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
The almond trees are blooming and the bees are dying, and nobody knows why. All up and down California's vast San Joaquin Valley, nearly 2,500 square kilometres of small nut trees arranged in laser-straight rows are shaking off the cobwebs of winter. They're gearing up once again to produce nearly half a billion kilograms of nuts, worth US$3 billion to the U.S. economy.
The trees cannot produce the bounty on their own, however. They need bees - a million hives worth - trucked in from nearly forty U.S. states to move pollen from one tree to another, fertilising the blooms in the largest managed pollination event on Earth.
But even as the beekeepers reap record fees for renting their hives, their livelihood is now threatened by the largest loss of honey bees in the history of the industry.
Since October 2006, 35 per cent or more of the United States' population of the Western honey bee (Apis mellifera) - billions of individual bees - simply flew from their hive homes and disappeared.
When the almonds were being plucked from the trees late last year, Gene Brandi of Los Banos, California had 2,000 hives, but by late February he had just 1,200 - a loss of 40 per cent.
And Brandi is one of the more fortunate. Across the 24 U.S. states affected by the mysterious phenomenon, losses have ranged up to 90 per cent. "I've had a couple of yards where I've had 200 hives and they're down to 10 hives that are alive," says David Bradshaw of Visalia, about 180 kilometres southeast of Los Banos along California's Route 99.
What's causing the carnage, however, is a total mystery; all that scientists have come up with so far is a new name for the phenomenon - Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) - and a list of symptoms.
In hives hit by CCD, adult workers simply fly away and disappear, leaving a small cluster of workers and the hive's young to fend for themselves. Adding to the mystery, nearby predators, such as the wax moth, are refraining from moving in to pilfer honey and other hive contents from the abandoned hives; in CCD-affected hives the honey remains untouched.
The symptoms are baffling, but one of the emerging hypotheses is that the scourge is underpinned by a collapse of the bees' immune systems. Stressed out by cross-country truck journeys and drought, attacked by viruses and introduced parasites, or whacked out by harmful new pesticides, some researchers believe the bees' natural defences may have simply given way. This opens the door to a host of problems that the bees can normally suppress.
What's surprising is that mysterious declines are nothing new. As far back as 1896, CCD has popped up again and again, only under the monikers: 'fall dwindle' disease, 'May dwindle', 'spring dwindle', 'disappearing disease', and 'autumn collapse'.
Even the current outbreak has possibly been going on undetected for two years, according to the CCD Working Group - a crack group of U.S. researchers from institutes including the Pennsylvania State University and University of Montana, who are trying to unravel the mystery.
What has made the members of the Working Group - as well as conservationists, beekeepers, and farmers - really sit up and notice is the scale of this year's decimation; something in the environment has allowed CCD to reach an unprecedented scale that threatens the very survival of the pollination industry.
"We have never seen a die-off of this magnitude with this weird symptomology," says Maryann Frazier, a bee researcher at Pennsylvania State University. "We've seen bees disappear over time and dwindle away, but not die-off so quickly."
Asian mites and latent viruses
A problem preventing clear identification of CCD is that honey bees are already under threat from manifold foes.
Even without CCD, the number of managed hives in the U.S. has dwindled by nearly 50 per cent since the industry's peak in the 1970s. The main culprit for the die-offs is a tiny Asian mite. Known as Varroa destructor to scientists and the 'vampire mite' to beekeepers, these tiny parasites - circular, crab-like arachnids about the size of a bee's eyeball - have been quietly parasitising the Asiatic honey bee (Apis cerana) in Southeast Asia for millennia.
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Varroa destructor, a tiny tick-like arachnid, has been wreaking havoc on U.S. honey bees since it was inadvertently introduced from Asia in the 1980s.
Scott Bauer/Wikipedia
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Some time in the early 1980s, though, the mites hitched a ride to America and hopped on new hosts - spreading like wildfire throughout the defenceless Western honey bee population with the help of migratory beekeepers who obligingly trucked them around the country. The mites suck the vital juices out of both developing and adult bees, and left unchecked can kill a hive within 12 months.
In addition to the damage that the mites do themselves, they also spread viruses. Furthermore, the mites appear to assist the viruses by somehow sabotaging the bees' immune system.
"There's something about a mite feeding on a bee that just knocks its immune system out. [Then] the viruses can take over," says Eric Mussen, a bee researcher at the University of California, Davis.
