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本文選自《經濟學人》3月20日刊文章。研究表明，蜜蜂比人類更早使用疫苗接種，而且它們還懂得二次接種疫苗。蜂王在產卵之前，會給蜂卵注入病原體蛋白片段，觸發幼蜂免疫系統發育，工蜂在照顧幼蜂時，會再次通過蜂王漿給幼蜂進行二次接種。世間萬物比我們想象的要智慧。 本文節選全文重點段落進行精講，譯文僅供參考。如需閱讀英文全文，請掃描文末二維碼，加我微信，查看朋友圈，或加入《365天外刊精讀》課程，每天和我們一起讀外刊、看世界！課程介紹見文末。
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選文精講 Honeybees run vaccination programmes, tooThe inoculations are conducted via royal jellyAN OLD SAW has it that there is nothing new under the sun. But it may still come as a surprise that human beings are not alone in having invented vaccination. Work just published in the Journal of Experimental Biology by Gyan Harwood of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, confirms that honeybees got there first. It also suggests that they run what look like the equivalent of prime-boost childhood vaccination programmes.雖然有句古話說，太陽底下無新鮮事，但人類并不是發明疫苗的唯一物種這件事仍然讓人很驚訝。伊利諾伊大學厄巴納-香檳分校的吉安·哈伍德在《實驗生物學雜志》上發表的研究證實，蜜蜂（早在人類之前）就已經懂得接種疫苗，它們進行的疫苗接種類似于兒童疫苗接種計劃。Being gregarious, honeybees are at constant risk of diseases sweeping through their hives. Most animals which live in crowded conditions have particularly robust immune systems, so it long puzzled entomologists that honeybees do not. Indeed, they actually possess fewer immune-related genes than most solitary bees.蜜蜂作為群居動物一直存在疾病在蜂巢迅速傳播的風險。大多數生活在擁擠環境中的動物都有特別強大的免疫系統，但蜜蜂卻沒有，這個問題一直困擾著昆蟲學家。事實上，它們的免疫相關基因比大多數獨居的蜜蜂都要少。Part of the answer, discovered in 2015, is that queen bees vaccinate their eggs by transferring into them, before they are laid, fragments of proteins from disease-causing pathogens. These act as antigens which trigger the development of a protective immune response in the developing young. But that observation raises the question of how the queen receives her antigen supply in the first place, for she subsists purely on royal jelly, a substance secreted by worker bees which are at the stage of their lives (which precedes the period that they spend flying around foraging fornectar and pollen) when they act as nurses to larvae. Dr Harwood therefore wondered if the nurses were incorporating into the royal jelly they were producing, fragments from pathogens they had consumed while eating the victuals brought to the hive by the foragers.- forage for: 覓食；forager：覓食者
在2015年的一項發現給出了部分答案，蜂王在產卵之前，會將能致病的病原體蛋白質片段轉入蜂卵中，這相當于為蜂卵注射疫苗，這些蛋白片片段相當于抗原，會觸發發育中的幼蜂的保護性免疫反應。但這個觀察又提出了一個問題：蜂王最初是如何得到抗原的？蜂王僅靠蜂王漿為生，蜂王漿由工蜂在它們看護幼蜂的時候分泌產生（這個階段在它們出去覓食花蜜和花粉之前）。因此，哈伍德博士在想，是不是這些看護幼蜂的工蜂在吃覓食的工蜂帶回來的食物時，攝入了病原體，而他們將病原體片段加入到了它們生產的蜂王漿中。
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