A biotech company in Georgia has received conditional approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the first vaccine for honeybees, a move scientists say could help pave the way for controlling a range of viruses and pests that have decimated the global population. It is the first vaccine approved for any insect in the United States.

The company, Dalan Animal Health, which is based in Athens, Georgia, developed a prophylactic vaccine that protects honeybees from American foulbrood, an aggressive bacterium that can spread quickly from hive to hive. Previous treatments included burning infected colonies and all of the associated equipment, or using antibiotics. Diamond Animal Health, a manufacturer that is collaborating with Dalan, holds the conditional license.

Dalail Freitak, an associate professor in honeybee research at Karl-Franzens University of Graz in Austria and chief science officer for Dalan, said the vaccine could help change the way scientists approach animal health.

“There are millions of beehives all over the world, and they don’t have a good health care system compared to other animals,” she said. “Now we have the tools to improve their resistance against diseases.”

Before you start imagining a tiny syringe being inserted into a bee, the vaccine, which contains dead versions of the bacterium Paenibacillus larvae, comes in the form of food. The vaccine is incorporated into royal jelly, a sugar feed given to queen bees. Once they ingest it, the vaccine is then deposited in their ovaries, giving developing larvae immunity as they hatch.

Scientists long assumed that insects could not acquire immunity because they lacked antibodies, the proteins that help many animals’ immune systems recognize and fight bacteria and viruses. Once scientists understood that insects could indeed acquire immunity and pass it to their offspring, Freitak set about answering the question of how they did so. In 2015, she and two other researchers identified the specific protein that prompts an immune response in the offspring and realized they could cultivate immunity in a bee population with a single queen.

The introduction of a vaccine comes at a critical moment for honeybees, which are vital to the world’s food system but are also declining globally because of climate change, pesticides, habitat loss and disease.