The Barometer Online

Issue date: 4/11/07 Section: Forum

One of the many disturbing environmental trends of recent decades - though perhaps not one of the best known - is the increasingly drastic decline of honeybee populations in the United States and elsewhere. This is no trivial matter when one considers the bees' huge environmental impact - they're "essential for the pollination of over 90 fruit and vegetable crops worldwide," according to Congressional testimony this March by entomology professor Diana Cox-Foster. Cornell University found that honeybees pollinate more than $14 billion-worth of crops and seeds annually in the U.S. "Every third bite we consume ... is dependent on a honeybee to pollinate that food," according to Zac Browning of the American Beekeeping Federation.

Bees' numbers have decreased in many areas for more than thirty years. "From 1971 to 2006, approximately one-half of the U.S. honeybee colonies have vanished," writes Michael Leidig of the Telegraph (U.K.). Numerous factors have contributed to this decline, including urbanization (which leaves less land available for bees to use in foraging for nectar), as well as pesticide use, mite infestations and beekeepers going out of business in a less and less profitable profession. This year, however, an unexplained phenomenon - currently known as "Colony Collapse Disorder" (CCD) - has quickened honeybee depopulation to drastic, unprecedented and extremely worrisome levels.

In hives experiencing Colony Collapse Disorder, bees seem to be "flying off in search of pollen and nectar and simply never returning to their colonies," as Alexei Barrionuevo writes in the February 27th issue of the New York Times. "And nobody knows why. Researchers say the bees are presumably dying in the fields, perhaps becoming exhausted or simply disoriented and eventually falling victim to the cold."

In CCD, according to Cox-Foster, "the bee colony proceeds rapidly from a strong colony with many individuals to a colony with few or no surviving bees. Queens are found in collapsing colonies with a few young adult bees, lots of brood and more than adequate food resources. No dead adult bees are found in the colony or outside in proximity to the colony."

"Part of the mystery," reports CBS News's John Blackstone, "is that colonies can go from active and healthy to dead and gone within days." They "just disappeared," said beekeeper Louise Rossberg. "There's nothing there. There's no bees on the ground anywhere. There's just a completely empty hive."

"I have never seen anything like it," said California beekeeper David Bradshaw, quoted by Barrionuevo. "Box after box after box are just empty. There's nobody home."

Though regional honeybee die-offs have happened in the past, this appears not to be a merely regional problem. So far, Colony Collapse Disorder has been reported in at least 24 states (from California to Oklahoma to Wisconsin to Georgia), as well as in Canada, with the same (or a similar) phenomenon also being reported recently in Spain, Poland, Switzerland and Germany. The exact impact of CCD on honeybee colonies is somewhat difficult to gauge, Cox-Foster says, because of a lack of systematic data regarding colonies' death rates - but some estimates have pegged the losses at 75 percent of the honeybee population in some states, in an industry where beekeepers consider losses of 17 percent to be normal. A 2007 "preliminary nationwide survey" by the Apiary Inspectors of America found that "approximately one-quarter of responding beekeepers suffered CCD," though the response rate wasn't given. While "some commercial beekeepers are reporting their losses as about the same as the last several years," the American Beekeeping Federation's Web site notes that "others report losing thousands of colonies: one lost 11,000 of his 13,000 colonies; another 700 of 900; another 2500 of 3500; another virtually all of his 10,000." Those reporting on CCD consistently describe the losses as both unprecedented and alarming.

What's causing CCD? Various factors may be involved. Barrionuevo reports that "bees are being raised to survive a shorter off season," to be ready to pollinate certain plants (such as California's almond crop) that begin blooming in February. This may cause the bees unhealthy stress, as may "the willingness of beekeepers to truck their colonies from cost to coast" in search of pollination work - a practice that may also spread viruses and mites among bee populations.

"Some unknown pathogenic disease [or] pesticide contamination" might be to blame, notes Dennis van Engelsdorp of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. Pesticides have already been interfering with bees' populations; Barrionuevo writes that "insecticides used to kill mites are harming the ability of queen bees to spawn as many worker bees. The queens are living half as long as they did just a few years ago."

As Cox-Foster notes, "a unique aspect of CCD is that there is a significant delay in [other insects robbing or invading] the dead colony ... this suggests the presence of a deterrent chemical or toxin in the hive." As of this writing, however, no environmental or chemical agent common to all the CCD cases has been discovered.

If there is a common agent, it may be suppressing bees' immune systems. Van Engelsdorp explains that "initial studies of dying colonies revealed a large number of disease organisms present, with no one disease being identified as the culprit," and investigators have observed a "strong immune suppression" in the bees left in collapsing colonies. This immune suppression, van Engelsdorp says, "could be the AIDS of the bee industry," meaning it may increase bees' susceptibility to other diseases, which eventually disorient and/or kill them.

Whether Colony Collapse Disorder is the result of human practices (such as pesticide use or driving bees around the country packed in trucks) or a naturally occurring phenomenon, it's clear that necessity is forcing humans to find a way to cure or ameliorate it. At least for the present, we need pollinating honeybees in order to grow many of our crops. Given that reality, the disorder offers a good example of why humanity can never afford to take for granted - as we all too frequently do - the often fragile natural processes on which our lives depend.

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Callan Sullivan is a senior in political science. The opinions expressed in his columns, which appear every Wednesday, do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Barometer staff. Sullivan can be reached at forum@dailybarometer.com.

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