Mystery Ailment Strikes Honeybees
By
Genaro C. Armas
Associated Press
STATE
COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) -- 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.
Researchers are scrambling to find the
cause of the ailment, called Colony Collapse
Disorder.
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.
"We have seen a lot of things happen
in 40 years, but this is the epitome of
it all,'' Dave Hackenberg, of Lewisburg-based
Hackenberg Apiaries, said by phone from
Fort Meade, Fla., where he was working
with his bees.
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.
Hackenberg, 58, was first to report Colony
Collapse Disorder to bee researchers at
Penn State University. He notified them
in November when he was down to about
1,000 colonies-after having started the
fall with 2,900.
"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.
"I would characterize it as serious,''
said Daniel Weaver, president of the American
Beekeeping Federation. "Whether it
threatens the apiculture industry in the
United States or not, that's up in the
air.''
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.
Among the clues being assembled by researchers:
* 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.
* From the outside, a stricken colony
may appear normal, with bees leaving and
entering. But when beekeepers look inside
the hive box, they find few mature bees
taking care of the younger, developing
bees.
* 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.
"That is a real abnormality,'' Hackenberg
said.
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.
Researchers are also looking into the
effect pesticides might be having on bees.
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.