are aspen trees a birch? Will those fungi grow on my aspen?

Does the wood chip mulch, that the bees were digging in, have to be a certain type of wood?

Miles,
Agreed those trees looked more like aspen.

We should all try to more closely observe our woody mulched growing areas to see if this phenomenon is perhaps even more common than just on beeches and spruce. Heck, Colorado blue spruce is so widespread here in Rocky Mountain country being used as an ornamental tree, that many of us should watch closely to see if bees visit simple wounds from pruning or branch breakage to see if the local bees use them in a similar way.

Judith,
This information presented by Stamets is astounding at so many levels. The sum of the parts of the natural world so greatly exceeds our ability to even conceive of the synergies between living species. Thank you for posting it here.

Chaga mushroom grows on birch trees. Birch is very closely related to aspen, so they can appear like each other.

The wood chips in the mulch weren't what the bees were seeking. They were using the mycelium as a medicine against viruses and diseases.

This was a really interesting talk. Thanks for posting it.
John S
PDX OR

Yes, but doesn't the mycelium need the wood to form?

If so then does it have to be a certain type of wood that forms the specific mycelium which the bees were seeking?

If not what substrate was used to get the right kind of mycelium?

I would like to replicate the bed he showed.

Each kind of mycelium comes from a different species and type of wood. Chaga grows on birch, normally standing whole trees. Hypholoma capnoides grows on conifers, but garden giant (the one he was talking about), stropharia rugoso annulata, grows on hardwood chips, but doesn't grow very well on whole wood logs. Some grow primarily on rotted wood. Agaricus grows on rich soil (permies ha ha), some grow on insect cadavers. Some are parasitic, like the honey mushroom and grow primarily on living wood and kill the tree. They can then continue growing on the tree they have just killed. The kind he was talking about which is known as garden giant, wine cap and King Stropharia, is one of the easiest to grow in the yard and get edible mushrooms. THe spawn is widely available. It is usually bought in bags.

He also talked about the hollow of a tree. There would normally be rotten wood and therefore mycelium inside the hollow log or tree, as at least part of it is being colonized by the mycelium. That could be any kind of tree.

One effective strategy is to make sure that old wood is in your yard. I leave it in the soil, with some exposed. It's good for the soil, especially if you're growing trees and shrubs, as they need that fungal material in the soil. It's also good for the soil food web in general in your soil. The mycelium will naturally be attracted to the wide variety of mycelium growing on all the different types of wood. Then the bees will be able to choose what kind of mycelium they most want. Penicillin and other medicines come from mold and fungi. Another crucial strategy that I use every year is to add wood chips, which will then be taken over by some kind of mycelium, which the bees can then choose to eat for medicine if that is the species that they want.
John S
PDX OR

Paul stamens is just the best, this type of work is what I dream of doing- why I love permaculture. Thanks for posting this!

Every sentence has profound implications. Thank you so much for bringing this to our attention.

O. K., Now do a google search for '' Mother Tree'' ! Most likely you will want to watch the Paul Stamets video again !Big AL

_Just a closely related subject !

http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/meet-worlds-largest-living-organism

And Check-out " Mother Tree "

for the good of the crafts ! Big Al

Thanks for posting this GOOD NEWS!!!

I would like to speed up this process and add woody material.

How can I make "MycoHoney"? -neutraceutical made from polypore mushroom

Nutraceutical Definition - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutraceutical

cd shahan :that's a really good question, My quick answer is that probably besides Paul Stamets (and the Bees) there is not a 1/2 dozen people who have a clue !

Hopefully I am wrong, lets see what other answers we get here! And you can always share your research here as this is important to everyone on the planet .

for the good go the CCrafts! Big AL

Has anybody taken Paul up on his call for citizen scientists? There was an email address of bee@fungi.com but no further instructions.

I've emailed him so will hopefully see shortly what he has in mind. Things will be frozen up my way until May 2015, so there is plenty of time to digest this information. Right now I'm rather dumbstruck at the implications of this discovery.

Anything further on this citizen scientist email thing?  Or making nutraceutical honey?

