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Bees disappearing as mystery ailment sweeps U.S.

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Manitoba_Rancher

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Bees disappearing as mystery ailment sweeps U.S.
Updated Thu. Mar. 29 2007 7:06 PM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

Bees are vanishing across the United States, leaving empty colonies behind and putting honey production in jeopardy -- and nobody knows why.


Experts gathered in Washington Thursday at a House Agriculture Subcommittee, describing the mysterious threat as "Colony Collapse Disorder" (CCD).


The remains of dead bees usually remain inside a hive, unless worker bees carry their bodies them out. But colonies affected by CCD show no signs of the ailment, aside from a notable absence of mature bees.


It's possible the affected bees abandon the hive before dying, but scientists have yet to understand why or how.


In the past six months, U.S. beekeepers estimate they have lost between 50 and 90 per cent of their honeybees. One colony can have 60,000 bees in the summer, and that number drops to about 20,000 in the winter.


Scientists, beekeepers and officials started a CCD group in December 2006 to examine the cause of the disorder, and hopefully find a cure.


Not only are bees crucial to the agriculture industry in the production of honey, they also work as pollinators. Roughly 75 per cent of flowering plants require pollinators to bear fruit, including crops that produce the resources needed for drugs and fuel.


Researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, University of Montana and Penn State University are leading the study of CCD.


So far, they have noticed that affected colonies are still active, with remaining bees looking after developing bees. But when a colony is weakened, it's usually taken over by rival bees and other insects looking for honey.


And when scientists examined individual bees in affected colonies, they showed weakened immune systems and an increase in bacteria and foreign fungi.


Caird E. Rexroad, from the Agricultural Research Service, echoed that fact when he testified in front of the committee Thursday.


"We believe that some form of stress may be suppressing immune systems of bees, ultimately contributing to CCD," CNN quoted Rexroad as saying.

U.S. beekeepers had already taken a huge hit from varroa mite, a parasite that killed more than half of some colonies and also affected wild honeybee hives.
 
Could it bee (little bit of a pun), mad bee desease. Stop the presses we have a crisis in the hives, Queen be has gone mad and all the drones and workers are doing a Jones Town. To bad I like honey. Will this mean NAfta is in grave danger, perhaps the Japanese will stop all shipments of bees.

Oldtimer, quick type something, do a post I like honey. Perhaps the border will be closed between Canada and the USA. Bee swatters will be one guard. More border guards, will the new moniters detect the bad bees from entering Canada.

Big Muddy be on guard, Northern Rancher will be the last to know. SAve me some northern honey.

Haymaker, check the Mexican Border and don't let any south, I really do like honey.

CA
 
canadian angus said:
Should we do a study and put tags in them all and have a mandatory registration, put top beurocrats on both sides right on that, I need to save my HONEY.

CA
Click to expand...

Settled down , settle down, I think we might have to re-examine this tagging thing. I didn't even know Bees had ears. :shock:
 
This is a pretty serious deal actually. I watched a documentary on this and they say that if the honey bees don't make a come back or they find out what's causing the rampant deaths and stop it, within 4-7 years (I think that was the time table, although I'm not exactly sure), our ag community will be basically destroyed...that's how vital these bees are to our very existence.

Food for thought...
 
We have a hive on the property and one year it was trashed by a late freeze.. The veg crop stunk that year in the garden and the next year the bee population was still down and the fruit crop was bad... Last year they finally were back and we had so many apples and pears and stuff that it wasn't even funny... We are looking at a frost again next week and this warm weather has kick started the fruit trees. Am a bit worried about that to be honest... If the trees blossom before than by by fruit crop...
 
I do still do like HONEY, so what is it besides wild, no mad bee desease? A gay drone perhaps, workers revolt because they can't turn their backs in the hive.

The IRS squezzing the hives? Isn't it about time that the lowly got respect, I do like Honey, and all good Breakfast eaters standup and be counted. Enough already, take care of your hives, get close and listen for the hum, put blanlets on them when it gets cold, I do like my Honey.

Get the Hilory's of the world to make it their cause, we Lovers of Honey, stand up. Honey is the only organic group the doesn't break down!

I know it is all tongue in cheek, but I DO LIKE MY HONEY.

CA
 
They found this problem in Southern Ontario as well. Losses in hives up to 90%. Producers have a lot of stockpiled honey from last year, so the shortage won't show up till this fall or late summer.
 
I came accross this article on the bees dieing off and thought it was interesting. Geneticly modified seeds are suspected of playing a role but there has been very little research in that area.



COLLAPSING COLONIES Are GM Crops Killing Bees?

By Gunther Latsch March 22, 2007 Spiegel.de

A mysterious decimation of bee populations has German beekeepers worried, while a similar phenomenon in the United States is gradually assuming catastrophic proportions. The consequences for agriculture and the economy could be enormous.

Is the mysterous decimation of bee populations in the US and Germany a result of GM crops?

Walter Haefeker is a man who is used to painting grim scenarios. He sits on the board of directors of the German Beekeepers Association (DBIB) and is vice president of the European Professional Beekeepers Association. And because griping is part of a lobbyist's trade, it is practically his professional duty to warn that "the very existence of beekeeping is at stake."

The problem, says Haefeker, has a number of causes, one being the varroa mite, introduced from Asia, and another is the widespread practice in agriculture of spraying wildflowers with herbicides and practicing monoculture. Another possible cause, according to Haefeker, is the controversial and growing use of genetic engineering in agriculture.

