CCD

Colony Collapse Disorder Wikipedia

• Clothianidin
• Imidacloprid effects on bee population
• Pesticide toxicity to bees
• Bees and toxic chemicals
• Vanishing of the Bees
• Pesticide misuse
• Pollinator decline
• Diseases of the honey bee
• Regent (insecticide)
• Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/05/08/what-biotech-company-blamed-for-bee-collapse-just-bought-leading-bee-research-firm.aspx

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-schiffman/the-fox-monsanto-buys-the_b_1470878.htmlhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-schiffman/the-fox-monsanto-buys-the_b_1470878.html

http://batcountryword.com/index.php/2012/06/11/bringing-it-all-together-our-exhaustive-research-into-honeybee-colony-collapse/

http://batcountryword.com/index.php/2012/06/11/bringing-it-all-together-our-exhaustive-research-into-honeybee-colony-collapse/

Bringing it all together: Our exhaustive research into honeybee colony collapse

Last summer was the first time I grew my own garden. It’s a bit strange that I’ve never grown a garden because my family have been farmers for decades if not centuries. I am actually the first generation who was not a farmer at some point in my life. Growing my own food has made me a bit more observant about “flowering insects” like the honeybee. I remember growing up stepping carefully though my yard in the 70s and 80s. Back then, if we didn’t have shoes on while walking through the grass, we were very likely to be stung by bees pollinating flowers –they were everywhere. This is also true of the less-famous pollinators, butterfly and other bee types. However, last year I didn’t see a single honeybee in my garden, not even on the rose bushes. It was as if they had all vanished. This got me wondering about how low the honeybee population has really sunk and just how screwed we are without them.

When talking about the extinction of honeybees, we are really talking about a total collapse of our food supply except for machine-pollinated veggies courtesy of large food firms such as Monsanto. No other option is available, only artificially pollinated crops; all other food sources will totally collapse. An incredible amount of agricultural crops are nearly, if not completely, dependent on honeybees for pollination. Those 90%-100% dependence on honeybee pollination are apples, avocados, blueberries, cranberries, cherries, kiwi fruit, macadamia nuts, asparagus, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, celery, cucumbers, onions, legume seeds, pumpkins, squash, and sunflowers. Additional crops that are heavily dependent on honeybees include apricot, citrus (oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruit, tangerines, etc.), peaches, pears, nectarines, plums, grapes, brambleberries, strawberries, olives, melon (cantaloupe, watermelon, and honeydew), peanuts, cotton, soybeans, and sugar beets. You get it: there are a lot of fruits and vegetables that need honeybees. Monetarily, honeybee pollination is estimated to generate $15 billion annually. Some estimates are even higher at $20 billion annually due to honeybees increasing yield and quality achieved from pollination and seed production.

That’s how screwed we are, now onto what the hell happened.

Reading several articles on the subject I’ve found a lot of misrepresentations of the phenomenon of “Colony Collapse Disorder” or CCD. Much of the confusion seems to be generated (purposefully or not) by how CCD is defined and what natural factors should not be considered a CCD event. Parasites, protein deficiency, immune problems, radio waves, and pesticides are some of the leading possibilities. Until some recent research from Harvard (which we’ll get to in a minute) none of these options could be proved to cause true CCD. And we’ll see why. Trying to sort out all these details can be confusing and overwhelming. Many of the causes have been trumpeted in a way that seems more convenient than fact-based. For example, viruses, fungi, and mites can all kill Honey Bees when the bees’ immune systems are deficient. Research that focused on the viruses, fungi, or mites however ignored the causal issue, “Why would honeybees have a deficient immune system in the first place?”

One such study from the University of California Davis posited the idea that radio waves interfered with the bees’ internal navigation system. This theory has two problems. 1) Honeybees use polarized light and landmarks to navigate, not radio waves. 2) Radio waves in the atmosphere are constant, but bee colony collapses happened randomly at varied spots and at different times. And there are still small bee colonies kept healthy and populated. How did radio waves (which are ubiquitous) not reach those particular bees? The answer is that the theory put forth by UC Davis stems from a misrepresentation of a German paper. Unfortunately, the misrepresentation persists to this day.

Another predominant line of thinking holds that parasites such as Nosema ceranae (fungal invader of adult bee intestinal tract) and Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus are causing the collapses. On their surface, these look like excellent causes, a lot of research has shown that these intrusive diseases can indeed be fatal for a bee colony. Until we learn that these diseases have been found in bee samples years before the colony collapses began.

