Found: a cause of Colony Collapse Disorder [UPDATE] Hotlist

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by Wee Mama

Fri Apr 17, 2009 at 11:23:35 AM PDT
Found: a cause of Colony Collapse Disorder Hotlist


News in recent years about Colony Collapse Disorder of bees raised concerns here over the past two years, reflected in part in Devilstower's diary. Good news! It appears that the cause has been identified, which is the first step to managing or avoiding the disease. A report today in Ars technica summarized research from Environmental Microbiology Reports. Spanish researchers found a parasitic fungus, Nosema ceranae, in two infected hives after eliminating other possible causes. More significantly, they were able to treat other hives with an antifungal, fumagillin, and completely cure the colonies.


Healthy on top, sick colony below


Here's the abstract (permitted by fair use, I believe):

Honeybee colony collapse is a sanitary and ecological worldwide problem. The features of this syndrome are an unexplained disappearance of adult bees, a lack of brood attention, reduced colony strength, and heavy winter mortality without any previous evident pathological disturbances. To date there has not been a consensus about its origins. This report describes the clinical features of two professional bee-keepers affecting by this syndrome. Anamnesis, clinical examination and analyses support that the depopulation in both cases was due to the infection by Nosema ceranae (Microsporidia), an emerging pathogen of Apis mellifera. No other significant pathogens or pesticides (neonicotinoids) were detected and the bees had not been foraging in corn or sunflower crops. The treatment with fumagillin avoided the loss of surviving weak colonies. This is the first case report of honeybee colony collapse due to N. ceranae in professional apiaries in field conditions reported worldwide.

Obviously treating every colony in the world with fumagillin would not be a good idea - too expensive, and certain to lead to resistance. But knowing the cause makes it much more likely that good practices can reduce the incidence, and the fumagillin makes a good back up if hygiene fails.

Thought you all would enjoy getting some good news on this lovely spring day! (Lovely here at least - hope most of you are also enjoying some true spring).

And some eye candy from UCSD:

Russians Saving U.S. from Colony Collapse Disorder

Russian bees are stationed at the White House. (That's a good thing.)

April 14, 2009 at 12:47PM by Kim Flottum


Buzz up!

Here's a thought on the current status of Colony Collapse Disorder. Long ago...well, just over 50 years ago or so, but not too far away from where I am now, a group of University and USDA Honey Bee Scientists gathered to study a problem that had been plaguing beekeepers in all parts of the country for a couple of years. Beekeepers were complaining that they were finding colonies devoid of bees, gone, empty and barren, and nothing was left behind to give a clue as to what had happened. Quick research showed that this wasn't a new problem, and indeed had occurred quite a few times over the years...well, over the years that people had been keeping records about such things.

By the time the scientists had been rallied to do something by concerned beekeepers the situation had already gone on for a couple of seasons and was heading into the third. They wanted to meet it head on for the third year to see what could be done. Of course by the time they got together it was plain that the problem was abating...and in fact it was difficult to find samples to study.

One of the scientists was heard to say that it was a real task to study what they were calling disappearing disease, because every time they got together to study it..."the damn thing disappeared."

This spring, the damn thing seems to have disappeared again. We've looked at why we think this is the case, and, indeed, beekeepers have gone a long way in improving how they keep bees healthy. Better nutrition management, cleaner homes for the bees to live in, safer mite controls being used by beekeepers and of course many of the bees and beekeepers that were susceptible to whatever it was are gone.

Late last week a press release was issued by the White House and the USDA about one more thing that seems to have shown CCD to the door this year: honey bees that have some resistance to one of the suspected precursors of CCD – the varroa mite.
white house garden

The White House and CCD? Yes, the White House, the USDA and CCD.

Down in Baton Rouge, La., there's a USDA Honey Bee Research Lab. There, they've imported and refined several strains of pretty much mongrel bees from eastern Russia that have been living with varroa for over a hundred years. In that time those varroa mites have taken a terrible toll on those bees. But not all of them died. In fact, some have thrived, and it was offspring from these varroa- and tracheal mite-tolerant bees that came to America. After vigorous inspections and extended isolation time to make certain they were disease and pest free, plus a few years of controlled breeding to increase even more this tolerance to mites, they have been released to the beekeepers here that need them. The result is that beekeepers using Russian bees use far fewer (and often no) mite control chemicals to keep their bees healthy. Because of this they spend less money and less time with this aspect of their business, and they have happier bees to boot. Plus, they lose fewer colonies so that cost, too, is reduced. All in all, keeping these bees saves time, money, environmental contamination and reduces or eliminates any threat of hive product problems. And now, there's even a Russian Bee Breeders Association in place to insure quality control. For beekeepers everywhere, the Russians are coming.

