Honey bee mystery unsolved after two years
Image Credit: Bob MacInnes
Honey bees are still leaving their hives and not returning. And scientists still aren’t sure why.
Jeff Pettis: As of today, we don’t have a single cause that we can point to. We’re looking at a combination of factors.
Jeff Pettis is a researcher at the USDA’s Bee Research Lab in Maryland. He said adult worker bees began disappearing from commercial hives in the U.S. two years ago. Bees die when separated from their colonies. Pettis said what’s going on is likely similar to how people can get one illness, but later – in a weakened condition – die of something else.
Jeff Pettis: Some primary stressor on the colony – it could be pesticide exposure, it could be poor nutrition, it could be parasitic varroa mites feeding on the colonies … followed by some secondary pathogen that’s actually doing the killing. That pathogen could be a virus.
Beekeepers lost 37 percent of their colonies in 2007. This phenomenon – which scientists call Colony Collapse Disorder – are suspected in at least half those losses. Meanwhile, honey bees add 15 billion dollars in value per year to U.S. agriculture, by pollinating 130 crops, including almonds and apples.
Jeff Pettis: As they walk away from the business, the crops and the production becomes at risk. And I think we’re fast approaching that.
Pettis’ lab is running experiments to see if pesticides or mites are involved.
Thanks for the article. It’s clear some new factor has entered our environment! All the other factors mentioned in the article have been present for years. Ask Dr. Pettis to investigate systemic insecticides such as “Gaucho” or imidaclopride. Try mapping the areas of heaviest bee losses against areas of heaviest sales of this insecticide and see if a pattern develops. Remember to factor in the transport of bees across country for commercial pollination. These chemicals are considered highly suspect in Europe.
This site seems to be a propaganda one for Monsanto, Bayers and the like with their Gaucho and IMD (imidacloprid) products. Is this site editor still believe that Agricultural bureaucrats do their job for the citizens? Please read something else like ‘‘A Spring without Bees’‘ by Michael Schacker.
What about something unrelated to parasitic varroa mites? Parallels in evolution similar to our own where the redistribution of resources biologically due to environmental conditions but this time with negative effects. Humans at some point shifted vast amounts of physical resource to the brain. What if bees with the continual move to different locations have crossed the barrier of efficiency required to ‘remember’ all the locations and the resource drain means the bees are running on empty. What is the memory cell structure of bees 100 years ago or natural bees to commercial bees being bred now days?
I have been told and noticed that were there are a lot of population, the frequency of cell phones..