Where are our bees?

[Guest guest]

We're in the middle of a bee emergency. Albert Einstein said, " If the bee

disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four

years left to live. "

Now a mysterious ailment called Colony Collapse Disorder is causing

agricultural honeybees nationwide to abandon their hives and disappear. It's

a kind of mass suicide in the bee world.

 

Entomologist Jerry Bromenshenk says, " Individual beekeepers are really

taking a beating. A guy down in Oklahoma lost 80% of his 13,000 colonies in

the last month. In Florida, there are a whole lot of people facing 40, 60

and 80 percent losses. That's huge. "

 

With CCD, most adult honeybees abandon a hive and disappear, abandoning the

queen and a remnant of younger bees. This is unheard of, since normally a

bee colony will do almost anything to protect its queen. Since the tasks

done in the hive are very stratified, bees cannot survive on their own.

 

One of the strongest instincts that bees have is protecting and nurturing

the next generation, but with CCD, the cells of young bees in the pupa stage

are not covered and protected by their older sisters, probably because most

of the adult bees have left. Dead adult bees aren't even found near the

hive; they are just gone.

Bromenshenk says, " We don't want to panic the beekeeper industry because we

are not sure it's time to push the panic button yet, but we do know this is

real, it's severe and it's widespread. "

 

Field technician and self-professed bee lover Scott Debnam describes visits

to the impacted bee yards as " spooky, " and says, " Fortunately the sites I've

visited have been recovering, but in Georgia I saw a lot of small colonies,

a lot of uncapped brood and a lot of early-stage brood. The adults had flown

the coop. "

 

Practically the only in-depth coverage of this story in the media appears on

Unknowncountry.com.