And now, apparently, Russians are coming to the White House. This July the White House hive is to get one of these USDA developed Russian Queens so that varroa tolerance will reside in DC, too. The White House and the Secretary of the Department Of Agriculture engineered this late last week, and come July, a Russian will be living at the White House. How sweet is that?

Honeybees in Danger

Sunday 12 April 2009

by: Evaggelos Vallianatos, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Industrial, pesticide-dependent agricultural practices in the United States are creating a death trap for the honeybee and threatening the human-bee symbiotic relationship forged over millenia. (Photo: Getty Images)

When I was teaching at Humboldt State University in northern California 20 years ago, I invited a beekeeper to talk to my students. He said that each time he took his bees to southern California to pollinate other farmers' crops, he would lose a third of his bees to sprays. In 2009, the loss ranges all the way to 60 percent.

Honeybees have been in terrible straits.

A little history explains this tragedy.

For millennia, honeybees lived in symbiotic relationship with societies all over the world.

The Greeks loved them. In the eighth century BCE, the epic poet Hesiod considered them gifts of the gods to just farmers. And in the fourth century of our era, the Greek mathematician Pappos admired their hexagonal cells, crediting them with "geometrical forethought."

However, industrialized agriculture is not friendly to honeybees.

In 1974, the US Environmental Protection Agency licensed the nerve gas parathion trapped into nylon bubbles the size of pollen particles.

What makes this microencapsulated formulation more dangerous to bees than the technical material is the very technology of the "time release" microcapsule.

This acutely toxic insecticide, born of chemical warfare, would be on the surface of the flower for several days. The foraging bee, if alive after its visit to the beautiful white flowers of almonds, for example, laden with invisible spheres of asphyxiating gas, would be bringing back to its home pollen and nectar mixed with parathion.

It is possible that the nectar, which the bee makes into honey, and the pollen, might end up in some food store to be bought and eaten by human beings.

Beekeepers are well aware of what is happening to their bees, including the potential that their honey may not be fit for humans.

Moreover, many beekeepers do not throw away the honey, pollen and wax of colonies destroyed by encapsulated parathion or other poisons. They melt the wax for new combs: And they sell both honey and pollen to the public.

Government "regulators" know about this danger.

An academic expert, Carl Johansen, professor of entomology at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, called the microencapsulated methyl parathion "the most destructive bee poisoning insecticide ever developed."

In 1976, the US Department of Agriculture published a report by one of its former employees, S. E. McGregor, a honeybee expert who documented that about a third of what we eat benefits from honeybee pollination. This includes vegetables, oilseeds and domesticated animals eating bee-pollinated hay.

In 2007, the value of food dependent on honeybees was $15 billion in the United States.

McGregor also pointed out that insect-pollinated legumes collect nitrogen from the air, storing it in their roots and enriching the soil. In addition, insect pollination makes the crops more wholesome and abundant. He advised the farmer he should never forget that "no cultural practice will cause fruit or seed to set if its pollination is neglected."

In addition, McGregor blamed the chemical industry for seducing the farmers to its potent toxins. He said:

"Pesticides are like dope drugs. The more they are used the more powerful the next one must be to give satisfaction" and therein develops the spiraling effect, the pesticide treadmill. The chemical salesman, in pressuring the grower to use his product, practically assumes the role of the "dope pusher." Once the victim, the grower, is "hooked," he becomes a steady and an ever-increasing user.

No government agency listened to McGregor.

The result of America's pesticide treadmill is that now, in 2009, honeybees and other pollinators are moving towards extinction.

In October 2006, the US National Research Council warned of the" "demonstrably downward" trends in the populations of pollinators. For the first time since 1922, American farmers are renting imported bees for their crops. They are even buying bees from Australia.

Honeybees, the National Academies report said, pollinate more than 90 crops in America, but have declined by 30 percent in the last 20 years alone. The scientists who wrote the report expressed alarm at the precipitous decline of the pollinators.

Unfortunately, this made no difference to EPA, which failed to ban the microencapsulated parathion that is so deadly to honeybees.

Bee experts know that insecticides cause brain damage to the bees, disorienting them, making it often impossible for them to find their way home.

This is a consequence of decades of agribusiness warfare against nature and, in time, honeybees. In addition, beekeepers truck billions of bees all over the country for pollination, depriving them of good food, stressing them enormously, and, very possibly, injuring their health.

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Evaggelos Vallianatos, former EPA analyst, is the author of "This Land Is Their Land" and "The Passion of the Greeks.