[Pollinator] Penn State Researxch on Honey Bee Deaths

[Ladadams at aol.com]

Probing Question: What's killing the honey bees?
Thursday, March 1, 2007 

 
Photo: Brenda Anderson
By Lisa Duchene
Research Penn State

Far away from the snowdrifts outside our windows, spring is unfolding in 
California as the almond trees begin to bloom. Missing from the party are millions 
of honey bees typically trucked in to pollinate the $2-$3 billion crop.

Since last fall, beekeepers in more than 20 states including Pennsylvania 
have lost tens of thousands of honey bee colonies -- an estimated 30 to 35 
percent of the nation's pollinator stock. Nobody knows why. 

Almonds are the first crop jeopardized by the die-off. "We haven't really 
seen the panic set in yet. It's just starting now," said Zac Browning, co-owner 
of Browning's Honey Co. and vice president of the American Beekeeping 
Federation in Jesup, Ga.

But apple trees in the Pacific Northwest, Pennsylvania and other Northeast 
states, along with cucumber, melon, cherry and berry crops, will all soon need 
pollination. In all, honey bees annually pollinate about $14 billion worth of 
food crops or one-third of the nation's produce.

Apiculture experts are scrambling to figure out the cause of the massive 
die-off they've named Colony Collapse Disorder. The ecological detectives include 
Penn State honey bee expert Maryann Frazier, a senior extension associate in 
entomology, and entomology professor Diana Lynn Cox-Foster.

So far, said Frazier, there are several possible suspects. The varroa mite, a 
parasite that sucks the blood of both adult and larval bees, is a well-known 
nemesis that can weaken a hive and set the stage for viral devastation.

But another mysterious factor is at work. "Something's causing the bees to be 
particularly weak, and that then allows the mites and the viruses to do their 
job," said Frazier, who has worked with honey bees for 28 years. There may be 
a pathogen not previously observed -- "perhaps a fungal disease," she added. 
Cox-Foster and David Geiser, professors of plant pathology, are working on 
this angle. The third suspect is environmental contaminants. A number of new 
pesticides are toxic to honey bees, and could be negatively impacting the colonies 
in several ways, Frazier explained.

Whatever the cause, last fall beekeepers began reporting dramatic die-offs. 
One beekeeper in Lewisburg, Pa., who overwinters his hives in Florida lost 
three-quarters of his bees within a two-week period in November, said Frazier. We 
don't yet know the impact on Pennsylvania's migratory bee population. But the 
die-off may actually have started earlier, as beekeepers have sustained higher 
than normal losses for the last several years.

Trying to explain their disappearance, Frazier noted, "We have never seen a 
die-off of this magnitude with this weird symptomology. We've seen bees 
disappear over time and dwindle away, but not die off so quickly."

The die-off is primarily affecting large, commercial bee-keeping operations. 
Besides honey bees, introduced to North America by the Puritan colonists, 
there are some 700 other kinds of bees in the Northeast, but Frazier does not 
expect them to be affected.

Pesticide use in large, single-crop farms wipes out many other sources of 
pollination, so many farmers resort to "hives for hire," and rent hives of honey 
bees while the plants are blooming. The average hive earns $50 to $100 
annually in rent, $125 to $150 in the case of California's almond crop. Beekeepers, 
already losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in pollination revenue, are 
importing bees from Australia to rebuild their hives by the summertime, according 
to the American Beekeeping Federation.

Here in the Northeast, more losses are expected when the cold weather breaks 
and beekeepers check their hives for the first time. As Frazier, Cox-Foster 
and others search for answers, the future of the American beekeeping industry 
may hang in the balance. 

***
For more Probing Questions and other features about research at Penn State, 
subscribe to Research Penn State at 
http://www.rps.psu.edu/cgi-bin/subscribe.cgi online.



Laurie Davies Adams
Executive Director
Coevolution Institute
423 Washington St. 5th
San Francisco, CA 94111
415 362 1137
LDA at coevolution.org
http://www.coevolution.org/
http://www.pollinator.org/
http://www.nappc.org/

Bee Ready for National Pollinator Week:  June 24-30, 2007.  Contact us 
for more information at www.pollinator.org 

Our future flies on the wings of pollinators.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.sonic.net/pipermail/pollinator/attachments/20070302/fad5dab5/attachment.html