Looks like a patent was granted for this,

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=Stamets.AANM.&OS=AANM/Stamets&RS=AANM/Stamets

Didn't read it in detail but enough to be sure it's about the myco nectar.  I can't find any other recent updates though.  

Check this out:  5 Reasons why Fungi are the future

Stamets once had an employment opening at his installation, though when speaking with him on the phone, my work with morels in Michigan had changed, and this before the morel growing patent was sold to another company. We grew morels (Neogen Corp., Lansing, Michigan) in a room within a room within a room, due to strict temp. and humidity requirements for triggering the sclerotia out of dormancy. A current project links to Stamet's mushroom flies, though the approach is due to both the cancer connection in Drosophila (brain cancer and other tumors in these flies) and the spotted wing Drosophila (D. suzukii) connection to the genus. One proposed location for the project can be though of as a transition town, which also sports a solar potential: Amboy, California, and that is why the name is Lansing, Mike Lansing. Thus, we will be studying the biology of such Drosophilids as D. mohavensis, as well as growing anti-cancer medicinals in containers. However, Mr. Okura's approval must first be sought. Betty, one of Amboy's original citizens, died of cancer.

Regards, ML

Welcome to Permies Mike!  I hope that you will be a regular contributer to our fungi forum.

Great that you have such a strong training in the field of fungi propagation!   Do you mean that you are part of this project in Amboy California involved with anti cancer medicinal  fungi?

Last week I harvested Turkey Tails (trametes versicolor) to give to a prostate cancer patient in a local town.  He is also using chaga (Inonotus obliquus).  

Greetings, Roberto,

Actually, there is a medicinal fungi link to one of your B.C. neighbors. Maybe the link will work:

Wade Davis Official Site
www.daviswade.com

I met Davis at the same time I met Dr. Andrew Weil in Arizona. It was Weil who was at one time interested in Chinese injections of fungi into cancerous livers. Yes, Trametes and similar fungi are well known for their polysaccharides that also have antiviral activity. Northwest Coast wildcrafters should take heed and be more clued-up than usual, because nowadays the gaze is forensic: the pigments of Boletus, for example, can sequester 137-cesium.

We may as well mention that bark beetles can transmit fungal pathogens to trees. Is this correct: 29 million dead in California?

John Saltveit's post of two years ago is correct: the bees are doing deliberate self-medication, and we also are studying these chemistry phenomena in Drosophila. Another example is deliberate self-medication in chimpanzees with Vernonia species. Black Queen virus is a related virus to those found in Drosophila (Cricket Paralysis virus, Nodoviridae, etc.). Importantly, nodamura virus (Nodaviridae) infects herons and egrets, and this is the link to Dr. Weil's interest in Chinese liver cancer: heron hepatitis virus links hepatocellular carcinoma (HBV/HCV).

Analysis of Stamet's video reveals some important points:

1.) Stamet's connection to Smee (Utah State) is a replay of what medical mycologists already knew. Here is Smee's abstract:

Smee, et al / Immunosugar UV-4 / alpha-Glucosidase
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27072420

The true pioneer is actually Baruch S. Blumberg (NASA Astrobiology), discoverer of the Australian antigen of hepatitis B virus. Blumberg used the naturally-occurring compound deoxynojirimycin from Mulberry (Morus species) to prevent the maturation of HBV. Blumberg's antiviral compound is an imminosugar. We had posted much on this in 1998, though it seems that the website is defunct. A Google search shows two clues to the disappearance of badger2's website, which was mentioned in our investigative trajectory for Zika and Ebola viruses:

1.) Google search 'Antiviral Research and Natural Products Chemistry....https://www.collegezoom.org/aquaviva11.tripod.com'

2.) Google search 'Re: Hashimoto;s / Tuberculosis / HCV....17 Aug 2004....www.remedyspot.com

Stamets mentions ebola in the video, though we certainly are not buying the fruit-bat crib mobiles that the media (as well as Stamets) has invoked. There are other vectors of ebola and Marburg viruses, even though they remain either unknown or esoteric. For Zika, the connection is inde3ed at Zika Forest for the locals called the infection the "sleeping disease."  In the year 1998, we posted to the aquaviva11 web-page the connection to Zika virus with our excerpt on beta-glucosidase as universal regulator of plant sleep (nyctinasty).

