Colony Collapse Disorder continues to devastate bees across the world

05/07/08For the last two years bees around the world have been disappearing without an explanation. Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) appears to not have any one known cause.

CCD is a mysterious disease that eradicates entire colonies and makes the bees leave and never return to the hive. Scientists have been studying many factors, but have been unable to pinpoint an exact cause.

"Typically beekeepers lose a certain percentage of their hives in the winter, but the losses in the last couple of winters have been higher," Bruce Boynton, CEO of the National Honey Board, said.

Beekeepers and industry officials started realizing the problem in late 2006. They came to the conclusion that Colony Collapse Disorder was an epidemic early in 2007, Boynton said.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service some beekeepers reported thirty to ninety percent loss of hives beginning in October 2006.

These losses have had a profound impact on honey production and the pollination of crops across the world.

The USDA says that the number of hives has decreased by half since the 1940s and that beekeepers have had increased demand for quality pollinators. This has necessitated the transport of hives over long distances.

Honey production, already on the decline, has been exacerbated by colony collapse disorder, Boynton said. "Crop growers are finding it harder to find quality bees for pollination," he said.

In China, apple farmers use thousands of workers to manually pollinate the crops. But the United States cannot afford these practices, Gabriela Chavarria, the director of science for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said.

Almond farmers had a terrible harvest due to the lack of pollinators and the crops cannot be hand pollinated due to cost.

"We have taken them for granted for so long that now it might be too late," Chavarria said.

One theory is that CCD is the result of a combination of many different factors. With a lifespan of only 6 to 7 weeks, there is not enough time for bees to recover from all the stresses we are throwing at them, Chavarria said.

The cumulative factors are really complicated and include mites, viruses, pesticides, and diet, Laurie Davies-Adams, the executive director of the Pollinator Partnership, said.

The Pollinator Partnership is an organization that advocates protection for the health of pollinators, such as bees, bats and birds.

"Pollination is a critical ecosystem service, it's free and we should protect it," Chavarria said.

The proper course of action to protect bees against CCD has been hard to assess because scientists are unsure which stresses are responsible or how they interact to create the problem.

"There is not enough money going into research," Chavarria said.

Davies-Adams just returned from a lecture given at the United Nations to raise awareness. She said that there is some research to suggest that one factor is linked to the introduction of Australian honeybees to the United States. The Australian bees may have never been exposed to a deadly mite known as the varroa mite.

The USDA said that samples of the Israeli acute paralysis virus, carried by the varroa mite, was found in about 96 percent of CCD hives tested by a research team,

Much speculation centers on the effect of cell phones on the honeybee population. However, no correlation was found and the German study that focused on this issue recently released information to the Associated Press denying any causation.

"A lot of research still needs to be done," Davies-Adams said.

Otherwise, it will continue to increase and cause a catastrophic loss of plant diversity, Chavarria said.

"I think finally they are collapsing because we have not done enough to help them," Chavarria said.