But mites and their viruses have been infecting U.S. honey bees for nearly 30 years. What has experts worried is that CCD kills bees even more efficiently than mites - destroying a healthy colony in a matter of weeks.
I am not an expert of lab
I am not an expert of lab tests but I found a person who might be an excellent expert of bee pathology. She is Professor Department Entomology, Diana Cox-Foster from The Pennsylvania State University. She is a representative of colony collapse disorder working group. She has over 25 years experience in insect physiology, pathology, molescular biology and evolution. She has active experience in disease biology through involvement in biodefence issues in agriculture. I am sure you'll get some help from her.
dan
Killing Bees in Residential Areas
I'd like to comment on your first statement. My father is actually owns an apiary up in Minnesota. And in his old apartment complex that he lived in, there was a be infestation. And people were constantly sending complaints to the main office about "Killer Bees" in their apartments. When my father went to check it out he found that they were the same bees that were in his apiary.
Apparently it's people's ignorance as to what is what. And possibly our own laziness that we don't have any clue.
My story does have a happy ending though. The maintenance of the apartment complex was using regular wasp pesticide. This contains sugar, and because honey bees thrive on sugar, they weren't affected. So my father actually made a deal and moved the bees to his apiary instead of letting them be slaughtered.
Could Genetically Modified Crops be the Cause
The one thing I've not seen mentioned regarding this horror is the that genetically modified crops might be the smoking gun.
So far, no one seems to have considered the thought, that bees and plants are adapted to support each other and the introduction of foreign proteins into the plants introduce those foreign proteins into the nectar and pollens they bring to the hive.
Genetically modifying plants may also affect the chemical constitution of nectar introducing proteins or reducing sugar content so the honey is no longer as resistant to molds etc. -- or as nourishing to honeybees.
I will also add that whatever the cause, short of something 100% specific to bees, that they are probably our indicator species and a whole constellation of pollinating insects are affected.
Genetically modified food
They've proven that heirloom varieties of vegetables have more vitamins in them. It is wholly possible that modified plants have a nectar that does not support the bees' dietary requirements, fosters the growth of disease, and causes them to fly off to a solitary death.
GM crops causing bee exodus
"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years left to live." - Albert Einstein
“I have never seen anything like it,” [beekeeper] Mr. Bradshaw, 50, said from an almond orchard here beginning to bloom. “Box after box after box are just empty. There’s nobody home.”
“The fact that bees avoid fields sown with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and the consequent reduction in pollination activity is a scientific alarm for agriculture and the environment,” it said.
The study, initially published by the Ecological Society of America before being picked up in Italy, looked at pollination and the response of wild bees to organic, conventional and GM rapeseed crops. It measured the abundance of bees and the pollination deficit, which is the difference between potential and actual pollination. The results showed no pollination deficit in organic fields, a slight pollination deficit in conventional fields and a high pollination deficit in GM fields.
Likewise, bees were most abundant in organic fields and least so in GM fields.
Are GM Crops Killing Bees?
By Gunther Latsch, Der Spiegel
< A mysterious decimation of bee populations has German beekeepers worried, while a similar phenomenon in the United States is gradually assuming catastrophic proportions. The consequences for agriculture and the economy could be enormous.
Walter Haefeker is a man who is used to painting grim scenarios. He sits on the board of directors of the German Beekeepers Association (DBIB) and is vice president of the European Professional Beekeepers Association. And because griping is part of a lobbyist's trade, it is practically his professional duty to warn that "the very existence of beekeeping is at stake." The problem, says Haefeker, has a number of causes, one being the varroa mite, introduced from Asia, and another is the widespread practice in agriculture of spraying wildflowers with herbicides and practicing monoculture. Another possible cause, according to Haefeker, is the controversial and growing use of genetic engineering in agriculture.
As far back as 2005, Haefeker ended an article he contributed to the journal Der Kritischer Agrarbericht (Critical Agricultural Report) with an Albert Einstein quote: "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."
Mysterious events in recent months have suddenly made Einstein's apocalyptic vision seem all the more topical. For unknown reasons, bee populations throughout Germany are disappearing - something that is so far only harming beekeepers. But the situation is different in the United States, where bees are dying in such dramatic numbers that the economic consequences could soon be dire. No one knows what is causing the bees to perish, but some experts believe that the large-scale use of genetically modified plants in the US could be a factor.