Additionally, mites have been cited as the source of colony collapse. The tracheal mites and varroa mites that can cause colony devastation are not present in high enough numbers –probably due to beekeeper mitigation through miticides. And, just like the parasitic diseases, the mites were also present in colonies for decades before the CCD crisis. Even though they put stress on the hives it is doubtful they have caused CCD as it is defined.

For example, according to the Congressional Investigation Report “Honey Bee Colony Collapse Disorder,” dated January 7, 2010: “[Varroa parasitism] is associated with viral pathogens and if left untreated can cause colony mortalities usually within six months to two years after the initial infestation.” Six months to two years? That is not a sudden collapse! This fact alone should be enough to debunk the mite theory. The report also (quite contradictory to its mite assessment) states, “How CCD Differs from Past Bee Colony Losses: Current bee colony losses seem to differ from past losses in that colony losses are occurring mostly because bees are failing to return to the hive (which is largely uncharacteristic of bee behavior); bee colony losses have been rapid; colony losses are occurring in large numbers.” The fact that CCD colonies seem to be susceptible to several pathogens point to a systemic problem that compromises the immune-system and not any single one of these pathogens.

Hello neonicotinoid insecticides!

The real culprits in the CCD events are two pesticides produced by Takeda Chemical Industries and Bayer AG. These pesticides are used and distributed by Monsanto. One of the pesticides is called Imidacloprid, the other is Clothianidin. The pesticides are “neonicotinoid” in that they’re very similar in structure to nicotine.

Clothianidin acts on the Central Nervous System. In particular, it’s an agonist of acetylcholine. (Agonist refers to propagating or potentiating activity of a neuron.) Basically, Clothianidin increases the firing or effects of that neuro-chemical Acetylcholine. Acetylcholine affects several areas of the brain and could easily affect a bee’s navigation system.

Germany suffered catastrophic colony collapses in 2007 after the use of Clothianidin, and more recently Imidacloprid, to halt a rootworm epidemic. After use of these pesticides, Germany experienced 330 million bee deaths. “According to the German Research Center for Cultivated Plants, 29 out of 30 dead bees had been killed, in the 2008 study, by direct contact with clothianidin.”

And, even small amounts of these pesticides harm bees. In a study appearing in the June issue of the Bulletin of Insectology from Harvard School of Public Health, Dr. Alex Lu, conclusively links Imidacloprid to CCD. Talking about his study in the Harvard Gazette, Dr. Lu states, “[it] apparently doesn’t take much of the pesticide to affect the bees. Our experiment included pesticide amounts below what is normally present in the environment.”

The dangers of these pesticides have also been known for some time by the EPA. From a document obtained through Freedom of Information Act request we find that the EPA started studying neonicotinoids in 2000 and found that they may be harmful to bees as early as 2003. From one such study:

Clothianidin’s major risk concern is to nontarget insects (that is, honey bees). Clothianidin is a neonicotiniod insecticide that is both persistent and systemic. Acute toxicity studies to honey bees show that clothianidin is highly toxic on both a contact and an oral basis. Although EFED does not conduct RQ based assessments on non-target insects, information from standard tests and field studies, as well as incident reports involving other neonicotinoids insecticides (e.g., imidacloprid) suggest the potential for long term toxic risk to honey bees and other beneficial insects.

In another action, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) had to sue the EPA in order to get data that was being held that linked Monsanto and Bayer to CCD. From the letter:

EPA has failed to respond to NRDC’s Freedom of Information Act request for agency records concerning the toxicity of pesticides to bees, forcing the legal action … [I]n 2003, EPA granted a registration to a new pesticide manufactured by Bayer CropScience under the condition that Bayer submit studies about its product’s impact on bees. EPA has refused to disclose the results of these studies, or if the studies have even been submitted. The pesticide in question, clothianidin, recently was banned in Germany due to concerns about its impact on bees. A similar insecticide was banned in France for the same reason a couple of years before. In the United States, these chemicals still are in use despite a growing consensus among bee specialists that pesticides, including clothianidin and its chemical cousins, may contribute to CCD.

To further hide their tracks, on September 28, 2011 Monsanto bought out some of those bee specialists –specifically the leading research firm Beeologics, a company dedicated to the study and protection of honeybees.

