Posted on 02/15/2007 7:29:48 PM PST by VxH
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - A mysterious illness is killing tens of thousands of honeybee colonies across the country, threatening honey production, the livelihood of beekeepers and possibly crops that need bees for pollination.
Reports of unusual colony deaths have come from at least 22 states. Some affected commercial beekeepers — who often keep thousands of colonies — have reported losing more than 50 percent of their bees. A colony can have roughly 20,000 bees in the winter, and up to 60,000 in the summer.
The country‘s bee population had already been shocked in recent years by a tiny, parasitic bug called the varroa mite, which has destroyed more than half of some beekeepers‘ hives and devastated most wild honeybee populations.
Along with being producers of honey, commercial bee colonies are important to agriculture as pollinators, along with some birds, bats and other insects. A recent report by the National Research Council noted that in order to bear fruit, three-quarters of all flowering plants — including most food crops and some that provide fiber, drugs and fuel — rely on pollinators for fertilization.
"We are going to take bees we got and make more bees ... but it‘s costly," he said. "We are talking about major bucks. You can only take so many blows so many times."
One beekeeper who traveled with two truckloads of bees to California to help pollinate almond trees found nearly all of his bees dead upon arrival, said Dennis vanEnglesdorp, acting state apiarist for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture .
Scientists at Penn State, the University of Montana and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are among the quickly growing group of researchers and industry officials trying to solve the mystery.
• Although the bodies of dead bees often are littered around a hive, sometimes carried out of the hive by worker bees, no bee remains are typically found around colonies struck by the mystery ailment. Scientists assume these bees have flown away from the hive before dying.
• Normally, a weakened bee colony would be immediately overrun by bees from other colonies or by pests going after the hive‘s honey. That‘s not the case with the stricken colonies, which might not be touched for at least two weeks, said Diana Cox-Foster, a Penn State entomology professor investigating the problem.
Cox-Foster said an analysis of dissected bees turned up an alarmingly high number of foreign fungi, bacteria and other organisms and weakened immune systems.
In the meantime, beekeepers are wondering if bee deaths over the last couple of years that had been blamed on mites or poor management might actually have resulted from the mystery ailment.
"Now people think that they may have had this three or four years," vanEnglesdorp said.
So that's what all the buzz has been about. My beeber is stungged.
Bee happy. Eat your honey.
FYI
ping
Similar to the current Global CoolingWarming Gore trend..
Correct me if I'm wrong. Please!
/Salute
MaxMax
All joking aside, this is a very serious problem. Without honeybees to pollinate, many crops cannot thrive, and major colony losses will have very serious and immediate consequences to our food supply.
Much of the problem for beekeepers is the vast amount of honey being imported from China and Vietnam: China imported over 270 million pounds of honey to the U.S. last year. The total demand for honey is just over 400 million pounds, and beekeepers are forced into leasing their colonies to growers for pollination purposes.
It is suspected that the constant moving, by truck, of large quantities of bee colonies is the major cause of the decline in bee populations. One of my neighbors recently shipped nearly 5000 colonies to California to help pollinate the almond crop. He gets around $130 per colony for this service, and due to the decline in the demand for domestic honey, he needs this income desperately. His losses on the trip were almost 20% of the total shipped.
If you are a consumer of honey, be sure you buy American honey.
Yeah, I saw that. I gave me immediate, negative thoughts.
I know we have at least 2 beekeepers here at FR. I can't remember their usernames though.
Maybe they are on Travis' ping list.
I was a beekeeper years ago - I think the other freeper's user name was "beekeeper".
Have you heard of this mite?
My first problem back in 1980s was American foulbrood. Has a distinctive odor of dirty socks, so I burned the entire hive, bees and all, rather than contaminate the other colonies.
Later, African bees invaded one of my colonies and I figured I was getting too old - but I had a really good time for over 10 years.
It looks like it is an invasive species. This definition says it was introduced:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varroa_destructor
Reducing the size of the wax foundations' cells sounds more logical than chemically treating a colony, as the mites build up a resistance and the honey may not be fit for human consumption. Coating the bees with powdered sugar sounds good though probably not perfect.
With smaller cells the bees will be smaller, and the honey/pollen production will be less. Italians are nice and big, good housekeepers, too.
You're talking big money if purchasing new queens to introduce and force swarming. For every swarm, you'll need more woodenware, frames.
Egad! don't get me started talking about beekeeping ....
I find this interesting:
[no bee remains are typically found around colonies struck by the mystery ailment. Scientists assume these bees have flown away from the hive before dying]
One possible explaination is that the bees get lost and are unable to return to the hive.
Possibly due to:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22orientation+flights%22+Imidacloprid
Since birds have parasites, would this affect a birds mirgration?
And this university paper:
http://sifaka.cs.uiuc.edu/~qmei2/data/honeybee.biosis-1998.biomodel.xml
(html formatting is off; but the information is there)
says: "Imidacloprid is increasingly used worldwide as an insecticide."
So this is being sprayed? That means it isn't the mites?
35
The problem has been evident for a very long time.
I lost and replaced several colonies in the mid 90's. Careful attention and management was ineffective.
http://sifaka.cs.uiuc.edu/~qmei2/data/honeybee.biosis-1998.biomodel.xml
The html on that is broken. So it comes up a bit messy. It is a study paper that was done about hand pollinating plants and pathogens damaging insects.
It also goes over using imidacloprid as an insecticide.
It says, "The main targets of the insecticide imidacloprid are neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptors within the insect brain."
"Imidacloprid was a partial nicotinic agonist, since it elicited only 36% of ACh-induced currents and competitively blocked 64% of the peak ACh-induced currents. GABA-induced currents were partially blocked when imidacloprid was coapplied and this block was independent upon activation of nAChRs. Our results identify the honeybee nAChR as a target of imidacloprid and an imidacloprid-induced inhibition of the insect GABA receptor."
nAChR = nicotinic acetylcholine receptors
Nicotine enhances cognitive functions, such as learning, memory, and retention through activation of brain nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs).
The most common nicotinic receptors found in the brain are the low affinity a 7-nAChR and the high affinity a 4b2-nAChR. a 7.
***Imidacloprid, which is being sprayed as an insecticide, it is an agnostic. An agnostic is used to affect the addictive properties and some of the side-effects of nicotine.***
Hazards of imidacloprid seed coating - affects orientation flights, foraging bees
http://www.univ-tours.fr/irbi/UIEIS/Theses-DEA/Lefebvre-these.pdf
imidacloprid used in seed coating, post 38
Good morning. Ping to thread.
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