Politicians, until now, have shown little concern for such warnings or the woes of beekeepers. Although apiarists have been given a chance to make their case - for example in the run-up to the German cabinet's approval of a genetic engineering policy document by Minister of Agriculture Horst Seehofer in February - their complaints are still largely ignored.
Even when beekeepers actually go to court, as they recently did in a joint effort with the German chapter of the organic farming organization Demeter International and other groups to oppose the use of genetically modified corn plants, they can only dream of the sort of media attention environmental organizations like Greenpeace attract with their protests at test sites.
But that could soon change. Since last November, the US has seen a decline in bee populations so dramatic that it eclipses all previous incidences of mass mortality. Beekeepers on the east coast of the United States complain that they have lost more than 70 percent of their stock since late last year, while the west coast has seen a decline of up to 60 percent. In an article in its business section in late February, the New York Times calculated the damage US agriculture would suffer if bees died out. Experts at Cornell University in upstate New York have estimated the value bees generate - by pollinating fruit and vegetable plants, almond trees and animal feed like clover - at more than $14 billion.
Scientists call the mysterious phenomenon "Colony Collapse Disorder" (CCD), and it is fast turning into a national catastrophe of sorts. A number of universities and government agencies have formed a "CCD Working Group" to search for the causes of the calamity, but have so far come up empty-handed. But, like Dennis vanEngelsdorp, an apiarist with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, they are already referring to the problem as a potential "AIDS for the bee industry."
One thing is certain: Millions of bees have simply vanished. In most cases, all that's left in the hives are the doomed offspring. But dead bees are nowhere to be found - neither in nor anywhere close to the hives. Diana Cox-Foster, a member of the CCD Working Group, told The Independent that researchers were "extremely alarmed," adding that the crisis "has the potential to devastate the US beekeeping industry." It is particularly worrisome, she said, that the bees' death is accompanied by a set of symptoms "which does not seem to match anything in the literature."
In many cases, scientists have found evidence of almost all known bee viruses in the few surviving bees found in the hives after most have disappeared. Some had five or six infections at the same time and were infested with fungi - a sign, experts say, that the insects' immune system may have collapsed.
The scientists are also surprised that bees and other insects usually leave the abandoned hives untouched. Nearby bee populations or parasites would normally raid the honey and pollen stores of colonies that have died for other reasons, such as excessive winter cold. "This suggests that there is something toxic in the colony itself which is repelling them," says Cox-Foster.
Walter Haefeker, the German beekeeping official, speculates that "besides a number of other factors," the fact that genetically modified, insect-resistant plants are now used in 40 percent of cornfields in the United States could be playing a role. The figure is much lower in Germany - only 0.06 percent - and most of that occurs in the eastern states of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Brandenburg. Haefeker recently sent a researcher at the CCD Working Group some data from a bee study that he has long felt shows a possible connection between genetic engineering and diseases in bees.
The study in question is a small research project conducted at the University of Jena from 2001 to 2004. The researchers examined the effects of pollen from a genetically modified maize variant called "Bt corn" on bees. A gene from a soil bacterium had been inserted into the corn that enabled the plant to produce an agent that is toxic to insect pests. The study concluded that there was no evidence of a "toxic effect of Bt corn on healthy honeybee populations."
But when, by sheer chance, the bees used in the experiments were infested with a parasite, something eerie happened. According to the Jena study, a "significantly stronger decline in the number of bees" occurred among the insects that had been fed a highly concentrated Bt poison feed. According to Hans-Hinrich Kaatz, a professor at the University of Halle in eastern Germany and the director of the study, the bacterial toxin in the genetically modified corn may have "altered the surface of the bee's intestines, sufficiently weakening the bees to allow the parasites to gain entry - or perhaps it was the other way around. We don't know."
Of course, the concentration of the toxin was ten times higher in the experiments than in normal Bt corn pollen. In addition, the bee feed was administered over a relatively lengthy six-week period.
Kaatz would have preferred to continue studying the phenomenon but lacked the necessary funding. "Those who have the money are not interested in this sort of research," says the professor, "and those who are interested don't have the money."
Tetracycline soaked seeds plus sugar syrup meals=a death coctail
Even if there were nothing else that could be weakening bee immune systems, they would die out from only two factors, sugar syrup and corn syrup feed plus tetracycline (antibiotic) soaked seeds.
You can read that in agricultural practice today, seeds are soaked in huge vats in tetracycline to prevent mold.
Then the bees are fed corn syrup and/or sugar syrup.