There is another issue with Colony Collapse Disorder that is not readily apparent. Honeybees are the only insect we’ve so far noticed disappearing because of a multi-billion dollar industry surrounding their well-being. What other insect impacts are we causing? Are other pollinating insects, like the butterfly, also going extinct? What about environmental impacts on birds and other animals we depend upon? How about ourselves?

Let’s examine some of our own mysterious diseases. Could they be linked to the same neonicotinoid insecticides? Food allergies have increased in US children by two to five times in the past 30 years. Developmental disorders, including Autism, have increased by a similar percentage in the same timeframe. There’s so far no link to neonicotinoid pesticides and our own allergies and diseases. Seeing as how I’m a neuroscience researcher allow me to leave the reservation for a minute and get “science-y.” Acetylcholine release from peripheral parasympathetic system decreases the release of proinflammatory cytokines. This suggests that a mechanism for a neurotoxin in our food might affect our immune system during fetal development. I don’t know if that hypothesis will pan out, but at the very least, shouldn’t we consider investigating these questions? We should definitely halt the widespread use of these chemicals until bee populations recover and in the meantime we could study how they possibly harm us humans.

Here comes the politics.

Another question you may be asking yourself is how the government, specifically the EPA, knew about the chemically-induced Colony Collapse Disorder and allowed it to continue. Just like the research firm, Beelogics, everyone has their price –no matter if they’re Democrat or Republican. From Opensecrets.org, individual Monsanto contributions to politicians (only as of June of this year):

• Aaron Schock (R)
• Adam Kinzinger (R)
• Adrian Smith (R)
• Ben Nelson (D)
• Bennie G. Thompson (D)
• Billy Long (R)
• Blaine Luetkemeyer (R)
• Bob Goodlatte (R)
• Bobby Schilling (R)
• Bruce Braley (D)
• Chuck Grassley (R)
• Claire McCaskill (D)
• Colleen Hanabusa (D)
• Collin C. Peterson (D)
• Cory Gardner (R)
• David Loebsack (D)
• Deborah Ann Stabenow (D)
• Devin Nunes (R)
• Emanuel Cleaver (D)
• Frank D. Lucas (R)
• Hal Rogers (R)
• Jack Kingston (R)
• James E. Risch (R)
• Joe Courtney (D)
• John Boozman (R)
• Larry Kissell (D)
• Lynn Jenkins (R)
• Marlin Stutzman (R)
• Mike Crapo (R)
• Mike Simpson (R)
• Pat Roberts (R)
• Richard G. Lugar (R)
• Rick Berg (R)
• Roy Blunt (R)
• Sam Graves (R)
• Saxby Chambliss (R)
• Steve Fincher (R)
• Tim Huelskamp (R)
• Timothy Johnson (R)
• Todd Akin (R)
• Todd Rokita (R)
• Tom Harkin (D)
• Tom Latham (R)
• Vicky Hartzler (R)
• William L. Clay Jr. (D)

How about our President of “change?” He’s appointed several Monsanto people to his administration. Let’s look at a lineup of who Obama promoted from Monsanto lackey to government overseer. As reported by Organic Consumer’s Association:

• Tom Vilsack, USDA Secretary: As Iowa Governor, Tom Vilsack was a leading advocate for Monsanto, genetic engineering, and factory farming.
• Michael Taylor, Senior Adviser to the Food and Drug Administration Commissioner on Food Safety: The Vice President for Public Policy at Monsanto Corp. from 1998 until 2001, Taylor exemplifies the revolving door between the food industry and the government agencies that regulate it.
• Roger Beachy, Director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture: Beachy is a long time Monsanto collaborator who heads an institute which is effectively a Monsanto front.
• Islam Siddiqui, Chief Agricultural Negotiator for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative: Islam Siddiqui…was Vice President of CropLife America, the notorious lobbying group that represents pesticide and genetic engineering companies, including the six multinational corporations that control 75% of the global agrichemical market: Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, BASF, Dow and DuPont.
• Elena Kagan, Supreme Court Justice: As President Obama’s Solicitor General, Kagan argued Monsanto’s side against organic farmers in the Roundup Ready alfalfa case … Kagan joined a Supreme Court that includes a former Monsanto lawyer, Clarence Thomas.

The conclusion: What can we do?

