colony collapse disorder

Now that summer is (almost) here...

Honey bees coming out of almonds in March this year for the most part were looking great. Almonds are a good crop for honey bees. There is lots of nectar and lots of pollen, and usually the weather is moderate ... that is, not too hot, not too dry, not too rainy, not too cold ... so that the bees can fly, eat and be merry. Life is good in an almond orchard in bloom.

After almonds bees go in several different directions. Some go directly to more pollination jobs, usually right there in California, or moving north to Oregon and Washington, even parts of Idaho for more tree fruit work ... apples, peaches, pears, plums and the like. Many of the beekeepers who moved out to California last fall from the Midwest ... the Dakotas, Minnesota, Montana, Colorado, and other locations ... can’t really go home in March because it’s still more winter than spring back home, so they want to wait where the weather if better and there’s bee food to be had. So if they can find a pollination job for six or eight weeks to delay that trip east they not only pick up a few dollars from pollination, but they get to let their bees enjoy an additional early summer nectar and pollen harvest.

This turns out to be less ideal than you might imagine ...

Although as many as 40+% of U.S. bees died last winter, with as many as half of them perishing from whatever causes colony collapse disorder (CCD), not nearly that proportion of U.S. beekeepers experienced these problems. In fact, our estimate is that fewer than 5% of U.S. beekeepers have had a run in with CCD. As you can imagine though, this small number of beekeepers commands a huge number of beehives, thus the disparity...

While I’m estimating, here are some recent figures we have come up with that reflect what the U.S. population of beekeepers is. Analyzing our subscribers, honey board resources, talking to beekeeping supply companies, state regulatory agents and beekeeping association leaders, we conclude that there are just under 1,000 commercial beekeepers in the U.S. These are people who make their living from honey bees... making honey, hiring out for pollination, selling bees in season, making or selling beekeeping supplies, selling beeswax, and raising and selling queen honey bees all can be part of the business. Of these, honey and pollination are generally the most practiced and the most lucrative.

After that we figure there are about 5,000 part-time or side-line beekeepers. These folks run anywhere from 50 to 300 or so colonies, and generally are family run operations, with spouse and children part of the picture. They are saving for college funds, maybe a retirement income, a family business that the kids can be a part of, or as a part-time job that generates serious and necessary income for the family.

The rest of us, the back yard beekeepers, are like back yard gardeners – we are everywhere and there are thousands of us. We figure there are about 90,000 – 95,000 back yard beekeepers in the U.S. today. We have on average 10 or fewer colonies and keep them, yes, in the back yard or in bee yards that are usually close by.

From these calculations then we figure there are about 100,000 or so beekeepers in the U.S., total. Of those, probably 2,500 are big enough to be called serious businesses, another 3,000 – 4,000 pretty serious, and the rest chase honey bees as a hobby or enjoyable pastime.

The beekeepers that lost honey bees last fall and winter to CCD were predominately commercial and large side line beekeepers. Whether that’s because they are the beekeepers who were able to note the causes of their problems (CCD-like symptoms), or just those who were reporting them is unclear. ...

What Happens to Your Food When Beekeepers Go Out of Business (and They Are)

People who keep bees commercially keep them to make a living. They take them far and near to fields and farms so the bees can pollinate the crops they are visiting. This is their most-often discussed activity, now that they are dying in droves and the food they help produce could possibly be reduced. Probably the most cited statistic in the entire Colony Collapse Disorder business is the Cornell study that says honey bees help contribute somewhere in the neighborhood of $15 billion worth of food production in the U.S. on an annual basis. This figure is over eight years old (done in 2000), so with inflation that figure should rightly be moved up to just short of $19 billion today. That’s the real number here.

This figure, however, doesn’t include the money paid to beekeepers for all this effort. ...

One of the most frustrating aspects of dealing with an immediate problem of colony collapse disorder and scientific research is the downtime between experiment, analysis and publication. Scientists are reluctant to steal the thunder of any serious announcement from the publication before it hits the stands. Sometimes they do though, in subtle ways and the people who need that information (the beekeepers) benefit by not having to wait to get information that can help them.

