honey bee situation remains in perilous state

Apiary study shows U.S. honey bee situation remains in perilous state

Jun 24, 2008 11:16 AM, By David BennettFarm Press Editorial Staff

In 2006, after honey bees abandoned hives in massive numbers, beekeepers began sounding an alarm that gained volume in 2007 when the mass exodus and die-off of bees picked up speed. Researchers named the mysterious malady colony collapse disorder (CCD).
“Unfortunately, beekeepers have struggled over the last few years from colonies dying from introduced parasitic mites and other things,” said Jerry Hayes, then president of the Apiary Inspectors of America from his Gainesville, Fla., office last spring. “They’re already kind of numb because of all the problems. But in (the summer of 2006), beekeepers began losing colonies for reasons that weren’t quite in line with the other problems.
“With affected hives, there are no dead or dying bees on the ground as we see with pesticide exposures or other diseases. No one can explain this behavior.”
The few bees left in CCD-hit hives appear to suffer from an immune system collapse, susceptible to bacteria and fungi that normally would cause little bother.
“That, too, is highly unusual, and we’ve been trying to find the cause for several months. It seems to indicate some sort of mass immune deficiency. There are some very smart people looking for an answer, but we still haven’t come up with something we can combat through management practices or something else. It’s quite frustrating.”
Time not a healer
With solutions to CCD in short supply, many were hoping the disorder would run out of steam and the key pollinators of U.S. crops would be back to full health in 2008. That hasn’t happened.
“The AAIA did another survey looking at CCD,” said Hayes, assistant chief of Apiary Inspection at the Florida Department of Agriculture, on May 15. “This year, there’s been an additional 36 percent loss in honey bee colonies over the winter coming into 2008.”
There has also been a shift in the region suffering most from CCD.
“East Coast beekeepers — especially Florida beekeepers who travel up and down the East Coast — took a dramatic hit in the 2006-07 period. Tens of thousands of colonies were lost.”
This year, the problem has largely moved to the West Coast. Beekeepers there “lost tens of thousands of colonies last winter.”
It seemed to have happened just before, during or after they moved bees into almond pollination in California. A lot of colonies were empty and had to be transported back to the beekeepers’ homes after almond pollination.
“These bees are being impacted by something that’s mysterious, but consistent. We just have to figure out the (offending) combination of viruses, microsporidians, chemicals and pollutants.”
Are crops already being impacted by the dearth of bees or have beekeepers been able to keep up so far?
“For the most part, they’ve been able to keep up. The good thing about honeybees is keepers can use management techniques — utilizing honeybee biology — to split healthy colonies into two. That’s one way to recover some losses. Artificial feed and other things can also build up colonies.
“If cattle or poultry (perish), it takes a long time to replace the animal and production. Honey bees are a bit different and that’s a good thing.”
But the ability to recover quickly can disguise deeper problems.
“People sometimes assume beekeepers are crying wolf about losses while there are just enough honey bees to get by. But that’s because keepers are doing what they must to survive by splitting colonies and using other management techniques.”
Asked about a rumored push to bring Mexican bees into the United States to pollinate crops, Hayes confirms such a possibility. “One of the scenarios being considered involves almond pollination. Because of increased almond acreage due to prices, beekeepers are being paid a premium to bring in their colonies. The almond industry absolutely requires honeybees to carry pollen from point A to point B.”
In the event U.S. bee numbers come up short, “Mexico — being involved in NAFTA and GATT — could petition the U.S. to allow its honey bees and keepers across the border. My guess is because of the scope and range and how lucrative almonds are, that could certainly happen.”
U.S. almond producers won’t be denied the opportunity to produce a crop. However, that could deepen U.S. beekeeper problems.
By allowing in Mexican bees, “the Africanized bee issue would gain additional concern. But it isn’t just that. There could be more pests, predators and other concerns — things that aren’t in the United States now.
“If anything like that happens, it would further weaken and, possibly decimate, the U.S. beekeeping industry.”
On the other hand, points out Hayes, such worries are all predicated on the idea “that people care where their food comes from. I think USDA already projects that some 40 percent of our vegetables will be imported by 2015, or thereabouts. And the prediction is the U.S. will be a net food importer in 50 years. If people don’t care about that, they probably won’t care about U.S. bee health either.”
Hayes stresses that the public needs to understand that commercial beekeeping — where hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of colonies are tended — is an enterprise as agricultural as raising livestock or row crops. Too often, commercial beekeeping is seen as a “bucolic activity in the backyard.”
That is a false perception. Beekeeping is hard work, not a weekend hobby.
Currently, so many products are being systemically applied to U.S. crops “that we’re pushing honey bees very hard. As a result of all the things we’ve mentioned — as well as factors we haven’t yet considered — the bees have reached a tipping point. With CCD, it appears something finally pushed them over. The bees said ‘We can’t keep this up.’ And that’s why we’re seeing these dramatic losses.”
Meanwhile, aggressive Africanized bees are moving through the lower half of the country. “They’re now in areas of Louisiana, Arkansas and Oklahoma. They’ll probably be crossing the Mississippi River in the next year, or so.
“Depending on who you believe, these bees have been responsible for three to 11 deaths in Texas. In Florida, we had the first human fatality due to them in April.”
Hayes is keen to separate the honey bees from their “killer” cousins. “We don’t want people thinking bees in the white boxes are part of the problem when they’re actually part of the solution.”
Asked to prognosticate on honey bee health, Hayes doesn’t see a dramatic improvement anytime soon. “But it could get worse if we have another invasive pest, virus or disease added to the current list.
“It’s interesting that honey prices are on the rise a little. Some keepers on the East Coast are saying if honey prices are up, there is less reason to travel west for almond pollination.”
It costs about $9,000 one-way to drive a loaded semi from Florida to California. If honey prices stay up, beekeepers “can save that transportation cost and stay afloat and keep their bees from being so stressed. That, of course, would take pollinators away from a growing almond crop. And that’s another reasons why Mexican bees could be an option.”