Nothing, you’re fucked. Monsanto owns the government, makes a profit now from honeybee-killing practices, and stand to make a huge payoff from honeybee extinction. Nothing will change that and it means total economic and food-supply devastation. After that, you need to learn to grow your own food and tend your own bees or at least know people who can.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-honeybee-deaths-linked-seed-insecticide.html

Honeybee deaths linked to seed insecticide exposure

Honeybee populations have been in serious decline for years, and Purdue University scientists may have identified one of the factors that cause bee deaths around agricultural fields.

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Analyses of bees found dead in and around hives from several apiaries over two years in Indiana showed the presence of neonicotinoid insecticides, which are commonly used to coat corn and soybean seeds before planting. The research showed that those insecticides were present at high concentrations in waste talc that is exhausted from farm machinery during planting.

The insecticides clothianidin and thiamethoxam were also consistently found at low levels in soil - up to two years after treated seed was planted - on nearby dandelion flowers and in corn pollen gathered by the bees, according to the findings released in the journal PLoS One this month.

"We know that these insecticides are highly toxic to bees; we found them in each sample of dead and dying bees," said Christian Krupke, associate professor of entomology and a co-author of the findings.

The United States is losing about one-third of its honeybee hives each year, according to Greg Hunt, a Purdue professor of behavioral genetics, honeybee specialist and co-author of the findings. Hunt said no one factor is to blame, though scientists believe that others such as mites and insecticides are all working against the bees, which are important for pollinating food crops and wild plants.

"It's like death by a thousand cuts for these bees," Hunt said.

Krupke and Hunt received reports that bee deaths in 2010 and 2011 were occurring at planting time in hives near agricultural fields. Toxicological screenings performed by Brian Eitzer, a co-author of the study from the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, for an array of pesticides showed that the neonicotinoids used to treat corn and soybean seed were present in each sample of affected bees. Krupke said other bees at those hives exhibited tremors, uncoordinated movement and convulsions, all signs of insecticide poisoning.

Seeds of most annual crops are coated in neonicotinoid insecticides for protection after planting. All corn seed and about half of all soybean seed is treated. The coatings are sticky, and in order to keep seeds flowing freely in the vacuum systems used in planters, they are mixed with talc. Excess talc used in the process is released during planting and routine planter cleaning procedures.

"Given the rates of corn planting and talc usage, we are blowing large amounts of contaminated talc into the environment. The dust is quite light and appears to be quite mobile," Krupke said.

Krupke said the corn pollen that bees were bringing back to hives later in the year tested positive for neonicotinoids at levels roughly below 100 parts per billion.

"That's enough to kill bees if sufficient amounts are consumed, but it is not acutely toxic," he said.

On the other hand, the exhausted talc showed extremely high levels of the insecticides - up to about 700,000 times the lethal contact dose for a bee.

"Whatever was on the seed was being exhausted into the environment," Krupke said. "This material is so concentrated that even small amounts landing on flowering plants around a field can kill foragers or be transported to the hive in contaminated pollen. This might be why we found these insecticides in pollen that the bees had collected and brought back to their hives."

Krupke suggested that efforts could be made to limit or eliminate talc emissions during planting.

"That's the first target for corrective action," he said. "It stands out as being an enormous source of potential environmental contamination, not just for honeybees, but for any insects living in or near these fields. The fact that these compounds can persist for months or years means that plants growing in these soils can take up these compounds in leaf tissue or pollen."

Although corn and soybean production does not require insect pollinators, that is not the case for most plants that provide food. Krupke said protecting bees benefits agriculture since most fruit, nut and vegetable crop plants depend upon honeybees for pollination. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates the value of honeybees to commercial agriculture at $15 billion to $20 billion annually.

Hunt said he would continue to study the sublethal effects of neonicotinoids. He said for bees that do not die from the insecticide there could be other effects, such as loss of homing ability or less resistance to disease or mites.

"I think we need to stop and try to understand the risks associated with these insecticides," Hunt said.

