As honeybees vanish, agriculture may get stung

(from: http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/nation/16863431.htm)

Jimmy Odom of Charlotte got a big surprise recently when about 30 percent of his 25 carefully tended colonies of honeybees vanished.

They left no trail to follow. No dead bodies for pathologists to examine. No witnesses.

They just disappeared. And honeybees are disappearing across the nation.

Odom and other beekeepers are baffled. Because no one is sure what causes the problem, honeybee scholars created a name for it in January — Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, and are searching for a cause.

“Nobody knows but the bees,” Odom said. “It’s just a mystery.”

So what if bees disappeared?

Bees pollinate crops in gardens, farms and orchards. Officials say bees are essential to the cucumber, blueberry, strawberry, apple, melon and squash crops, adding an average of $88 million annually to the value of the crops in North Carolina alone. Counting their value to other crops such as cotton, peanuts and soybeans, they increase the total value by $154 million a year.

In South Carolina, bees also pollinate millions of dollars worth of crops including apples, blueberries, cucumbers, strawberries, squash, and melons.

“The honeybee is, by far, the most beneficial insect,” says Charles Heatherly, president of the N.C. State Beekeepers Association. “It pollinates one-third of the food we eat.”

The disorder has been confirmed in two dozen states, but is presumed to affect honeybees across the continent.

Cornell University estimates honeybees pollinate more than $14 billion worth of crops in the United States. Florida, which has about 200,000 of the country’s 2 million commercial hives, may have lost 30 percent to 40 percent of its hives in the past six months.

Entomologist David Tarby of N.C. State University said no one knows whether the cause of CCD is a virus, bacteria, parasitic mites, environmental stress or something else.

Entomologist Mike Hood of Clemson University calls it “a fast-moving mystery,” but a small problem so far. The Carolinas each have about 2,000 beekeepers, the bulk of them hobbyists whose bees make honey as well as pollinate crops.

“The symptoms that the beekeepers reported on CCD seems to be that the adult population is suddenly gone,” Tarby said. Unlike a killing by pesticides, it leaves no dead bees behind, he said.

Lack of food is not the problem. A brood of very young bees is often left with a queen, signifying that collapse of the colony was rapid, said Tarby, one in a group of scientists from several states and the U.S. Department of Agriculture working on the mystery.

A lucky event, he said, would be finding a colony collapse in progress, which would allow a detailed study of the bees and their behavior.

With fewer honeybees likely to be seen this summer, gardeners should use care with insecticides such as Sevin that are lethal to bees.

Without honeybees or bumblebees to pollinate such crops as cucumbers, squash and melons, gardeners may have to resort to hand pollination. That means using cotton swabs to move pollen from the male flowers to the female flowers, which ensures development of the fruit.

Date Posted: Friday, March 9th, 2007
Categories: Bee Disorder, Bee Colony, Colony Collapse, Colony Collapse Disorder, CCD, Honey Bee
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Sue Bee Feeling ‘Sting’ Of Bee Colony Disorder

(From http://www.ktiv.com/News/index.php?ID=10869)

Thousands of honey bee colonies across the country are mysteriously disappearing. Researchers want to know why. And, so does a Sioux City company, that relies on honey to make money.

These worker bees have a job to do. They make the honey for their colony. But, thousands of them have moved out or died off… leaving the queen bee and baby bees behind. Researchers call it Colony Collapse Disorder. “The colonies are healthy,” says Bill Huser, VP Research & Development. “They have adequate food supply and young bees there, but adult bees are disappearing.”

The disorder wipes out the worker bees in a matter of weeks. Bad news for the world’s largest honey distributor… Sue Bee Honey. It relies on 325 beekeepers in 25 states to produce 40 million pounds of honey each year. “We depend on our members honey, obviously, to fill our packing needs,” said Mark Mammen, Executive V.P.

Some of the beekeepers who contribute to Sue Bee Honey report losses of up to 80%. And officials here say, if this trend continues, it could take a bite out of the bottom line. “If beekeepers continually have to try to replace half of their outfit over time, it’s going to put a lot of them out of business,” said Mammen.

Besides the bottles, honey bees are responsible for one third of what you eat. They grow millions of dollars worth of cash crops in the U.S. Without their buzz, there could be less food on your supermarket shelf. “The fruit that we get from our fruit trees plus some of the garden crops like cucumbers, squash and others are actually the result of flowers being pollinated by honey bees,” said Huser.

Researchers are trying to figure out what’s wrong with the worker bees. It’s a mystery that’s left the honey bee industry to feel the sting.

Culprits include parasitic mites, chemicals or viruses. While some cases of Colony Collapse Disorder have been reported in Iowa, the hardest hit states include Montana, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia and California.

Date Posted: Friday, March 9th, 2007
Categories: Bee Disorder, Bee Colony, Colony Collapse, Colony Collapse Disorder, CCD, Honey Bee
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Scale Of The Disorder

(as reported from wikipedia.org)

At least 22 different states as well as portions of Canada are known to have been affected by Colony Collapse Disorder. The disorder has been identified in a geographically diverse group of states including Georgia, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and California. In some states the loss of honey bee colonies is estimated as high as 75 percent of the population. The phenomenon is particularly important for crops such as the almond growing in California, where honey bees are the predominant pollinator and the crop value in 2006 was $US 1.5 billion. In 2000, the total U.S. crop value that was wholly dependent on the honey bee pollination was estimated to exceed $US 15 billion.

Honey bees are responsible for approximately one third of the United States crop pollination including such species as: almonds, peaches, soybeans, apples, pears, pumpkins, cucumbers, cherries, raspberries, blackberries and strawberries; many but not all of these plants can be (and often are) pollinated by other bees in the U.S., but typically not on a commercial scale. Most native pollinators cannot be utilized as easily or as effectively as honey bees, whose colonies can be moved from crop to crop as needed, and will visit many plants in large numbers. The commercial viability of these crops is therefore strongly tied to the beekeeping industry.

Date Posted: Thursday, March 8th, 2007
Categories: Bee Disorder, Bee Colony, Colony Collapse, Colony Collapse Disorder, CCD, Honey Bee
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