Category: Insects/pollinators

Intriguing article in today’s Washington Post, Honey, I’m Gone: Abandoned Beehives Are a Scientific Mystery and a Metaphor for Our Tenuous Times.

This post’s title references a quote that is also the lede of the article, recalling how in the  sci-fi novel “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” the dolphins all disappear just before Earth is destroyed to make way for a hyperspatial express route, leaving behind only that message.

Though I’m not sure I buy it (or a lot of what comes out of WaPo these days), the premise of the article is that how we view Colony Collapse Disorder says more about us than about what’s causing the alarming decline of the bees:

If what you’re searching for is an entire spectrum of moral lessons regarding the evils of human behavior, this crisis is even better than global warming. If you hate globalization, then you will doubtless see its evils as patent in the disappearance of the bees. Pesticides? Genetically modified foods? Those, too, are convenient hypotheses in the absence of contradictory information. Even cellphones have been offered as an explanation. If you’re driven crazy by them, then so must be the bees. Isn’t it obvious?

Our fuzzy, hard-working, sweetness-producing icons have become our most powerful Rorschach test.

As go the bees, so go our hopes and fears for the future.

As for the realities of the problem, there’s not much new here. A USDA scientist jokes about bees making crop circles and tells us all the things that apparently aren’t to blame. I take some solace in the notion that the problem seems concentrated on those stressed colonies being shipped all over kingdom come on flatbed trailers, the nation’s ‘hardest working migrants’.

It’s a longish article, but worth a read — or at least skip ahead to the end where the author suggests we take solace in seven of our culture’s great exit lines.

I’m going with the (sarcastic) one from the end of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid:

Good. For a moment there, I thought we were in trouble.

Colony collapse disorder (CCD) continues to get ink all over. This morning, there was a recommended diary on DailyKos pointing to this article in the Organic Consumer Association newsletter. Shorter version: Pushing for larger bees encourages varroa mites. Conventional treatments for the mites and other stresses lead to collapse.

In another story, WVU professor helps develop techniques to reduce threat against honeybees, a West Virginia University apiculturist touts a program to bolster hives that includes lemongrass, spearmint, wintergreen and formic acid.

Sounds refreshing.

Interesting report (I can’t vouch for the credibility) that organic beekeepers aren’t seeing so much colony collapse disorder. Perhaps because they aren’t stressing the bees with antibiotics and pesticides fighting parasites and diseases and aren’t trucking them all over kingdom come, the colonies aren’t collapsing.

I’ve got a bunch of other bee links that I haven’t really had time to explore. Surf away:

Bee Colony Collapse Disorder – Nothing new here. But I was told to keep an eye open for updates here.

Texas A&M CCD info

Mid-Atlantic Apiculture CCD info – Hosted by Penn State

Via CNN: Mysterious honeybee killer could make dinner bland. Key quote:

The top suspects are a parasite, an unknown virus, some kind of bacteria, pesticides, or a one-two combination of the top four, with one weakening the honeybee and the second killing it.A quick experiment with some of the devastated hives makes pesticides seem less likely. In the recent experiment, Pettis and colleagues irradiated some hard-hit hives and reintroduced new bee colonies. More bees thrived in the irradiated hives than in the non-irradiated ones, pointing toward some kind of disease or parasite that was killed by radiation.

The parasite hypothesis has history and some new findings to give it a boost: A mite practically wiped out the wild honeybee in the U.S. in the 1990s. And another new one-celled parasitic fungus was found last week in a tiny sample of dead bees by University of California San Francisco molecular biologist Joe DeRisi, who isolated the human SARS virus.

However, Pettis and others said while the parasite nosema ceranae may be a factor, it cannot be the sole cause. The fungus has been seen before, sometimes in colonies that were healthy.

Then there was this curious twist …

Too dependent on honeybees?

Recently, scientists have begun to wonder if mankind is too dependent on honeybees. The scientific warning signs came in two reports last October.

Read the whole article.

There’s a diary over at DailyKos about a Beltway gathering going on looking at Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

It will be interesting to see what they come up with. But what caught my eye was the writer talking about how a third of the U.S. diet — particularly the tasty crops — depend on pollinators. One crop singled out was asparagus.

Can you think of any crop less dependent on pollinators than asparagus? Oy. I’m glad there is growing concern about pollinator problems. But please don’t compromise your credibility by telling everyone that our asparagus is threatened by CCD.