Over the last year or so a lot of samples have been taken, papers written, talks presented, discoveries made, interviews given ... but no definitive answers discovered.

From what I’ve learned, here’s at some of what’s going on ...

First off, some colonies die every year, in fact some die every month, every week, every day. They always have and always will. Bees are insects subject to the pressures of nature and the real world and they offer a bell curve of tolerance to those natural pressures ... no different than animals everywhere, domestic or wild, large or small. It happens. But because they are under the media microscope at the moment and live in a manmade box under the care of people, blame falls disproportionately on the glamorous and visible Colony Collapse Disorder and its (probably) man made cause. But for some bees in some places, sometimes, let's rule out Colony Collapse Disorder right off.

For a better picture, let’s back up a moment and see what peripheral activities beekeepers have been up to lately ... it’s been an interesting summer ... and it leads back to honey bee colonies collapsing....

Photo: Yeshwant-Chitalkar, in New York City

Elsewhere on this site thedailygreen.com is running Urban Beekeeping Photos. Nearly a hundred beekeepers have submitted dozens of photos of their colonies that live in an urban setting ... that are surviving in town ... showing that these city bees are doing just fine. I'm pretty sure this has never been done before and we hope you enjoy this celebration of bees in the city ... it's a first.

Yet, at the same time, this blog continues to document the march of Colony Collapse Disorder across the land. It's almost, but not quite ... "if it doesn't bleed, it doesn't lead". Spectacular and devastating news events are what get noticed. And for some time now that's a lot of what's been here. And that's because that's what's been happening.

Nobody appreciates the irony of this more than I, believe me. At the same time we are celebrating the life, and documenting the death of our bees. It leaves a strange taste.

The celebration idea was the result of an ongoing discussion the Editor and I have been having that finally came to be ... urban beekeeping is showing up all over, and the attention it needs has never been more important. Urban bees have arrived ... and we want to make sure they stay. In fact, there's a whole chapter on just this subject in the revision of The Backyard Beekeeper coming out next year. It's that important, and it's not been explored in this depth anywhere before.

One way to resolve this imbalance is to ignore one or the other. That's not an option for me. I want to ...

Have you been thinking about keeping bees? After reading more about bees in the last couple of years than in the last 20 has the thought of actually keeping bees gone from a mere whimsy, to ... "That’s something I could do, and I think I’d like to try," and having some in the back yard, or on the deck, or on the roof has become focused, and maybe ... just maybe ... possible.

And newspapers, magazines, shows on TV and even web pages keep showing beekeepers making honey, looking in those hives, and talking about pollination and how good bees are for the environment ... yup, this IS something to try, and they’re doing it in towns and cities and on roof tops and porches and empty lots and backyards, so maybe I can too? But where do you start? You don’t even know any beekeepers, and Home Depot doesn’t carry bee hives, Wal-Mart doesn’t have bee suits, and the farm supply store you pass on the way to work everyday doesn’t have bees for sale. So where? And probably more important, how?

OK ... here’s how ... First, see this earlier Do It Yourself Beekeeping article we did that talks a lot about getting started: Your family and neighbors, the law, hives and hive stands, protective gear, what kind of bees to get and where to get supplies. This is a good grounding in basic beekeeping so be sure and read it, but there’s not much about roof top or vacant-lot-in-the-city beekeeping. And there can be a big difference between city bees and country bees, and you need to know the differences. So read on....

“Lots of things start to make sense now, now that somebody has figured out at least some of the problem”.

That was the first thing that came to mind when I read the report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences about viruses, proteins, malfunctioning ribosomes and Colony Collapse Disorder.

Scientists at the University of Illinois and the USDA, using information gleaned from the newly completed honey bee genome and a tool to arise from that information call a microarray (think of this as a massive screening of a tiny bit of honey bee tissue testing for hundreds, probably more, maladies, all at the same time from the same tissue sample), have found that honey bees from colonies suffering from symptoms of CCD have had the cellular structures in their bodies that manufacture the proteins necessary to combat stresses, pesticides, nutrition problems and more, compromised by viruses. These viruses, and there are many, one of which is the Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus looked at earlier, essentially capture the ribosome function of cells and hijack their capability to produce the components necessary to combat these problems, and force them to produce only more virus proteins. ...

One salient fact has become very clear: Keep bees away from modern agriculture. There isn’t a crop out there that is safe for bees at any time of the year it seems. Corn and soybeans seem to be the most deadly ... and there is a lot of corn and soybeans out there.

Corn

Corn is deadly because most of it is seed-treated with systemic pesticides that move throughout the plant to protect it all season long ... and some winds up in bee-collected pollen that the bees take home to be stored and to kill yet unborn generations of baby bees. (This doesn’t include the possibility of harm to the environment and the people who live in corn areas due to atrazine pollution from corn crop management, but that doesn’t seem to be a bee problem at the moment. However, does your community test for this substance in your drinking water?). The label of the most-used corn chemical treatment even says that it is dangerous for honey bee brood, but that seems to not be an issue ... at least not for farmers, the EPA, or the state departments of agriculture responsible for enforcing label regulations....

It's been quite awhile since there's been anything of substance to say about the condition of the honey bees in this country, or even the rest of the world, relative to Colony Collapse Disorder. Beekeepers and scientists pretty much know what they know ... pesticides are involved, both those from people other than beekeepers, and those applied by beekeepers; viruses are involved, both normal and exotic; diseases are involved, both regular and exotic; nutrition is involved, both enough, and good enough; and of course the root cause ... money, lots of money is involved, both from the research side, and from the beekeeper side.

