One of the most important crop pollinators in the world, honey bees in the United States have been decimated in recent months by a mysterious disease.
Credit: Jon Sullivan/Wikipedia
All stressed out
As if having its bodily fluids sucked out by a parasite wasn't enough to weaken a bee, some suspect its immune system is also under attack from plain old stress.
Just as humans fall ill more readily after draining tasks or emotional upheavals, Mussen says stress is a sure-fire way to compromise bee immunity too.
And the lives of commercial honey bees are filled with stress. A typical year for a hive might entail up to five cross-country truck trips, chasing crops to pollinate and clover fields to make honey in. Banging the bees around during cross-country journeys can take a heavy toll.
"Some of the beekeepers you talk to will tell you that they'll lose 10 per cent of their queens" on every trip, Mussen says. And besides transportation stress, many of the hardest-hit beekeepers have reported that their hives underwent extraordinary stresses like drought, overcrowding, or famine, in the months before die-offs occurred.
Stress alone won't kill a bee, but Mussen thinks that it's just one more factor conspiring against them. "It's the knocking down of the immune system, it's having mites around - everything is just piling up - they haven't got much of a chance."
Fly away and die
Pesticides are designed to kill bugs and other pests on crops without causing harm to humans or the environment. But in a never-ending biological arms race, miscreant insects develop resistance to new pesticides nearly as fast as chemists can create them. In this tit-for-tat exchange, scant attention is paid to effects that new pesticides have on beneficial insects like honey bees.
While many pesticides are downright lethal to bees, some new studies have pointed to other strange effects found at low doses. For example, low doses of new compounds called neonicotinoids might be interfering with bee minds. Potentially, this prevents them from remembering their colony's location and causes them to get lost and never return.
According to Pennsylvania State University entomologist Diane Cox-Foster, another possibility is that neonicotinoids are another factor impairing bee immunity.
Yet another hypothesis is that sick adult bees may be self-sacrificing: flying away to die in order to protect the hive from further infection.
When the Working Group first examined samples of CCD-killed bees from across the country, one factor they found in common was fungal growth in the bees' guts. The fungi may be from the genus Aspergillus, a group of fungi that produce toxins which can kill young adult bees. Studies published in the past have reported that bees infected with the fungus fly away from the colony to die.
Not that Aspergillus is the only possibility. "We're asking if there is anything new that may have been brought in accidentally," says Cox-Foster. "We know that there are a couple of potential routes for introduction of new pathogens."
Hands off the hive
When a colony is weakened other bees or insects usually move in to take advantage of the gap and score a free lunch in the form of honey. Not so in CCD-killed hives; wax moths and other predators stay away, at least for much longer than they would normally.
According to Cox-Foster, it could be that insects' keen sense of smell may be keeping them away from dangerous chemicals present in the dead hive. "We know that insects are very good at detecting chemicals in their environment. There are studies that have taken caterpillars and shown that they'll actually feed around a droplet of pesticide on a leaf because they can detect it"
"One of our hypotheses is that the fungus itself is producing toxins that are being detected by the other insects. Likewise, it could be one of these environmental contaminants [like pesticides]," she says.
That's as far as the research detectives have gotten to date. Are bees, under stress from many sources, succumbing to pressure from new pathogens or chemicals? Between mites, viruses, fungi, stress and new pesticides, the insects are under threat like never before.
Fully one-third of fruits, vegetables, and nuts consumed in America are dependent on pollinators - overwhelmingly honey bees. The net value of all this produce to the U.S. economy is roughly US$15 billion per year. And across America experts are scrambling to find answers to the mystery before it turns into an even bigger economic and agricultural disaster.
Benjamin Lester was an intern at COSMOS who wrote stories for both the print magazine and Cosmos Online. He's a graduate of evolution and ecology from the University of California at Santa Cruz, USA.
Bees
Hi Benjamin,
I live in Laguna Beach, California
During the past two years, I have seen the destruction of a colony of Honey Bees, who had taken up residence in the eves of the Condo. next door, and know of the Extermination of beautiful large black and yellow bees living in an Apartment Complex around the corner, being remodeled. The Company Rep. said the Bees were killer bees. I am going to assume that it is cost effective to Gas them, than to re-locate them. Your article is interesting. I work with people with Alzheimer's Disease. Each time I enter the garage, I see all of the containers of Pesticides from many years of use, laying in boxes on shelves. One house had so many, the smell was interrupting my sleep. I thought we had a gas leak.
Since I have been living at this residence for two years, the caterpillars are back, from three the first year, to 40 last year,(as both homeowners are no longer the ones caring for the surrounding garden.) The caterpillars transform into "Mourning Cloak Butterflies", during the month of August. I hose off the sidewalk each morning, as they will start their trip at sundown, down the hot asphalt street, and up the sidewalk to the safe haven of the eves of the front door.
