Mystery killer silencing honeybees

[Guest guest]

" While a few crops, such as corn and wheat, are pollinated by the wind,

most need bees. Without these insects, crop yields would fall dramatically.

Agronomists estimate Americans owe one in three bites of food to bees. "

 

" Frazier said researchers also were looking at a new group of pesticides

that might impair the bees' ability to orient to their hives. So maybe they

are dying only because they cannot find their way back "

 

 

 

Possible culprits: New Pesticides and Global Warming.... surprised? I'm not!

 

 

hilly.com/mld/inquirer/16623837.htm

 

Mystery killer silencing honeybees

If the die-off continues, it would be disastrous for U.S. Crop yields.

By Sandy Bauers

Inquirer Staff Writer

 

David M Warren / Inquirer Staff Photographer

A bee, laden with pollen. Honeybees pollinate more than $15 billion

worth of U.S. Crops, including Pennsylvania's apple harvest and New

Jersey's

cranberries and blueberries.

Something is killing the nation's honeybees.

 

Dave Hackenberg of central Pennsylvania had 3,000 hives and figures he

has lost all but about 800 of them.

 

In labs at Pennsylvania State University, the Pennsylvania Department

of Agriculture, and elsewhere in the nation, researchers have been

stunned by

the number of calls about the mysterious losses.

 

" Every day, you hear of another operator, " said Dennis vanEngelsdorp,

acting state apiarist with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.

" It's

just causing so much death so quickly that it's startling. "

 

At stake is the work the honeybees do, pollinating more than $15

billion worth of U.S. Crops, including Pennsylvania's apple harvest, the

fourth-largest in the nation, worth $45 million, and New Jersey's

cranberries

and blueberries.

 

While a few crops, such as corn and wheat, are pollinated by the wind,

most need bees. Without these insects, crop yields would fall dramatically.

Agronomists estimate Americans owe one in three bites of food to bees.

 

The problem caps 20 years of honeybee woes, including two mites that

killed the valuable insect and a predatory beetle that attacked the

honeycombs

of weak or dead colonies.

 

" This is by far the most alarming, " said Maryann Frazier, an apiculture

- or beekeeping - expert at Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.

 

One of the first to notice the latest die-off was Hackenberg, who lives

in Lewisburg, north of Harrisburg in Union County.

 

He and his son truck about 3,000 hives up and down the East Coast every

year as part of a large but little-known cross-continental migratory bee

industry.

 

Hackenberg's bees pollinate oranges in Florida, apples, cherries and

pumpkins in Pennsylvania, and blueberries in Maine. Come summer, they are

buzzing along the Canadian border, making honey.

 

This season, Hackenberg hauled his hives to Florida by Oct. 10, just as

he has done for 40 years. By November, some hives were empty; others had

just

sickly remains.

 

He made some calls and found out a beekeeper in Georgia had seen the

same thing.

 

Since then, with concern mounting, experts have been investigating. A

few months ago, they were referring to the die-off as " fall dwindle

disease. "

Now, they have ratcheted up to " colony collapse disorder. "

 

Last weekend, apiarist vanEngelsdorp and other researchers headed to

central California, where hundreds of acres of almond trees - the source

of 80

percent of the world's almond harvest - are about to blossom.

 

Last fall, workers transported managed hives - about 450 per

tractor-trailer - to California from colder areas such as the Great

Lakes and

the Dakotas. Now, hives are coming from Texas, Florida, Maryland and

Pennsylvania. In all, about half the country's managed hives are needed for

the mass pollination.

 

As workers openthe hives to check them, " the picture's not so good, "

said Jeffrey S. Pettis, a leader in bee research at a U.S. Department of

Agriculture lab in Beltsville, Md.

 

Pettis said bees often had some winter loss, but this level of death

was unprecedented.

 

As dead or dying insects are collected, dissected and tested, several

possibilities are emerging.

 

The most recent mite problem - the varroa mite - compromises a bee's

immune system, so a virus might be the new culprit, Frazier said. Or it

could

be a new fungal pathogen.

 

Frazier said researchers also were looking at a new group of pesticides

that might impair the bees' ability to orient to their hives. So maybe they

are dying only because they cannot find their way back home.

 

Honeybees are not natives. The country already had about 3,500 species

of pollinating bees before Europeans brought honeybees in the 1600s. But

because honeybees produce honey and can be managed so easily, they have

become

a mainstay of U.S. Agriculture.

 

" Part of the problem is that today we develop these big monocultures of

corn or peas or cabbage, " Frazier said. " They wipe out the diversity of

nectar

sources and reduce nesting sites for wild bees. And we use,

unfortunately, a

lot of pesticides to keep the insects we don't want from eating these

crops,

which also works to eliminate the pollinators. "

 

So a Pennsylvania orchard manager, say, will bring in bees for the two

weeks the apple trees bloom, then take them out so he can apply

substances to

control other insects.

 

Neither entomologists nor growers can say what will happen when the

2007 growing season for most of the country's crops starts. " We're

coming up

onto the season where people are really going to be worried, " Frazier said.