During the past couple of years, snatches of all this have been revealed in publications by the many beekeeping scientists looking at these various issues, from beekeepers who have made discoveries on their own, and by researchers not even remotely associated with the beekeeping industry, but who have been brought in because they have a technology, a technique, a skill or experience that has helped those involved. Colony Collapse Disorder has brought together, and split apart, a complex and diverse assortment of practical and applied scientists, theoretical and specialized scientists, and everyday beekeepers.

Yet, we still don't have the answer ...

A year ago USDA CSREES (Cooperative State Research Extension Education Service) awarded a $4.1 million grant to a group of university researchers for the express purpose of solving the current honey bee health problems confronting the beekeeping industry. Without actually nailing it down, this was a project to look into the current Colony Collapse Disorder malady and, over four years, find out what was going on. But at the same time the grant was to fund an extensive education program for beekeepers, and to develop as much information as possible so beekeepers could keep their bees healthy, and had a place to go for questions ... and answers. Moreover, 25% of the funds were to go to study non-apis pollinators, such as bumble bees, alfalfa leaf-cutting bees and the like. To date, this is the only government money to be distributed to beekeeping researchers to study this problem other than normal budgetary funds to keep the USDA projects up and running.

So what’s happened in a year? I’m glad you asked, because I wanted to know too. So I ventured to the University of Georgia in Athens to visit with Dr. Keith Delaplane, the leader of this large and varied group studying this large and varied problem. ...

The USDA and the Apiary Inspectors Of America released the results of their annual colony loss survey in late May. Perhaps you saw or heard about the release. This is the third year this survey has been done and a comparison of the three years is enlightening. Unfortunately each year the surveys keep getting more sophisticated, better timed, and have a more focused population. Thus the results are better each year, with more and better data, but it is difficult to compare apples to apples. Nevertheless, we’ll try.

The first, the 2007 survey reported an overall 31.8% loss during the winter and into the spring. That was all beekeepers reporting all losses. That means that nearly 757,000 colonies died in the U.S. that winter because there were 2.442 million colonies in the U.S. that year. Of these, 45% were lost, according to the survey respondents, to Colony Collapse Disorder. That comes to about 340,000 colonies lost to CCD that first year, or, 14% of U. S. bees died of CCD.

In 2008 the survey showed there was an overall loss of 35.2% of the U. S. colonies over winter, or nearly 860,000. That’s up 10% from the previous year. Of these 29% died from CCD, according to the published numbers, or right about a quarter million lost to CCD. That was a downward trend, which was encouraging, if you can think that losing a quarter million colonies is encouraging.

This spring’s survey showed that roughly 29% of the 2.3 million managed colonies were lost overwinter ...

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]]> Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:47:00 EST http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/blogs/bees/bees-white-house-garden-88032302?src=rss http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/blogs/bees/bees-white-house-garden-88032302?src=rss

From the perspective of probably every beekeeper in the U.S., the first day of spring, 2009, should be one of the most memorable in decades. It was on that day that Michelle Obama announced that not only would there be a garden on the White House lawn, the first since FDR was in office, but there would be, yes BEE HIVES!

The chefs at the white house are looking forward to cooking with locally grown fresh vegetables (and sharing what they can’t use with the local food banks), and being able to use honey in some of their recipes. Honey produced right outside their kitchen door.

Mrs Obama readied the garden plot on the first day of spring with the help of a couple dozen local fifth graders. They worked to remove the sod and loosen the soil in preparation of planting of the spring crops. The L-shaped plot will contain year-round vegetables once completely established, with vegetables, berries and other tasty edibles. All will be raised organically.

To complete the garden, two bee hives will be ...

Once a year the National Agricultural Statistics Service, an arm of the Department of Agriculture, counts beehives, how much honey was produced from those beehives during the previous 12 months, how much honey was left from the year before, and how much beekeepers sold their honey for. At the same time they survey honey prices at the wholesale and retail levels and adjust the overall price according to how much was actually sold. Thus, the wholesale price, which is always lower, has a greater influence on the overall price than the retail price which is always higher, but sells less in total amounts. By far the most honey used in this country is used in the baking and industrial markets...think Honey Nut Cheerios, or honey roasted peanuts for instance, and this honey is captured in the industrial sector.

When you read about the precipitous drop in the number of colonies in the U.S. in the past several years, this is where all those numbers come from....

I'm often accused of being overly optimistic. Sometimes that's true. It is today. I listened to those with their heads on straight, with long experience in the field, with years of scientific background ... and they all said basically the same thing. And I even looked at the evidence myself, listened to the bees, watched them fly. The experts said they were in good shape, the bees looked like they were in good shape, and the beekeepers said things were going the way they used to go ... just fine, thanks.

But Colony Collapse Disorder strikes most often right about now, and up until right about now things were going just fine. Finer, in fact than in years. I, in my optimism, listened to all of the experts and all of the beekeepers and even saw all of the improvements ... better nutrition, fewer mite-controlling chemicals, cleaner hives, less pesticide exposure. And it looked good. Really, it did. Or at least it did on the west coast. Mostly, the bees out there were doing fine. And with fewer trees and more bees, suddenly it sounded like the days of old ... the wild, wild west once again.

But it's those east coast bees that that didn't get the message I guess. Florida bees, strong only weeks ago, one operation went from nearly a thousand colonies to a handful ... only 50 or so ... in a mere three weeks. 1,000 to only 50. That's a loss of about 50 a day, two an hour 24 hours a day for three weeks. ...