Disappearing Bees

CHRISTOPHER PURCELL

Is this a result of what is being called bee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), Honey Bee Depopulation Syndrome (HBDS) or in England, the “Mary Celeste” phenomenon, where beehives are completely emptied of bees & their bodies never found? CCD is a World- wide problem, it is not seasonally linked & the colonies tend to show signs of stress before the mass disappearance…

…We may not all die from starvation if all the bees disappear completely, but a large percentage of the population possibly would. The tiny bee is one of the lynchpins that allow us to feed such a large World population of over 6 billion people. A third of all food we eat in Australia is brought to us with the help of bees, equating to $2 billion worth of agriculture according to the CSIRO, who are researching ways of reducing the reliance of Australian plant industries on European honeybees as the principle pollinators of our crops. Our native bees are being studied to see if they can take on the role in the event of what CSIRO see as a likelihood; the collapse of honeybee populations.
Disappearing Bees

We had a local friend for dinner last night (tasted great) & he was telling us about something his dad, who lives in Sussex/Norfolk England, told him last week. In his dad’s garden are some very old lime (linden) trees, perhaps a few hundred years old. Every summer (as it is now), the limes are literally swarming with bees. Apparently the noise is incredible. Last week his step-mother walked over to the limes & was horrified by what she found. Underneath the trees was a thick carpet of dead bees. No bees in the trees.

Is this a result of what is being called bee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), Honey Bee Depopulation Syndrome (HBDS) or in England, the “Mary Celeste” phenomenon, where beehives are completely emptied of bees & their bodies never found? CCD is a World- wide problem, it is not seasonally linked & the colonies tend to show signs of stress before the mass disappearance.

CCD is diagnosed when all the following have occurred:

– A complete absence of all adult bees from the colony (including dead bodies anywhere near the hive)

– Capped brood remaining unhatched

– Honey & pollen stores left unused (which are not robbed by other bees or insects until after a period of time has passed)

There isn’t a lot of information on CCD, basically because very little scientific investigation seems to have been done. Most information appears to be anecdotal & with no widespread studies looking at which, where & how honey producers’ have been affected. The major producer-countries can’t even agree on where they should start looking for answers. The squabbling & disagreements were seen here in this country when the 40th Apimondia Congress (the World’s largest bee & honey organization) was held in Melbourne in September 2007.

Most producer-countries have formed into several particular camps. One camp believes the Varroa mite as the culprit, another, the bees’ nutrition. Some suspect pesticides, such as the Neonicatinoids, which are insecticides that act on the central nervous system of insects & are amongst the most widely used insecticides, with some countries restricting their use because of their possible links to CCD. Some see GM crops as a likely cause & others are convinced it’s a microspsoridian parasite or the over-use/misuse of ‘bee’ antibiotics, especially fumagillin, a drug that damages human chromosomes. The Israel Acute Paralysis Virus, which the US blamed Australia for spreading into their country through bee importation, is also a contender. The practice of ‘migratory beekeeping’ whereby beekeepers travel up to several thousand miles per year, moving their bees from one huge mono-culture crop to another, cell phone radiation & the practice (mainly in the USA) of feeding bees GM corn syrup & soy protein have also been identified as possible causes. However, the pro-GM food lobby point to the fact that most European countries have banned GM crops & yet they still have CCD.

The more enlightened members of the beekeepers’ associations believe that no one particular thing is responsible for CCD. They see the disappearance of the bees as just another ‘canary in the mine’ gasping for breath. Their intuition is that beekeeping practices, such as ‘migratory beekeeping’ & antibiotic use, combined with environmental stresses like pesticides & the lack of vegetation bio-diversity for foraging bees, lead to the bees having depleted immune systems that allow parasitic attacks to cause the final breakdown of the bees.

In April it was announced that microbiologists in Spain had isolated Nosema ceranae (a microsporidian related to Nosema apis) in colonies suffering from depleted populations. The weakened colonies were treated with the antibiotic fumagillin & fully recovered. A USDA bee scientist disputes this however, saying that Nosema ceranae may be a factor but not the sole cause as the fungus has been seen before in colonies that were healthy. The announcement does reek of human hubris though, whereby we assume we can fix every disease with yet another man-made chemical product, stronger & more damaging to nature than the one before.

We may not all die from starvation if all the bees disappear completely, but a large percentage of the population possibly would. The tiny bee is one of the lynchpins that allow us to feed such a large World population of over 6 billion people. A third of all food we eat in Australia is brought to us with the help of bees, equating to $2 billion worth of agriculture according to the CSIRO, who are researching ways of reducing the reliance of Australian plant industries on European honeybees as the principle pollinators of our crops. Our native bees are being studied to see if they can take on the role in the event of what CSIRO see as a likelihood; the collapse of honeybee populations.

We depend on bees enormously, not just for crop pollination but for producing their exsquisite honey, pollinating our colourful & perfumed flowers & for just buzzing around the garden, trees & paddocks while we work, delighting us with their wonderful industriousness & beauty. Their mysterious disappearance is a serious cause for concern. Are we watching yet another human induced extinction or merely a glitch in the matrix of nature? The only thing for sure is that at present, no one knows definitely what is causing CCD, or if they do, they certainly aren’t saying.

Christopher Purcell