The Disappearance of the Honey Bees?
Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2009 11:08 pm
I am aware of this story from work, I think its interesting and strange, you should read it and see what you think. It seems that the good old honey bee is on the way out, and it could have very serious implications for world agriculture. This is the stuff people should be thinking about, not interest rates on paper money if you ask me.
Solving the Mystery of the Vanishing Bees
From Scientific American
The mysterious ailment called colony collapse disorder has wiped out large numbers of the bees that pollinate a third of our crops. The causes turn out to be surprisingly complex, but solutions are emerging
By Diana Cox-Foster and Dennis vanEngelsdorp
Key Concepts
Millions of beehives worldwide have emptied out as honeybees mysteriously disappear, putting at risk nearly 100 crops that require pollination.
Research is pointing to a complex disease in which combinations of factors, including farming practices, make bees vulnerable to viruses.
Taking extra care with hive hygiene seems to aid prevention. And research into antiviral drugs could lead to pharmaceutical solutions.
Dave Hackenberg makes a living moving honeybees. Up and down the East Coast and often coast to coast, Hackenberg trucks his beehives from field to field to pollinate crops as diverse as Florida melons, Pennsylvania apples, Maine blueberries and California almonds.
As he has done for the past 42 years, in the fall of 2006 Hackenberg migrated with his family and his bees from their central Pennsylvania summer home to their winter locale in central Florida. The insects had just finished their pollination duties on blooming Pennsylvanian pumpkin fields and were now to catch the last of the Floridian Spanish needle nectar flow. When Hackenberg checked on his pollinators, the colonies were "boiling over" with bees, as he put it.
But when he came back a month later, he was horrified. Many of the remaining colonies had lost large numbers of workers, and only the young workers and the queen remained and seemed healthy. More than half of the 3,000 hives were completely devoid of bees. But no dead bees were in sight. "It was like a ghost town," Hackenberg said when he called us seeking an explanation for the mysterious disappearance.
We and other researchers soon formed an interdisciplinary working team that by December 2006 had described the phenomenon and later named it colony collapse disorder, or CCD. Curiously, Hackenberg's colonies stopped dying the following spring, but by that time only 800 of his original 3,000 colonies had survived. As Hackenberg spoke to colleagues around the nation, it became apparent that he was not alone.
And a survey our team conducted in the spring of 2007 revealed that a fourth of U.S. beekeepers had suffered similar losses and that more than 30 percent of all colonies had died. The next winter the die-off resumed and expanded, hitting 36 percent of U.S. beekeepers. Reports of large losses also surfaced from Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Europe and other regions. More recent data are not available yet, but some beekeepers say they have seen their colonies collapse this winter, too.
The bee loss has raised alarms because one third of the world's agricultural production depends on the European honeybee, Apis mellifera the kind universally adopted by beekeepers in Western countries. Large, monoculture farms require intense pollination activity for short periods of the year, a role that other pollinators such as wild bees and bats cannot fill. Only A. melliferacan deploy armies of pollinators at almost any time of the year, wherever the weather is mild enough and there are flowers to visit.
Our collaboration has ruled out many potential causes for CCD and found many possible contributing factors. But no single culprit has been identified. Bees suffering from CCD tend to be infested with multiple pathogens, including a newly discovered virus, but these infections seem secondary or opportunistic much the way pneumonia kills a patient with AIDS.
The picture now emerging is of a complex condition that can be triggered by different combinations of causes. There may be no easy remedy to CCD. It may require taking better care of the environment and making long-term changes to our beekeeping and agricultural practices.
Even before colony collapse, honeybees had suffered from a number of ailments that reduced their populations. The number of managed honeybee colonies in 2006 was about 2.4 million, less than half what it was in 1949. But beekeepers could not recall seeing such dramatic winter losses as occurred in 2007 and 2008. Although CCD probably will not cause honeybees to go extinct, it could push many beekeepers out of business.
If beekeepers' skills and know-how become a rarity as a result, then even if CCD is eventually overcome, nearly 100 of our crops could be left without pollinators and large-scale production of certain crops could become impossible. We would still have corn, wheat, potatoes and rice. But many fruits and vegetables we consume routinely today such as apples, blueberries, broccoli and almonds could become the food of kings.