 

Although research suggests the stress of moving bees long distances

might be a factor in the die-offs, smaller beekeepers with stationary hives

worry the problem will extend to their colonies as well.

 

Already, Janet Katz, a beekeeper in Chester, N.J., thinks three of her

21 hives are failing.

 

And the bees are stressed already, she said. " The weather last season

was not cooperative, " she said. " Over the course of the season it was

too wet,

too dry, too hot and too cold, all at the wrong times. "

 

Bees store honey every autumn - a hive needs 60 pounds to survive the

winter - but with this year's warm weather, they ate a lot, and

beekeepers had

to supplement with sugar syrup.

 

Now, the bees have sealed themselves inside the hives to stay warm, and

the keepers can't open the structures until spring.

 

" Are we going to see this same thing, this collapsing disorder, in

these bees? We don't know, " Frazier said. " It's very possible this may

extend

to our nonmigratory population. We just won't know until spring. "

 

-------------------------

Contact staff writer Sandy Bauers at 215-854-5147 or

sbauers <sbauers%40phillynews.com>.

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

It's interesting, I didn't see any mention of the common practice of beekeepers

feeding large amounts of sugar water to bees as a possible cause of problems.

The sugar water is almost always made with the same white sugar that causes so

many problems, including immune problems in humans. It is fed in the winter if

honey stores run low, and in the early spring to provide extra food before many

plants go into bloom. Sometimes in the fall also, to help the bees speed up the

production of fall honey for their winter storage. There are a few beekeepers

who instead save some extra honey to help winter over their bees but they are

few and far between. When you go to the beekeeping seminars they all tell you

to feed the bees sugar water. I have stopped doing this after losing many hives

- it's too early to judge the results, but I think there is a link between

beekeepers giving bees all this sugar water and the death of so many hives.

Another possible cause I think is worth exploring is the practice of most

beekeepers dosing bees with antibiotics yearly, sometimes twice a year. If

regularly dosing humans with antibiotics is causing health problems, isn't it

reasonable to assume it can do the same in bees?

 

JennMarie (amateur beekeeper)

 

 

[Guest guest]

From a non-amateur beekeeper FYI:

 

I feed my hives honey. Nectar the bees produce I share with the other hives.

I give every hive in my apiary no less than 60 pounds of their own produced

honey if they do not make themselves at least that much. And, at times I

still share everything my hives make evenly between my 4 hives and not bring

any honey in for my own use. I've been know to buy honey instead.

 

I do not treat the bees nor use the poison medicines others use. I keep a

strong hive when possible, and combine hives when keeping a hive strong

isn't possible. I treat the bees with powdered sugar once each season: I

make pollen cakes using soy flour mixed with buckwheat honey to feed the

bees about this time of year to entice the queen into laying.

 

Twice a year I use my own mixture of herbs to fumigate the hive and

euthanase

things inside the hives not honeybees.

 

During the season I will rotate hive bodies moving them around between hives

after I check them over and rub each one down with lemon balm leaves, or

another of my mints.

 

If I see a frame infected with something or one that looks suspicious, I

remove that frame and put it into a nuc box til I know for sure the frame or

the bees on that frame are okay. Or, not.

[Guest guest]

Those are all standard things to do with your bees, but ...

 

in a similar incident some years ago in France, a Bayer seed

treatment chemical, Gaucho, was identified as the culprit for bee

deaths. The French eliminated the poison to keep the bees alive.

Perhaps someone should check if the seeds they use in the area are

treated in this way...

 

See: Millions of bees dead - Bayer's Gaucho blamed

 

http://tinyurl.com/2xe6zw

 

Kind regards

Sepp

 

 

 

 

 

>1b. Re: Mystery killer silencing honeybees

> Posted by: " Jane MacRoss " HIGHFIELD janemacross

> Sat Feb 10, 2007 12:10 am ((PST))

>

>>From a non-amateur beekeeper FYI:

>

>I feed my hives honey. Nectar the bees produce I share with the other hives.

>I give every hive in my apiary no less than 60 pounds of their own produced

>honey if they do not make themselves at least that much. And, at times I

>still share everything my hives make evenly between my 4 hives and not bring

>any honey in for my own use. I've been know to buy honey instead.

>

>I do not treat the bees nor use the poison medicines others use. I keep a

>strong hive when possible, and combine hives when keeping a hive strong

>isn't possible. I treat the bees with powdered sugar once each season: I

>make pollen cakes using soy flour mixed with buckwheat honey to feed the

>bees about this time of year to entice the queen into laying.

>

>Twice a year I use my own mixture of herbs to fumigate the hive and

>euthanase

>things inside the hives not honeybees.

>

>During the season I will rotate hive bodies moving them around between hives

>after I check them over and rub each one down with lemon balm leaves, or

>another of my mints.

>

>If I see a frame infected with something or one that looks suspicious, I

>remove that frame and put it into a nuc box til I know for sure the frame or

>the bees on that frame are okay. Or, not.

>

>

 

 

--

 

 

The individual is supreme and finds its way through intuition.

 

Sepp Hasslberger

 

 

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