Those of us who were treated for acne back when tetracycline was popular, experienced a scientific experiment in the early years of antibiotic use that became a nightmare. At first, acne cleared up almost instantly. Then it crept back. Then we were treated with stronger antibiotics, cleomycin, and more, until all strengths lost their effectiveness. We began to experience bowel problems, and especially vaginal yeast infections. I found out that eating only a small amount of refined sugar or especially corn syrup gave me crippling abdominal pain, fierce vaginal yeast infections, and brain fog. A microscopy examination showed extensive fungus in my blood, including aspergillis. Scientists have figured out that antibiotics and sugar cause havoc with the human digestive system and other symptoms of the immune system. The fungus grows out of control because the antibiotics destroy the immune factors by altering the natural environment of the digestive tract. The fungus actually eats holes in the digestive tract, causing a diseased gut. We who were treated, had to take large doses over a long term of "probiotics" to re-establish a balance in the intestinal flora. We have ALL experienced leaky gut syndrome. Many of us have permanently damaged gut walls and live with pain. We live with the yeast toxins leaking into our blood streams and affecting our brains. Alzheimers is no mystery to me. I was tested for the worst case of leaky gut syndrome in my doctor's practice, and I took antibiotics for 10 years for acne. A European health practitioner was shocked to hear this and told me my life would never be normal again--that I had ruined my digestive tract. My life has been a living proof of this.
If you know this about human digestive tracts, and about "sugar disease/brain fog" combined with antibiotics, why do you not know, O scientists, that this is the brain fog the bees are experiencing? It is yeast in the brain - you found it, it's in the literature. The fungus has spread to their brain. It is in their intestinal tracts. And you continue to exacerbate and feed this problem by treating the seeds with antibiotics and then feeding the bees corn syrup. Woe be unto us.
If you want to watch me grow a crop of aspergillis in my blood stream, come visit me and I will go on a diet of corn syrup (ice cream) and we will test my blood before and after, and you will see the proliferation of aspergillis in my blood stream and you will see how sick I become. God, I pity the bees, the poor bees. Who can forgive us?
GM crops are the culprit
It looks like the bees are abandoning their honey, larvae & hives because they are tainted by BT (GMO) crops which alter their immune systems. I think the bees are fleeing tainted hives near GM crops and moving on to organic pastures. Perhaps they will all "go wild" and learn to ignore GMO crops completely, which will put the evil "frankencrops" out of business once and for all.
“The fact that bees avoid fields sown with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and the consequent reduction in pollination activity is a scientific alarm for agriculture and the environment,” it said.
The study, initially published by the Ecological Society of America before being picked up in Italy, looked at pollination and the response of wild bees to organic, conventional and GM rapeseed crops. It measured the abundance of bees and the pollination deficit, which is the difference between potential and actual pollination. The results showed no pollination deficit in organic fields, a slight pollination deficit in conventional fields and a high pollination deficit in GM fields.
Likewise, bees were most abundant in organic fields and least so in GM fields.
According to David Hackenberg, former president of the American Beekeeping Federation and leading the public information concerning CCD as a beekeeper, "beekeepers that have been most affected so far have been close to corn, cotton, soybeans, canola, sunflowers, apples, vine crops and pumpkins." Thus most of the commercially grown Bt plants seem to be included.
Bees eating Citrus
I live in a small desert town with a few fruit trees. gratefruit oranges and lemons. for the last two years the bees have been eating the internal flesh from the oranges leaving just a hard shell on the tree. this year they have started to eat the gratefruit will the lemons be next.
has anyone else had esperience with this problem. we thought bitwas fruit bats or some other animal. but upon closer investigation we are sure it is the bees. they can easily eat 1/3 of the crop in the season.
what can we do if anthing.
Bees eating Citrus
I think that would be yellow jackets and not Honeybees.
I also do organic beekeeping, and have not experenced the CCD. I think it has a lot to do with the treatments they give to bees.
Beekeeping in Canada
I haven't heard off any " Organic " beekeepers so far in my 3 years of keeping bees. Yes it is of big concern to me to be as organic as possible. I myself use all organic to look after myself & also my dogs & I feel the bees deserve the same. I would like to know more about what you do for your bees. In the area I live in ( Central B.C.) there is not a lot of crop spraying goes on. This is a high forage area & pasture. I look forward to a reply from you, as I am concerned about what goes on in the enviroment around us. Thank You Ellen