I understand that the Honey Bee is the only insect that produces food for Humans.
I was also saddened to see another neighbor, in another area of Orange County during his first experience with Honey Bees in his yard. He was being trained to use smoke on their hive. After his initial training, I saw him in his yard for many more hours, practicing his smoke tactics on them.It was more than I could bare. I finally was at the point of tears. We Humans should treat all things on the Planet with more respect. These wonderful bees are so important as you state, and thank you so much for the article in Cosmos.
P.S. Can it be the smoke, pesticides, chlorine, and pollution..I think so.
Sincerely,
Marilyn Killian
Bees
I lived on a farm when I was young and we always had 3 or 4 hives. Everything I have read about the bees dying off has not covered one possible culprit. Every since we started to grow huge row crops like corn and soy beans with under ground water irregation the farmers have been using herbicides to kill the weeds instead of cultivating. Just like the DDT afected the game birds and the preditors like the Eagle I think the herbicides are are affecting the honey bees. The bees may be trucked into the South to pollinate the pecan trees but they are trucked back to work the farms in the summer. Have the pecan tree growers tried having bee hives in the areas that stay there all year? That is what I would do if I was farming pecan trees. The bees drink surface water and this water is loaded with herbicides. Does this suggestion have merit? Arnie KLukas
Interesting , I understand
Interesting , I understand that GMO corn pollen could be to blame. You see this GMO plant produces a toxin to prevent pests from wreaking havoc on corn plants.
Maybe if we correlate corn fields to this bee problem it could prove usefull. If this doesn't get repaired soon we WILL run out of food!
smoke
Beekeepers use smoke as a masking agent for the alarm pheremones released during a sting. The smoke is typically produced using bits of wood and pine needles found in the area not plastic or other nonsensical materials. The smoke is harmless to the bees when wafted into the hive and causes them to gorge on honey thus becomming uninterested and physically unable to give the keeper a sting. Likewise a spray of sugar water on a swarm or single bee will keep the bee(s) preoccupied and uninterested in stinging as well. It is unfortunate that bees take up residence in unwanted areas but it is the landowners right to handle the situation as he or she feels fit. The next time you see your neighbor using his smoker approach him and educate yourself as to how a colony of bees behaves. I approach my hives with only a head veil and smoker and have yet to make a lady cry.
I was just wondering. Ther
I was just wondering. Ther person who wrote that said that the neighbor was doing it for many hours. I'll admit I dont know anything about bee-keeping, so this is why I am asking. Why did he need to do it for several hours? Is that necessary, or is the goal to do it as quickly as possible?
just wondering, sammie
Bees
You should check out the genetically modified corn that has pesticides it.
Maybe Monsanto is killing the bees!!!
'Monsanto' means 'sociopath' in many languages
Do harm with out remorse.
Make money at all costs.
Go forth and conquer without thought of consequence.
Wether it be drugs for cows to overproduce unhealthy milk that is snuck onto the store shelves without warning, to having total disregard for the animals well being.
We as humans have an abligation to all take the Hypocratic Oath - do no harm.
However, where there are humans, there is greed and disregard for anything that makes sense other than making money.
As we watch history being written, and mans accomplishment reaching the incredible ... we watch our future with uncertainty and leave our children with a mess to clean up ... if they can. May God have mercy for we know not what we are doing. We need to wake up, starte believing in miracles or simply take our millions to mars, on the company rocket, where we can put our fortunes in an very off-shore account to spend on our new planet.
Sandy
Thank you
It's nice to read a reply from someone who's awake. We need more people like you in this world if we are going to teach our kids about what people can and are doing to planet earth, and how to fix it.
thank you.
At the time of the writing
At the time of the writing of this article, this issue WAS a mystery. Now the book, "A Spring Without Bees", by Michael Schacker, June 08 explains how neonicotinoid pesticides--now the most widely used in the world--harm the honeybees' sensitive nervous, immune and digestive systems causing colony collapse disorder, slow die-off, vulnerability to viruses and fungal bee die-offs in the hive--even at very minute doses. Imidacloprid (IMD),the main ingredient in Admire, Merit, Gaucho, Poncho and many other tradenames causes brain and nervous system damage and the sick bees fly away and disappear. These pesticides were allowed "emergency provisional use" in chat the U.S. bypassing the FDA guidelines to require independent testing for toxicity to infants and or pregnant women. Page 2 of the Admire product label clearly states "highly toxic to honeybees". All of this is documented, but the corporation making it contributes heavily to Public Television, NPR, university science departments and top organizations that would normally sound the alarm. IMD, meanwhile, is the genome in GMO seeds.
Re: At the time of the writing
Thank you. This comment was far more helpful then the article itself. It's good to know that we're not entirely clueless as to the cause of this phenomenon.