Recent work by the Penn State scientists is a case in point. These scientists tried an experiment where the Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus was introduced to healthy honey bee colonies to see what would happen. It was shown quite dramatically that bees with that exposure pretty much all died. Moreover, they died away from the hive, just like in the cases of Colony Collapse Disorder. After about a month all that remained in the colonies were small clusters, many of them queenless. This certainly makes a case for this virus being extremely pathogenic, and perhaps associated with CCD, say the scientists. But they are quick to add that there’s more going on than just this virus.

And, just released in the June issue of The American Bee Journal were additional findings on the agricultural chemicals investigators found last year when examining components inside beehives. The chemical analyses were painstakingly careful, and thus slow (the old saying, do you want it fast, or do you want it right? comes in here). Samples come from healthy hives, collapsed hives, pollen samples and other in-hive collection points. These results, too, were kind of leaked early because much of the data was distributed at meetings and symposiums so that at least some of the information could be used by those who needed it. Some of it was discussed right here in The Beekeeper a few months ago because I was able to attend some of those symposiums, and thus get the information out early. ...

There’s a lull in the Colony collapse disorder world at the moment. But things have been happening on the government front that are interesting. The $4 million grant we’ve talked about before that’s been waiting is a step closer to being granted as one of the three teams competing for the funds has been chosen to be the golden child. But the fat lady hasn’t sung yet and they have to go and explain more fully what it is they intend to do, and who will be doing it. (Isn’t that what a grant proposal is supposed to do? So who pays for the scientists to go to D.C. and stay at expensive hotels and eat well for a couple three days while all this goes on? Just guess.)

The way this has been handled should be an embarrassment to the USDA because they have mishandled nearly every aspect of this from beginning to end, including who they let bid, and then the reviews of the programs. Their only saving grace is that everyone of the groups vying for the funds are better qualified to handle this operation than those in charge. This certainly leaves a bad taste in the mouths of anyone trying to do business with this government agency. ...

Dr. Eric Mussen, from the University Of California, Davis, is one of the researchers involved with figuring out the cause or causes of Colony Collapse Disorder. He’s been quoted extensively because he is the only bee guy in California, if you can believe that. His experience with commercial beekeepers, commercial queen and package producers and commercial fruit and vegetable growers is unequaled in the U.S., a fact his peers recently acknowledged with the presentation of two awards: He was awarded the title Beekeeper of the Year by the California State Beekeepers Association, the largest such group in the U.S., and he was selected the Extension Entomologist of the Year, by the Pacific Branch of Ent. Society Of America. Besides being well respected, he’s a heck of a nice guy.

In his most recent newsletter he talks about one of the mysteries of Colony Collapse Disorder he has heard about ... here are his comments ...

The information provided here was generated by a survey conducted by the Apiary Inspectors of America. They took the survey in January and February this year, and in the process, gathered information from 18% of the colonies in the U.S.

The survey found that about 35% of all the colonies in the U.S. died last winter. Of those that died, 71% died of natural causes, 29% from symptoms that are suspect colony collapse disorder. Doing the math that comes to at least 10% of all the bees in the U.S. last year died of Colony Collapse Disorder. I believe that is a significant number of colonies.

Unfortunately, the survey had to be conducted early on to get numbers to congress and the surveyers weren’t able to count the bees still under snow banks in the north. Now that the snow has mostly melted, the losses there have been found to be staggering, but it’s not known yet what proportion, if any, died of CCD. In any event, the losses now are estimated, by my survey this week anyway, to be, instead of 35%, closer to 44% of all the U.S. bees died last winter. Again, doing the math, that comes to 1.1 million colonies, just shy of what’s needed for almond pollination next spring. Hmmmm....

This survey, conducted by the Apiary Inspectors of America (AIA) in collaboration with the USDA-ARS Beltsville Bee Lab was done to not only count dead beehives, but to help determine the distribution of various bee parasites and pathogens. Preliminary results from this survey reveal: ...

