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HONEY BEES DISAPPEARING: STILL A PROBLEM
Discovery News
The 2010 prognosis for honey bees doesn't look good, according to Jeff Pettis, Research Leader at the USDA Bee Lab.
Although hard data won't be available until April, preliminary surveys of our nation's beekeepers suggest that at least as many bee colonies have died off over the winter as they have the last few years -- and possibly even more than in years past -- thanks to Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD.
I last spoke with Pettis in 2007, when I visited his lab as they researched the cause of CCD. Back then, they were pretty optimistic about finding the cause, but three years later answers are still elusive. I spoke to him this week about the state of the investigation.
Jeff Pettis: “We obviously think it’s more complicated than we first believed as in we don’t believe that we’re looking for a single virulent pathogen, although that can’t totally be ruled out. At first we were thinking that we’d find a single causative agent, a virulent pathogen sweeping through the bee population, and that doesn’t appear to be the case.”
So what's causing the die offs?
Pettis says it's looking more and more like there are several factors working in tandem to kill off the bees. They've found that colonies with CCD have an abundance of bacteria, viruses and a specific fungal disease, but none of these items alone can be singled out as the cause.
They've identified some plausible contributors to CCD and they’re about to test them out. This means they’ll try to recreate CCD in live colonies in the hopes of finding the right mix of factors. If they can accurately recreate CCD, they can better understand what's causing the die offs.
And here's the really bad news: This is the fourth year surveying honey bee losses across the U.S. In 2007, beekeepers lost 32 percent of their colonies. In 2008 they lost 36 percent. In 2009, 29 percent. Pettis suspects the 2010 numbers will be as bad or worse than these previous surveys.
In a normal year, about 15 to 20 percent of bee colonies will die off. With CCD increasing, those numbers rise by a third or more. Beekeepers are spending most of their time splitting healthy colonies in half and nursing those colonies back to strength in order to meet the nation’s pollination needs.
If there’s good news to report, it’s that with the ongoing national attention being given to CCD, bee researchers are getting more assistance from their scientific counterparts in other disciplines, as well as more funding from Congress to help sort it out. Read more on http://news.discovery.com/animals/honey-bees-disappearing-still-a-problem.html or
Although hard data won't be available until April, preliminary surveys of our nation's beekeepers suggest that at least as many bee colonies have died off over the winter as they have the last few years -- and possibly even more than in years past -- thanks to Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD.
I last spoke with Pettis in 2007, when I visited his lab as they researched the cause of CCD. Back then, they were pretty optimistic about finding the cause, but three years later answers are still elusive. I spoke to him this week about the state of the investigation.
Jeff Pettis: “We obviously think it’s more complicated than we first believed as in we don’t believe that we’re looking for a single virulent pathogen, although that can’t totally be ruled out. At first we were thinking that we’d find a single causative agent, a virulent pathogen sweeping through the bee population, and that doesn’t appear to be the case.”
So what's causing the die offs?
Pettis says it's looking more and more like there are several factors working in tandem to kill off the bees. They've found that colonies with CCD have an abundance of bacteria, viruses and a specific fungal disease, but none of these items alone can be singled out as the cause.
They've identified some plausible contributors to CCD and they’re about to test them out. This means they’ll try to recreate CCD in live colonies in the hopes of finding the right mix of factors. If they can accurately recreate CCD, they can better understand what's causing the die offs.
And here's the really bad news: This is the fourth year surveying honey bee losses across the U.S. In 2007, beekeepers lost 32 percent of their colonies. In 2008 they lost 36 percent. In 2009, 29 percent. Pettis suspects the 2010 numbers will be as bad or worse than these previous surveys.
In a normal year, about 15 to 20 percent of bee colonies will die off. With CCD increasing, those numbers rise by a third or more. Beekeepers are spending most of their time splitting healthy colonies in half and nursing those colonies back to strength in order to meet the nation’s pollination needs.
If there’s good news to report, it’s that with the ongoing national attention being given to CCD, bee researchers are getting more assistance from their scientific counterparts in other disciplines, as well as more funding from Congress to help sort it out. Read more on http://news.discovery.com/animals/honey-bees-disappearing-still-a-problem.html or
more links to go to about bees:
Honey Bee Facts
Did You Know?
About the Honey Bee
Approximately one third of all the food Americans eat is directly or indirectly derived from honey bee pollination. Some crops pollinated are cucumbers, almonds, carrot seed, melons, apricots, cherries, pears, apples, prunes, plums, pluots, seed alfalfa, cantaloupe, seed onions, avocados, kiwi, blueberries, cranberries, etc.- There are three members of a honey bee colony:
- Queen - mother to all the bees in the colony; she is a fertile female.
- Worker - an infertile female that performs the labor tasks of the colony, including feed preparation, guarding the hive, feeding the queens, drones and brood, and heating and cooling the hive.
- Drone - the male that starts out as an unfertilized egg. Its only purpose in the colony is to mate with a virgin queen. They live to mate with the queen, but not more than one in a thousand get the opportunity to mate.
- On average, a worker bee in the summer lasts six to eight weeks. Their most common cause of death is wearing their wings out. During that six to eight-week period, their average honey production is 1/12 of a teaspoon. In that short lifetime, they fly the equivalent of 1 1/2 times the circumference of the earth.
- The peak population of a colony of honeybees is usually at mid-summer (after spring buildup) and results in 60,000 to 80,000 bees per colony. A good, prolific queen can lay up to 3,000 eggs per day.
- Drones fly on United Airlines. This is a corny joke amongst beekeepers because of the way queens and drones mate. When a queen is five to six days old, she is ready to mate. She puts out a pheromone scent to attract the males and takes off in the air. The males from miles around smell the scent and instantly volunteer in the mating chase, which is performed in the air.
Basic Beekeeping
- Basic beekeeping simplified is having:
- New, viable queens
- Feed (natural or artificial)
- Good, sound equipment
- Disease-free hives (good medication program or integrated pest management)
- When processing honey from a beehive, a good rule of thumb is for every 60 pounds of honey produced one (1) pound of beeswax will be made (1 to 60 ratio).
- In order to manipulate population dynamics, the timing of hive management is critical, such as the splitting of hives just prior to swarming season. Also, feeding syrup and pollen supplement at least 21 days prior to a pollination inspection or honey flow induces the queen to lay eggs.
information provided courtesy of ABF member Lance Sundberg