Solving the Mystery of the Vanishing Bees
From Scientific American
The mysterious ailment called colony collapse disorder has wiped out large numbers of the bees that pollinate a third of our crops. The causes turn out to be surprisingly complex, but solutions are emerging
By Diana Cox-Foster and Dennis vanEngelsdorp
Key Concepts
Millions of beehives worldwide have emptied out as honeybees mysteriously disappear, putting at risk nearly 100 crops that require pollination.
Research is pointing to a complex disease in which combinations of factors, including farming practices, make bees vulnerable to viruses.
Taking extra care with hive hygiene seems to aid prevention. And research into antiviral drugs could lead to pharmaceutical solutions.
Dave Hackenberg makes a living moving honeybees. Up and down the East Coast and often coast to coast, Hackenberg trucks his beehives from field to field to pollinate crops as diverse as Florida melons, Pennsylvania apples, Maine blueberries and California almonds.
As he has done for the past 42 years, in the fall of 2006 Hackenberg migrated with his family and his bees from their central Pennsylvania summer home to their winter locale in central Florida. The insects had just finished their pollination duties on blooming Pennsylvanian pumpkin fields and were now to catch the last of the Floridian Spanish needle nectar flow. When Hackenberg checked on his pollinators, the colonies were "boiling over" with bees, as he put it.
But when he came back a month later, he was horrified. Many of the remaining colonies had lost large numbers of workers, and only the young workers and the queen remained and seemed healthy. More than half of the 3,000 hives were completely devoid of bees. But no dead bees were in sight. "It was like a ghost town," Hackenberg said when he called us seeking an explanation for the mysterious disappearance.
We and other researchers soon formed an interdisciplinary working team that by December 2006 had described the phenomenon and later named it colony collapse disorder, or CCD. Curiously, Hackenberg's colonies stopped dying the following spring, but by that time only 800 of his original 3,000 colonies had survived. As Hackenberg spoke to colleagues around the nation, it became apparent that he was not alone.
And a survey our team conducted in the spring of 2007 revealed that a fourth of U.S. beekeepers had suffered similar losses and that more than 30 percent of all colonies had died. The next winter the die-off resumed and expanded, hitting 36 percent of U.S. beekeepers. Reports of large losses also surfaced from Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Europe and other regions. More recent data are not available yet, but some beekeepers say they have seen their colonies collapse this winter, too.
The bee loss has raised alarms because one third of the world's agricultural production depends on the European honeybee, Apis mellifera the kind universally adopted by beekeepers in Western countries. Large, monoculture farms require intense pollination activity for short periods of the year, a role that other pollinators such as wild bees and bats cannot fill. Only A. melliferacan deploy armies of pollinators at almost any time of the year, wherever the weather is mild enough and there are flowers to visit.
Our collaboration has ruled out many potential causes for CCD and found many possible contributing factors. But no single culprit has been identified. Bees suffering from CCD tend to be infested with multiple pathogens, including a newly discovered virus, but these infections seem secondary or opportunistic much the way pneumonia kills a patient with AIDS.
The picture now emerging is of a complex condition that can be triggered by different combinations of causes. There may be no easy remedy to CCD. It may require taking better care of the environment and making long-term changes to our beekeeping and agricultural practices.
Even before colony collapse, honeybees had suffered from a number of ailments that reduced their populations. The number of managed honeybee colonies in 2006 was about 2.4 million, less than half what it was in 1949. But beekeepers could not recall seeing such dramatic winter losses as occurred in 2007 and 2008. Although CCD probably will not cause honeybees to go extinct, it could push many beekeepers out of business.
If beekeepers' skills and know-how become a rarity as a result, then even if CCD is eventually overcome, nearly 100 of our crops could be left without pollinators and large-scale production of certain crops could become impossible. We would still have corn, wheat, potatoes and rice. But many fruits and vegetables we consume routinely today such as apples, blueberries, broccoli and almonds could become the food of kings.