Yesterday Paul Bedard, a reporter for US News and World Report magazine, had an interview with Ed Schafer, the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, regarding the farm bill, which is getting somewhat messy, or not, depending on who you talk to. Lots of money is still on the table and where it ultimately will go is getting interesting. But one of the questions Paul asked was about funding for Colony Collapse Disorder. If you read his latest you’ll see what the head guy thinks, and that is, the scientists have it under control. Or rather, "We already have it in the labs. We have this great bee guy who's tinkering away in the lab to see what's going on," Schafer said.

A great bee guy? Tinkering? Already have it in the labs? ...

I recently talked to Dr. Jerry Bromenshenk, a professor from the University of Montana and one of the owners of Bee Alert Technology, a company that seeks out problems affecting honey bees, or problems that honey bees can solve. His group has been in the forefront of the projects that have honey bees seeking, and finding, hidden land mines. His group does some good stuff.

He also works a lot with the Military conducting research, some as with the mines just mentioned, but other projects also. I’ll discuss one of these projects in a few weeks involving hardware that is very well adapted to examining biological samples for pathogens, pesticides and the like to discover what’s inside. This has been a difficult project to pull off and all of us are glad to see it finally come to pass.

Jerry has been involved in the Colony Collapse Disorder crisis since the very beginning, and in fact was one of the players who actually named this disorder. What he did was describe what was actually happening to colonies when they came down with this problem. Below, in his own words, is probably the most graphic description of what Colony Collapse Disorder is ... how it begins, the process, and how, ultimately, it ends in a bee yard. I advise you to not continue if you are sensitive to the plight of our honey bees. ...

The Apiary Inspectors Of America commissioned a survey of colony losses this past winter. It is the best count of what’s happened so far this year since it's the only count of what’s happened so far this year. The AIA talked to beekeepers who have under their control about 18% of the nations 2.44 million colonies (about a half million colonies). What they found is not good news. ...

The Dead Don’t Stay Dead, It Seems...

Further investigation into what happens to all those empty beehives after all the bees have died from what is believed to be Colony Collapse Disorder has turned up some interesting answers...and some more questions.

First, we quoted Dennis VanEnglesdorp incorrectly in our last entry here. We took the quote from a newspaper article that quoted him saying that those hives should be burned. Well, they were right, and not right. Dennis did advise hobby beekeepers to not use equipment if they had experienced CCD. That’s because generally hobby beekeepers don’t have many colonies and replacement costs are minimal, considering the risks involved and the work involved in getting them in shape to use again. But, he added, and wasn’t quoted, if you choose to use them, have them irradiated before reintroducing bees into them.

Other researchers too, have suggested irradiation as a preventive measure for equipment after a bout with CCD. Indeed, although early reports indicated that irradiation wasn’t effective, long-term studies have now shown that irradiated equipment will have at least a 20% increase in the amount of brood raised in that equipment.

But this is still a soft number, and beekeepers are using other means to clean out the nasties left behind...as it seems there are some when all the bees are dead. ...

Did your bees die of Colony Collapse Disorder this winter?
That’s the $64,000 question right now. In parts of the U.S. bees are going gangbusters and looking like they are supposed to look in early April ... strong, ready, willing and able. But in the more northern parts of the U.S the season isn’t as advanced and the answers aren’t quite as clear. Of course those colonies that were pushed early for almonds found out how good they were, or weren’t, so they already know ... and what they know is that it isn’t good news again. ...

Last year at this time was when the second round of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) seemed to strike. Or maybe not. Lots of colonies perished last year right about Easter time due to what came to be known as the Easter Freeze. A very atypical (well, it seemed atypical anyway) late frost hit right about now across much of the northern U.S. east of the Mississippi river all the way to Maine, and all down the east coat to northern Florida. It killed everything in bloom, and it killed all the buds that hadn’t bloomed yet, so there was nothing left of the spring blossoms. Nothing. ...

Almond Pollination Exposed Vulnerabilities, and Resilience in Bee Colonies

Despite New Outbreaks of Colony Collapse Disorder, Bees Pass First Test