MYSTERY ILLNESS KILLING U.S. HONEYBEES

[Anonymous]

Mystery Illness Kills Thousands of U.S. Honeybees
STATE
COLLEGE, Pa. (Feb. 07) – 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.

[Author]

February 12, 2007 at 11:33 AM