As far back as 2005, Haefeker ended an article he contributed to the journal Der Kritischer Agrarbericht (Critical Agricultural Report) with an Albert Einstein quote: "If the bee disappeared off 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."

Mysterious events in recent months have suddenly made Einstein's apocalyptic vision seem all the more topical. For unknown reasons, bee populations throughout Germany are disappearing -- something that is so far only harming beekeepers. But the situation is different in the United States, where bees are dying in such dramatic numbers that the economic consequences could soon be dire. No one knows what is causing the bees to perish, but some experts believe that the large-scale use of genetically modified plants in the US could be a factor.

Felix Kriechbaum, an official with a regional beekeepers' association in Bavaria, recently reported a decline of almost 12 percent in local bee populations. When "bee populations disappear without a trace," says Kriechbaum, it is difficult to investigate the causes, because "most bees don't die in the beehive." There are many diseases that can cause bees to lose their sense of orientation so they can no longer find their way back to their hives.

Manfred Hederer, the president of the German Beekeepers Association, almost simultaneously reported a 25 percent drop in bee populations throughout Germany. In isolated cases, says Hederer, declines of up to 80 percent have been reported. He speculates that "a particular toxin, some agent with which we are not familiar," is killing the bees.

Politicians, until now, have shown little concern for such warnings or the woes of beekeepers. Although apiarists have been given a chance to make their case -- for example in the run-up to the German cabinet's approval of a genetic engineering policy document by Minister of Agriculture Horst Seehofer in February -- their complaints are still largely ignored.

Even when beekeepers actually go to court, as they recently did in a joint effort with the German chapter of the organic farming organization Demeter International and other groups to oppose the use of genetically modified corn plants, they can only dream of the sort of media attention environmental organizations like Greenpeace attract with their protests at test sites.

But that could soon change. Since last November, the US has seen a decline in bee populations so dramatic that it eclipses all previous incidences of mass mortality. Beekeepers on the east coast of the United States complain that they have lost more than 70 percent of their stock since late last year, while the west coast has seen a decline of up to 60 percent.

In an article in its business section in late February, the New York Times calculated the damage US agriculture would suffer if bees died out. Experts at Cornell University in upstate New York have estimated the value bees generate -- by pollinating fruit and vegetable plants, almond trees and animal feed like clover -- at more than $14 billion.

Scientists call the mysterious phenomenon "Colony Collapse Disorder" (CCD), and it is fast turning into a national catastrophe of sorts. A number of universities and government agencies have formed a "CCD Working Group" to search for the causes of the calamity, but have so far come up empty-handed. But, like Dennis vanEngelsdorp, an apiarist with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, they are already referring to the problem as a potential "AIDS for the bee industry."

One thing is certain: Millions of bees have simply vanished. In most cases, all that's left in the hives are the doomed offspring. But dead bees are nowhere to be found -- neither in nor anywhere close to the hives. Diana Cox-Foster, a member of the CCD Working Group, told The Independent that researchers were "extremely alarmed," adding that the crisis "has the potential to devastate the US beekeeping industry."

It is particularly worrisome, she said, that the bees' death is accompanied by a set of symptoms "which does not seem to match anything in the literature."

In many cases, scientists have found evidence of almost all known bee viruses in the few surviving bees found in the hives after most have disappeared. Some had five or six infections at the same time and were infested with fungi -- a sign, experts say, that the insects' immune system may have collapsed.

The scientists are also surprised that bees and other insects usually leave the abandoned hives untouched. Nearby bee populations or parasites would normally raid the honey and pollen stores of colonies that have died for other reasons, such as excessive winter cold. "This suggests that there is something toxic in the colony itself which is repelling them," says Cox-Foster.

Walter Haefeker, the German beekeeping official, speculates that "besides a number of other factors," the fact that genetically modified, insect-resistant plants are now used in 40 percent of cornfields in the United States could be playing a role. The figure is much lower in Germany -- only 0.06 percent -- and most of that occurs in the eastern states of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Brandenburg. Haefeker recently sent a researcher at the CCD Working Group some data from a bee study that he has long felt shows a possible connection between genetic engineering and diseases in bees.

The study in question is a small research project conducted at the University of Jena from 2001 to 2004. The researchers examined the effects of pollen from a genetically modified maize variant called "Bt corn" on bees. A gene from a soil bacterium had been inserted into the corn that enabled the plant to produce an agent that is toxic to insect pests. The study concluded that there was no evidence of a "toxic effect of Bt corn on healthy honeybee populations." But when, by sheer chance, the bees used in the experiments were infested with a parasite, something eerie happened. According to the Jena study, a "significantly stronger decline in the number of bees" occurred among the insects that had been fed a highly concentrated Bt poison feed.

According to Hans-Hinrich Kaatz, a professor at the University of Halle in eastern Germany and the director of the study, the bacterial toxin in the genetically modified corn may have "altered the surface of the bee's intestines, sufficiently weakening the bees to allow the parasites to gain entry -- or perhaps it was the other way around. We don't know."

Of course, the concentration of the toxin was ten times higher in the experiments than in normal Bt corn pollen. In addition, the bee feed was administered over a relatively lengthy six-week period.

Kaatz would have preferred to continue studying the phenomenon but lacked the necessary funding. "Those who have the money are not interested in this sort of research," says the professor, "and those who are interested don't have the money."
 

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