ABSTRACT

Christian H. Krupke, Greg J. Hunt, Brian D. Eitzer, Gladys Andino, Krispn Given

Populations of honeybees and other pollinators have declined worldwide in recent years. A variety of stressors have been implicated as potential causes, including agricultural pesticides. Neonicotinoid insecticides, which are widely used and highly toxic to honeybees, have been found in previous analyses of honeybee pollen and comb material. However, the routes of exposure have remained largely undefined. We used LC/MS-MS to analyze samples of honeybees, pollen stored in the hive and several potential exposure routes associated with plantings of neonicotinoid treated maize. Our results demonstrate that bees are exposed to these compounds and several other agricultural pesticides in several ways throughout the foraging period. During spring, extremely high levels of clothianidin and thiamethoxam were found in planter exhaust material produced during the planting of treated maize seed. We also found neonicotinoids in the soil of each field we sampled, including unplanted fields. Plants visited by foraging bees (dandelions) growing near these fields were found to contain neonicotinoids as well. This indicates deposition of neonicotinoids on the flowers, uptake by the root system, or both. Dead bees collected near hive entrances during the spring sampling period were found to contain clothianidin as well, although whether exposure was oral (consuming pollen) or by contact (soil/planter dust) is unclear. We also detected the insecticide clothianidin in pollen collected by bees and stored in the hive. When maize plants in our field reached anthesis, maize pollen from treated seed was found to contain clothianidin and other pesticides; and honeybees in our study readily collected maize pollen. These findings clarify some of the mechanisms by which honeybees may be exposed to agricultural pesticides throughout the growing season. These results have implications for a wide range of large-scale annual cropping systems that utilize neonicotinoid seed treatments.

Provided by Purdue University 

http://video.pbs.org/video/995224587

Help Save The Bees

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/silence-of-the-bees/video-full-episode/251/#.TyqPjUzybKc.google

http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2010/10/bee-research/

http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2010/10/bee-research/

SEEB!!!

LONDON, England (CNN) -- A British consortium pledged Tuesday to spend up to £10 million ($14.5 million) in research grants to find out what is causing a serious decline in bees and other pollinating insects.

Bee populations have recently seen sharp declines across the United States, Canada, and Europe.

Those insects -- including honey bees, bumble bees, butterflies and moths -- play an essential role in pollinating many vital crops, but their numbers have been declining steadily in recent years, scientists say.

In the United Kingdom alone, the number of pollinators has fallen between 10 and 15 percent in the past two years, according to the Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council (BBSRC), a government-sponsored research group.

"This funding will give some of Britain's world-class researchers the chance to identify the causes of the decline we're seeing in bee numbers, and that will help us to take the right action to help," British Environment Secretary Hilary Benn said in a statement.

The Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs and the BBSRC are each committing more than £2 million ($2.9 million) to the initiative. Also pledging funding are the Natural Environment Research Council, partly funded by the British government; the Wellcome Trust, a medical research charity; and the Scottish government.

Together, the group plans to put out a call for researchers to apply for the funding, and will decide which researchers will get the money, up to £10 million, said Matt Goode, a spokesman for the BBSRC.

"What we're hoping for is that across the £10 million, we will fund scientists who will be able to look at the entire system -- environmental factors, social factors, agricultural factors -- to address this problem as a whole," Goode told CNN. "We want to build a new community of pollinator scientists that can keep on top of this for the future as well."

Bee populations have recently seen sharp declines across the United States, Canada, and Europe, but the reasons are not fully understood, the British Beekeepers' Association has said.

New diseases and pests could be part of the problem, as could habitat loss, the inappropriate use of chemicals in farming, and poor weather conditions, the association said in a January report on the problems.

The declines could have a serious effect on food security because bees are essential to pollination. In the early spring, honey bees are the only pollinators present in substantial numbers, so they are particularly important for early flowering crops like fruit, the association says.

As an example, bees are 90-percent responsible for pollinating apple crops, the beekeepers' association says.

"It is generally held that one in three mouthfuls of the food that we eat is bee-pollinated, and bees likewise play an immeasurable part in providing food for our wildlife," the report said. "Colony losses thus have a significant impact on food production and sustainability."

Without effective pollination, the planet faces higher food costs and potential shortages, BBSRC Chief Executive Douglas Kell said. The funding can help scientists understand why bee populations are declining and how the decline can be stopped, he said.

The decline of bees is especially acute in the United Kingdom, because the the vast majority of honey bee colonies are managed by amateur beekeepers who operate for pleasure rather than profit, the beekeepers' association says.

In the United States and other countries, there are substantial commercial beekeeping sectors with enough financial backing to regenerate lost honey bee colonies, the association says. But in Britain, amateurs who have four or five colonies cannot recover in the face of substantial losses and may have to give up their hobby.

Such losses naturally have an impact on the availability of honey, the honey bee's primary product. The United Kingdom already imports more than 80 percent of its honey, the association says, so world shortages would make it even harder to find -- and more expensive to buy -- in Britain.

