The Latest Buzz on CCD
You probably would have had to spend the better part of the past year in a cave somewhere to have missed the news that something's wrong with honeybees. The strange case of the disappearing honeybees — a phenomenon formally known as "Colony Collapse Disorder," or CCD — has been all over everywhere, from newspapers and magazines to prime-time television news programs.
There have been almost as many theories regarding the cause of CCD as there have been vanished bees; everything from cell phone usage and global warming to the impending end of the world has been blamed.
How serious is CCD? Some beekeepers reported losses of 30 to 90 percent of their hives during the 2006 winter, as opposed to the typical winter loss rate of about 25 percent. During this past winter, beekeepers reported losses of about 36 percent, but only about one-third of those losses were attributed to CCD. Thirty-six percent doesn't sound good—but bear in mind that it's not that far beyond the normal loss rate of 25 percent.
Still, this problem needs a solution, and fortunately for all of us, the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) has some of the world's top bee experts working on it. Those experts have already said that we can rule out cell phones and the end of the world as the culprits.
There's no doubt that we need the bees, because they're essential for pollinating crops. In fact, bees add more than $15 billion in value annually to some 130 crops, including high-value specialty crops like berries, nuts, fruits and vegetables.
But the experts whose business it is to know about such things say that we're not in any immediate danger of starving because of the bee disappearances. There were definitely enough bees available to provide all the pollination needed in 2007, and there's no pollination crisis anticipated for this year.
Still, it's obviously not a good thing to have our honeybees disappearing, and the ARS scientists are determined to crack this mystery. They strongly suspect that CCD isn't caused by just one problem, but more likely is the result of a "perfect storm" of various troublesome factors coming together at just the right — or, perhaps more accurately, just the wrong — time.
ARS scientists have teamed up with other researchers worldwide to look at four possible culprits: pathogens (disease-causing organisms); parasites; environmental stresses, which would include exposure to pesticides; and management stresses such as nutrition problems, mainly from the bees not being able to get enough nectar or pollen.
One possibility might be a combination of exposure to pesticides and to a particular virus called Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV), which has been shown to be strongly associated with CCD-affected hives. The ARS scientists also will collaborate with other researchers on studying the combination of pesticide exposure and a particularly nasty beehive pest called the varroa mite.
If the ARS scientists find that neither of these combinations causes CCD, they'll move on to scrutinizing other combinations. And the ARS scientists aren't the only ones tackling this mystery; other researchers at locations worldwide are doing their own studies.
One of the biggest problems associated with the CCD mystery has been proving that the bees' disappearance actually was caused by CCD. Usually the scientists are called in only after the bees have disappeared, so they haven't had the chance to look at what might have been going on in that hive before the bees vanished.
To address that dilemma, in February 2007, ARS scientists and cooperators from various universities and states began taking samples about every six weeks from six cooperating beekeepers in Florida that haul bees up and down the East Coast to provide pollination services to growers. Two of those beekeeping outfits — called apiaries — did suffer outbreaks of CCD in 2006.
If any of the cooperating apiaries have another outbreak of CCD, at least now the scientists will have samples that can be used to detect changes in the bee colonies over time, giving them some clues as to what changed in that colony and potentially giving them some insights into what direction the CCD research should go.
You'll want to stay tuned on this story!
"Everybody's
Science" is written by Sandy Miller Hays, Director of Information for
the Agricultural Research Service, the chief scientific research agency
of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Hays is a native of Fort Smith,
Ark. From the late 1970s until early 1988, Hays was a reporter, editor
and columnist at the Arkansas Democrat (now the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette),
a Little Rock-based daily newspaper. She joined the ARS Information
Staff in 1988, and became Director of Information in April 1998.
You probably would have had to spend the better part of the past year in a cave somewhere to have missed the news that something's wrong with honeybees. The strange case of the disappearing honeybees — a phenomenon formally known as "Colony Collapse Disorder," or CCD — has been all over everywhere, from newspapers and magazines to prime-time television news programs.
In general, honey bee health has been declining since the 1980s, with the introduction of new pathogens and pests. (Photo by Rob Flynn)
How serious is CCD? Some beekeepers reported losses of 30 to 90 percent of their hives during the 2006 winter, as opposed to the typical winter loss rate of about 25 percent. During this past winter, beekeepers reported losses of about 36 percent, but only about one-third of those losses were attributed to CCD. Thirty-six percent doesn't sound good—but bear in mind that it's not that far beyond the normal loss rate of 25 percent.
Still, this problem needs a solution, and fortunately for all of us, the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) has some of the world's top bee experts working on it. Those experts have already said that we can rule out cell phones and the end of the world as the culprits.
There's no doubt that we need the bees, because they're essential for pollinating crops. In fact, bees add more than $15 billion in value annually to some 130 crops, including high-value specialty crops like berries, nuts, fruits and vegetables.
But the experts whose business it is to know about such things say that we're not in any immediate danger of starving because of the bee disappearances. There were definitely enough bees available to provide all the pollination needed in 2007, and there's no pollination crisis anticipated for this year.
Still, it's obviously not a good thing to have our honeybees disappearing, and the ARS scientists are determined to crack this mystery. They strongly suspect that CCD isn't caused by just one problem, but more likely is the result of a "perfect storm" of various troublesome factors coming together at just the right — or, perhaps more accurately, just the wrong — time.
ARS scientists have teamed up with other researchers worldwide to look at four possible culprits: pathogens (disease-causing organisms); parasites; environmental stresses, which would include exposure to pesticides; and management stresses such as nutrition problems, mainly from the bees not being able to get enough nectar or pollen.
One possibility might be a combination of exposure to pesticides and to a particular virus called Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV), which has been shown to be strongly associated with CCD-affected hives. The ARS scientists also will collaborate with other researchers on studying the combination of pesticide exposure and a particularly nasty beehive pest called the varroa mite.
If the ARS scientists find that neither of these combinations causes CCD, they'll move on to scrutinizing other combinations. And the ARS scientists aren't the only ones tackling this mystery; other researchers at locations worldwide are doing their own studies.
One of the biggest problems associated with the CCD mystery has been proving that the bees' disappearance actually was caused by CCD. Usually the scientists are called in only after the bees have disappeared, so they haven't had the chance to look at what might have been going on in that hive before the bees vanished.
To address that dilemma, in February 2007, ARS scientists and cooperators from various universities and states began taking samples about every six weeks from six cooperating beekeepers in Florida that haul bees up and down the East Coast to provide pollination services to growers. Two of those beekeeping outfits — called apiaries — did suffer outbreaks of CCD in 2006.
If any of the cooperating apiaries have another outbreak of CCD, at least now the scientists will have samples that can be used to detect changes in the bee colonies over time, giving them some clues as to what changed in that colony and potentially giving them some insights into what direction the CCD research should go.
You'll want to stay tuned on this story!
The Agricultural Research Service is the chief in-house scientific
research agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. You can read
more about ARS discoveries at http://www.ars.usda.gov/news/.
About the author
"Everybody's
Science" is written by Sandy Miller Hays, Director of Information for
the Agricultural Research Service, the chief scientific research agency
of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Hays is a native of Fort Smith,
Ark. From the late 1970s until early 1988, Hays was a reporter, editor
and columnist at the Arkansas Democrat (now the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette),
a Little Rock-based daily newspaper. She joined the ARS Information
Staff in 1988, and became Director of Information in April 1998.