Imagine

Imagine hundreds of people with little feather brushes, climbing up on trees and smearing each flower with pollen.

Each person can do about 30 trees a day, bees can do about 3000 trees a day.

Just imagine a world without honey bees.

Let's take care of the bees.

savingthehoneybees@gmail.com

Silence of the BeesImpact of CCD on US Agriculture

Impact of CCD on US Agriculture

In the winter of 2006/2007, more than a quarter of the country’s 2.4 million bee colonies — accounting for tens of billions of bees — were lost to CCD, Colony Collapse Disorder. This loss is projected have an $8 billion to $12 billion effect on America’s agricultural economy, but the consequences of CCD could be far more disastrous.

The role honeybees play in our diet goes beyond honey production. These seemingly tireless creatures pollinate about one-third of crop species in the U.S. Honeybees pollinate about 100 flowering food crops including apples, nuts, broccoli, avocados, soybeans, asparagus, celery, squash and cucumbers, citrus fruit, peaches, kiwi, cherries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, cantaloupe, melons, as well as animal-feed crops, such as the clover that’s fed to dairy cows. Essentially all flowering plants need bees to survive.

A daunting question is: If honeybee colonies were so severely affected by CCD that pollination stopped, could we lose these crops from our markets and our diets forever?Honeybees pollinate about 100 flowering crops.“We’re not there yet,” says Jeff Pettis of the USDA. Pettis says there are steps researchers and beekeepers can take to ensure that the bee population doesn’t plummet to catastrophic levels. “One measure beekeepers have been taking is to keep bees as healthy as possible — improve nutrition and reduce stress,” says Pettis. Consumers have become more demanding and expect to have fruits and vegetables available to us all year round. In order to achieve this, commercial beekeepers haul colonies of honeybees across the country so their pollination services can serve all growing seasons. The season may start with almonds in California, then move on to apples in the Northwest, cranberries in New Jersey and Maine blueberries. The constant moving about places stress on the bees. In addition, certain crops that may be in the pollination circuit, like cranberries and cucumbers, are not very nutritious for bees. To keep the bees healthy, beekeepers may need to ease up on their schedules. It may be necessary for them to retire bees for a particular season or skip some less nutritious crops entirely.