"The devastating effect that this decline may have on our environment would almost certainly have a serious impact on our health and well-being," said Mark Walport, director of the Wellcome Trust. "Without pollinating insects, many important crops and native plants would be severely harmed."

Alarm bells were raised in 2007 when scientists noted a phenomenon in America called "Colony Collapse Disorder" (CCD), the beekeepers' association said. The phenomenon sees worker bees suddenly leaving the hives and never returning, and it has affected billions of bees across the United States.

"If a bee leaves the hive and can't find its way back then it's dead. If a lot of bees do that, then the colony is dead," explained Chris Deaves of Twickenham Apiary in southwest London.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded $4.1 million last year to scientists across the country to find out what is causing the decline.

"One of the suspected causes of CCD is the intense ways that we manage bees in the 21st century," said Keith Delaplane, a professor at the University of Georgia who is taking part in the study. "Beehives are moved, put on pallets, loaded on trucks, moved overnight 500 miles and set down some other place. They are constantly in stimulating foraging mode."

The use of chemicals to control bee parasites may also be contributing to the problem, he told CNN.

Colony Collapse Disorder and cow Urine?

Trying to imagine a world without bees is not an easy task. Sure you wouldn’t have them buzzing around every time you ate lunch outside and your kids would be safe from painful stings during summer adventures but would we really notice if they went missing?

Would it really affect your life if tomorrow you woke up, turned on the news and realized that all the bees had just disappeared?

The answer is yes. Your life would be drastically affected if they were to disappear.

Considering that bees are responsible for about 30% of the food supply in the U.S. alone, I’d say that we depend on them more than one might realize.

The honeybee population has dropped by half over the last 50 years. While many are baffled by the incredible decrease, others contribute it mainly to mites and pesticides.

Not only would we lose fruits and vegetables that the honeybee pollinates but the Leafcutter bee and Alkali bee, which pollinate alfalfa, are also in danger. This poses a major threat to the meat supply.
A New Hope For The Bee Population?

There have been recent reports out of India about the use of cow urine to control microbial diseases in bee larva. Yes, you read that correctly. Researchers have been spraying the eggs with cow urine, which not only controls microbial disease during the rearing processes but also makes the colony work more efficiently by removing the unhealthy larva. The cow urine seems to be an efficient, safe alternative to the medicines that are currently used to treat microbial disease.

While this sounds a little unconventional for many, it could be a major step in helping increase the honeybee population.

GREENHOUSE BUMBLEBEE PARASITES

The researchers then sampled wild bumblebee populations around the greenhouses, catching bees in butterfly nets, holding them in vials and taking them back to a laboratory to screen for pathogens, including testing their feces.

The patterns that had been predicted by their mathematical model were borne out by studying the wild bees, they said.

Most of the parasites in the wild bumblebees were found to be at normal levels except for one intestinal parasite known as Crithidia bombi that is common in commercial bee colonies but typically absent in wild bumblebees.

The researchers found that up to half of wild bumblebees near the greenhouses were infected with this parasite.

"All of the different species of bumblebees that we sampled around greenhouses showed the same pattern: really high levels of infection near greenhouses and then declining levels of infection as you moved out," said Michael Otterstatter of the University of Toronto, one of the researchers.

"It was quite obvious that this was coming from the greenhouses and it was a general adverse effect on the bumblebees," Otterstatter added in a telephone interview.

He said the parasite weakens and often kills bees. The "spillover" of disease from commercial colonies may be a factor in the decline of bee populations in North America, he added.

The study, published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE, can be read here

(Editing by Maggie Fox and Sandra Maler

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/05/06/disappearing.bees.ap/index.html

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- A survey of bee health released Tuesday revealed a grim picture, with 36.1 percent of the nation's commercially managed hives lost since last year.
art.bee.gi.jpg

Bees are dying at unsustainable levels, the president of the Apiary Inspectors of America says.

Last year's survey commissioned by the Apiary Inspectors of America found losses of about 32 percent.

As beekeepers travel with their hives this spring to pollinate crops around the country, it's clear the insects are buckling under the weight of new diseases, pesticide drift and old enemies like the parasitic varroa mite, said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, president of the group.

This is the second year the association has measured colony deaths across the country. This means there aren't enough numbers to show a trend, but clearly bees are dying at unsustainable levels and the situation is not improving, said vanEngelsdorp, also a bee expert with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.

"For two years in a row, we've sustained a substantial loss," he said. "That's an astonishing number. Imagine if one out of every three cows, or one out of every three chickens, were dying. That would raise a lot of alarm."