Thus, we understand Stamet's video quite well....at least the first half of it

In the video, Stamets invokes p-coumaric acid. Therefore, we will wrest away from him any attempt to reify p-coumaric acid as unique to the Northwest Coast. Euptoieta claudia feeds on Viola species. Viola contains p-coumaric acid. We have mentioned on the Smerinthus thread the highly methylated exudates from Populus buds.

Fungal Metabolites Against Skin Cancer / Trichoderma
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22991673
'....methyl ester was the most potent....'

Basal cell carcinoma (BCC) uses collagenase to advance through human tissue. This report from Japan links the chemistry of the Gulf Fritillary, Euptoieta claudia, to collagenase inhibition, and notice (both cis and trans [italics]) configurations of the molecule:

Jan 2013 Japan / Viola yedoensis / Collagenase Inhibition
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22529049

An interesting fungal link to p-coumaric acid is here:

2017 / Conocephalum / p-Coumaric Acid / Sabinene
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11193385

Finally, p-coumaric acid links to a Japanese Papilio for sabinene, and (this [it.]), as we will show, is the link to influenza viruses:

Odawa, Japan / Papilio maackii Secretions
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24420834

'The Great Pandemic of 1889-1890. Eastern Siberia was threatened by influenza advancing from the steppes of West Siberia. Moving along the route later to be followed by the Trans-Siberian Railroad, influenza spread beyond Lake Baikal to Chita by Christmas of 1889 and to Sretinsk (Sretensk) on the Upper Amur River in January. Here the eastward course of the disease stopped, perhaps because the Amur, used by steamers for the next segment of the route to the Pacific, was frozen. Influenza did move north to Yakutsk.'
(Patterson KD, Pandemic Influenza, 1700-1900. A Study in Historical Epidemiology, Totawa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield [1986] pp. 49-65)

Maackia has been planted in Louisiana.

Maackia amurensis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maackia_amurensis

Maackia links precisely to the chemistry shown here, which strongly suggest that the butterfly Papilio maackii is ingesting anti-influenza compounds. What are the food plants of P. maackii?

Pterocarpans and Flavanones from Sophora flavescens Displaying Potent Neuraminidase Inhibition
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18938076

Papilio maackii food plants for antiviral activity begins with these:

Papilio maackii
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papilio_maackii

In 2006, badger2 was fortunate to meet Dr. Willy Burgdorfer, discoverer of the Lyme disease agent, and Dr. Philip who wrote a book on Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. Dr, Philip spoke at length on Colorado tick fever, which is a calicivirus. Here via the Maackia trajectory, we link Colorado tick fever to Louisiana where the Maackia plantation was established:

Maackia Lectins / Sambucus nigra / Influenza
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28712489

Maackia / Tulane Calicivirus
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26146020

Hi Mike.  I am familiar with Wade Davis.  I have not met him, but have read most of his books and listened to him on the radio.  I'm also familiar, though less so, with A Weil.   not much familiar with a lot of the rest of what you wrote.

nowadays the gaze is forensic: the pigments of Boletus, for example, can sequester 137-cesium.  

 Yikes.  perhaps I should stop picking boletus?  Are other fungi potentially sequestering radioactive compounds?  Also, when I think of the word forensic, I think science for the purpose of deducing crime.  When I think Cesium, I think Fukushima.  Are you seeing the nuclear disaster as a criminal act?  

We may as well mention that bark beetles can transmit fungal pathogens to trees. Is this correct: 29 million dead in California?

 I'm quite familiar with the Mountain Pine Beetle epidemic and it's fungal connection in my province, but not the California statistics.  In B.C., those numbers would be rather small, I would think.

How much of Stamets Video do you not agree with, besides the Ebola stuff?  You say the first half, you understand quite well.  That seems to imply that you do not have a clear understanding of the second half, which I find... somewhat unlikely.

When you mention the Zika virus and it's connection to a sleeping illness and the Zika forest, I am curious what you think of the Zika virus scare of two winters ago in which it was linked to microcephaly and seems to rise up every mosquito season since.  It seems that the microcephaly connection, if true, was a recent mutation of the Zika virus, or is that connection a fallacy?