With the threat of CCD looming, researchers are starting to study how other pollinators like the larger bumble bees could step in for honeybees. “The Dutch have figured out how to use bumblebees,” says Pettis. Bumblebees share many similarities with honeybees. Both are social nesters, although the bumblebees’ society is not as highly ordered as that of honeybees. Also, bumblebees make a new nest each spring by solitary queens, who hibernate through the winter. Honeybees remain in the old nest.

“There’s nothing waiting in the wings that can replace honeybees at this time,” says Pettis, “but we can solve the problem in honeybee health.” Pettis says that by focusing on reducing stress and improving nutrition, beekeepers can limit some of the factors that potentially lead to disastrous conditions like CCD, thereby keeping bees — and our diets — healthy.

NaturePosting.

Nature-Silence of the BeesUpdate on Colony Collapse Disorder

Silence of the BeesUpdate on Colony Collapse Disorder (Oct. 2007)
It was a mystery that left scientists around the world buzzing for answers. Last year a mysterious and deadly plague silently worked its way through bee colonies, leaving millions of dead bees in its wake. The killer was coined as CCD or Colony Collapse Disorder. It had moved in suddenly and unexpectedly, and left so few clues, experts could not crack the case.

Luckily this past September, there was a big break in the case. A team of scientists led by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Pennsylvania State University, The Pennsylvanis State Department of Agriculture and Columbia University linked CCD with a virus imported from Australia, IAPV or Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus. Over the past three years, genetic tests on bees collected from stricken colonies around the U.S. found the virus in 96 percent of bees from hives affected by Colony Collapse Disorder.

IAPV had not historically been present in U.S. bees. In fact, it was only discovered in Israel in 2004, the same year American beekeepers started importing packaged bees from Australia. “Before that, nobody knew to look for it,” says Jeff Pettis of the United States Department of Agriculture’s Bee Research Laboratory. “As people began to look for it, it was found in China, Australia and the U.S.”

A CCD-affected hive
Though the discovery of IAPV was indeed a big break, the case of CCD was not closed. Scientists have much to learn about how IAPV affects colonies and how it may have brought on CCD.

Future studies will tell researchers if they are dealing with just one strain of the virus or if there are other strains to look for. “Discovering the IAPV was a lead but not the end of the story.

We’re looking at IAPV as a marker. It’s there. It’s present in colonies but viruses by themselves are not known to be that dangerous,” says Pettis. Pettis and other scientists believe that CCD is not caused by one single factor, but by a whole host of forces including pesticides, parasites, poor nutrition, and stress. Any of these may leave bees vulnerable to infection and make IAPV lethal. “We know all of those things have affected bees in the past,” says Pettis. “We have to look at combinations of factors.”

Researchers at Penn State University and the USDA are planning a complicated set of experiments where they stress bees in certain ways and evaluate the effect on their health. The tests will hopefully indicate whether IAPV causes CCD by itself or if it is triggered by other pathogens and stresses.

Some studies on IAPV have already brought positive news. Israeli researchers say there is a possibility that IAPV-resistant bees can be bred. A third of bees sampled in Israel have incorporated the virus into their genome. In experiments, almost 20% of these bees survived when injected with IAPV.
While the work is ongoing and answers are sought, until the government declares otherwise, the nation’s borders remain open for bees. Packaged bees are being brought in from Australia, which has yet to report cases of CCD colonies. Though researchers are still searching for answers, they are considering whether stressors that disproportionately affect U.S. bees such as pesticides, poor nutrition or pests like varroa mites might trigger the virus, making it virulent.
Last year, imports from Australia and New Zealand made up only 5 percent of the bees needed just for almond pollination (though almond pollination represents half of our need for honeybee pollination services).

