October 11, 2007
The Case of the Missing Bees

By Dave Maxwell

Last winter and on towards spring 2007, beekeepers nationwide began to notice a serious decline in their colonies. Bees were dying off at alarming rates. The scientific name is “Colony Collapse Disorder.” Albert Einstein once wrote that, “If the bee disappears from the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”

For unknown reasons bee populations throughout the U.S. began dying off mysteriously last winter at much higher rates than normal, with beekeepers losing millions of dollars each day. Bees died in such dramatic numbers, that there was great concern the economic impacts would significantly affect U.S. agriculture during the summer. Some scientists have referred to the problem as a potential for “AIDS in the bee industry.”

By mid-spring, 2007 the plague had afflicted 27 states across the country and keepers reported losses of 30 to 90 percent of their honeybee hives. Beekeeper David Hackenburg of Lewisburg, PA., lost $400,000. During the summer, 35 states reported suffering heavy losses.

“The U.S. honey industry is facing one of the most serious threats ever from Colony Collapse Disorder, stated Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) in April. “The bee losses associated with this disorder are staggering and portend equally grave consequences for the producers of crops that rely on honeybees for pollination.”

The disease affects one type of bee, the European honeybee. Bumblebees and some 1,500 other species of bee found in the U.S. are not harmed, but neither are they a replacement for the honeybee. It’s the nation’s workhorse when it comes to pollination, handling the work necessary to create commercial crops of apples, blueberries, peaches, almonds, cranberries, melons and other crops. Some crops, such as corn, are self-pollinating.

The July/August issue of the American Beekeeper Federation newsletter stated that the disease had the potential to cause $15 billion losses in crop production and $75 billion in indirect losses for 2007.

No one seems to know what has been causing the bees to die off, but some experts believe that large-scale use of genetically modified plants in the U.S. could be a factor, some say mites and viruses; others think electrical waves from cell phone towers.

Diana Cox-Foster, of the CCD working group at Penn State University, reported that researchers were “extremely alarmed,” and that bee death has a set of symptoms “which does not seem to match anything in the literature.” In many cases, scientists found evidence of almost all known bee viruses in the few surviving bees, and in their hives, after most have disappeared. The sick ones fly off to die somewhere else. Some had five or six infections at the same time and were infested with an unknown fungus, a sign that the insects’ immune systems may have collapsed.

The scientists were also surprised that bees and other insects usually leave the abandoned hives untouched. Nearby bee populations or parasites that would normally raid the honey and pollen stores of colonies that have died have waited an unusually long time before invading the abandoned hive. “This suggests that there is something toxic in the colony itself which is repelling them,” Ms. Cox-Foster said.

A particular kind of microorganism called the Varroa mite, first discovered in the U.S. in 1987, is highly suspected for the current bee plague. It weakens the bees’ immune system and kills off most of the colony within a year or two after invading. Beekeepers do use pesticides to control the mites, but studies have shown there are also ways to breed honeybees that are resistant to the organism.

The ABF along with the American Honey Producers Association wrote to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns in the spring asking him to declare the situation with CCD constitutes an emergency, and make funds available from the Commodity Credit Corporation to fund additional and immediate research necessary to find the cause(s) and solution(s) to CCD.

As quoted in the newsletter article the two organizations pointed out the need for fast action stating: “If funds are not made available immediately and a remedy to CCD is not found before honeybee colonies go into winter again, we certainly expect to repeat the losses of this past winter, perhaps to an even greater degree.”

Kevin Hackett of the USDA, says if scientists can not find a quick fix for the Colony.

Collapse Disorder, then “Creating healthier bees, with good diet, better able to fight diseases is the best thing we can do right now.”

Pennsylvania beekeeper Dave Hackenburg, who has since rebuilt his colonies, remains convinced the bees are dying because of farmers’ use of pesticides especially a type called neonicotinoids and says he won’t sell his bees to farmers who use the pesticide on their crops.

In December 2007, the Entomological Society of America will hold a symposium in San Diego, on Colony Collapse Disorder in Honeybees and give an update on the status, potential causes and preventative measures of the disease.