The survey included 327 operators who account for 19 percent of the country's approximately 2.44 million commercially managed beehives. The data is being prepared for submission to a journal.

About 29 percent of the deaths were due to colony collapse disorder, a mysterious disease that causes adult bees to abandon their hives. Beekeepers who saw CCD in their hives were much more likely to have major losses than those who didn't.

"What's frightening about CCD is that it's not predictable or understood," vanEngelsdorp said.

On Tuesday, Pennsylvania Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff announced that the state would pour an additional $20,400 into research at Pennsylvania State University looking for the causes of CCD. This raises emergency funds dedicated to investigating the disease to $86,000.

The issue also has attracted federal grants and funding from companies that depend on honeybees, including ice-cream maker Haagen-Dazs.

Because the berries, fruits and nuts that give about 28 of Haagen-Dazs' varieties flavor depend on honeybees for pollination, the company is donating up to $250,000 to CCD and sustainable pollination research at Penn State and the University of California, Davis.

Honey Bees!

Colony Collapse Disorder

Honey bees

http://bushfarms.com/bees.htm

Scientists find clue in mystery of the vanishing bees

Colony collapse disorder has killed millions of bees

Scientists suspect a virus may combine with other factors to collapse colonies

Disorder first cropped up in 2004, as bees were imported from Australia

$15 billion in U.S. crops each year dependent on bees for pollination


(CNN) -- A virus found in healthy Australian honey bees may be playing a role in the collapse of honey bee colonies across the United States, researchers reported Thursday.


Honey bees walk on a moveable comb hive at the Bee Research Laboratory, in Beltsville, Maryland.

Colony collapse disorder has killed millions of bees -- up to 90 percent of colonies in some U.S. beekeeping operations -- imperiling the crops largely dependent upon bees for pollination, such as oranges, blueberries, apples and almonds.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says honey bees are responsible for pollinating $15 billion worth of crops each year in the United States. More than 90 fruits and vegetables worldwide depend on them for pollination.

Signs of colony collapse disorder were first reported in the United States in 2004, the same year American beekeepers started importing bees from Australia.

The disorder is marked by hives left with a queen, a few newly hatched adults and plenty of food, but the worker bees responsible for pollination gone.


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The virus identified in the healthy Australian bees is Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV) -- named that because it was discovered by Hebrew University researchers.

Although worker bees in colony collapse disorder vanish, bees infected with IAPV die close to the hive, after developing shivering wings and paralysis. For some reason, the Australian bees seem to be resistant to IAPV and do not come down with symptoms.

Scientists used genetic analyses of bees collected over the past three years and found that IAPV was present in bees that had come from colony collapse disorder hives 96 percent of the time.

But the study released Thursday on the Science Express Web site, operated by the journal Science, cautioned that collapse disorder is likely caused by several factors.

"This research give us a very good lead to follow, but we do not believe IAPV is acting alone," said Jeffery S. Pettis of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Bee Research Laboratory and a co-author of the study. "Other stressors on the colony are likely involved."

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This could explain why bees in Australia may be resistant to colony collapse.

"There are no cases ... in Australia at all," entomologist Dave Britton of the Australian Museum told the Sydney Morning Herald last month. "It is a Northern Hemisphere phenomenon."

Bee ecology expert and University of Florida professor Jamie Ellis said earlier this year that genetic weakness bred into bees over time, pathogens spread by parasites and the effects of pesticides and pollutants might be other factors.

Researchers also say varroa mites affect all hives on the U.S. mainland but are not found in Australia.

University of Georgia bee researcher Keith S. Delaplane said Thursday the study offers a warning -- and hope.

"One nagging problem has been a general inability to treat or vaccinate bees against viruses of any kind," said Delaplane, who has been trying to breed bees resistant to the varroa mite.

"But in the case of IAPV, there is evidence that some bees carry genetic resistance to the disorder. This is yet one more argument for beekeepers to use honey bee stocks that are genetically disease- and pest-resistant."

Bee researchers will now look for stresses that may combine to kill bees.

"The next step is to ascertain whether IAPV, alone or in concert with other factors, can induce CCD [colony collapse disorder] in healthy bees," said Ian Lipkin, director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

Besides the Columbia and USDA researchers, others involved in the study released Thursday include researchers from Pennsylvania State University, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, the University of Arizona and 454 Life Sciences.