Case closed? Not yet; but at least the prime suspect is now in custody. In the meantime, beekeepers must take measures to keep bees as healthy as possible. The goal now is improved nutrition, reduced stress, and better overall health for bees. Many beekeepers have been able to achieve just that. Over the summer, many experienced beekeepers had been able to build up the number of bees in the colonies over the summer. However, Diana Cox-Foster of Penn State University and a lead researcher on the team that discovered IAPV in U.S. bees says there are some reports now of CCD making a reappearance, though mainly in the colonies of less experienced beekeepers. If CDD continues, researchers like Cox-Foster are concerned that we could see major problems in honeybee numbers next Spring. She explains that beekeepers were able to restore colony numbers this year, but the weather was in our favor. Next time, we may not be that fortunate. If it strikes again, CCD could have disastrous impacts on U.S. agriculture — causing prices to soar and threatening the availability of some crops. Among the most vulnerable crops are almonds — a crop that completely depends on honeybee pollination. But foods like apples, berries and alfalfa seeds, which is fed to dairy cows and livestock, will be in peril as well. “It’s still fairly early,” says Cox-Foster. “It’s still a concern that some people will continue to have problems with CCD but the verdict is out.”

Haagen-Dazs-Help the Honey Bees

Imagine a world without honey bees

Disappearing bees threaten ice cream sellers
Premium maker Haagen-Dazs says vanishing bee colonies in the United States could mean fewer flavors and higher prices.
By Parija B. Kavilanz, CNNMoney.com senior writerFebruary 20 2008:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Haagen-Dazs is warning that a creature as small as a honeybee could become a big problem for the premium ice cream maker's business.
At issue are the disappearing bee colonies in the United States, a situation that continues to mystify scientists and frighten foodmakers.

That's because, according to Haagen-Dazs, one-third of the U.S. food supply - including a variety of fruits, vegetables and even nuts - depends on pollination from bees.

Haagen-Dazs, which is owned by General Mills, said bees are actually responsible for 40% of its 60 flavors - such as strawberry, toasted pecan and banana split."These are among consumers' favorite flavors," said Katty Pien, brand director with Haagen-Dazs

We use 100% all natural ingredients like strawberries, raspberries and almonds which we get from California. The bee problem could badly hurt supply from the Pacific Northwest," Pien said
Pien said Haagen-Dazs is hoping scientists get a breakthrough in this mystery soon. Otherwise, she said, the company may have to "re-examine the flavors that we currently offers our customers."

We have to ensure that we have enough supply to maintain our variety," she said.
Additionally, a supply shortage of key ingredients could push up retail prices for its products, she said.

Pien said the company is donating $250,000 to both Pennsylvania State University and the University of California, Davis to fund research into the bee colony collapse disorder (CCD).
She said Haagen-Dazs is also rushing to raise consumer awareness about the problem by launching a new flavor this spring called Vanilla Honey Bee.

"We'll use part of the sales from this flavor help the honeybees," she said.

"This is the first time that Haagen-Dazs has adopted a cause like this," said Pien. "We are taking this very, very seriously because it impacts not just our brand but the entire food industry."

See the link:

http://helpthehoneybees.com/

Hello. Is there anyone home?

Taken from: The New York Times (Ann Johansson for the New York Times )

“I have never seen anything like it,” Mr. Bradshaw, 50, said from an almond orchard here beginning to bloom. “Box after box after box are just empty. There’s nobody home.”

VISALIA, Calif., Feb. 23 — David Bradshaw has endured countless stings during his life as a beekeeper, but he got the shock of his career when he opened his boxes last month and found half of his 100 million bees missing.

In 24 states throughout the country, beekeepers have gone through similar shocks as their bees have been disappearing inexplicably at an alarming rate, threatening not only their livelihoods but also the production of numerous crops, including California almonds, one of the nation’s most profitable.

The sudden mysterious losses are highlighting the critical link that honeybees play in the long chain that gets fruit and vegetables to supermarkets and dinner tables across the country.
Beekeepers have fought regional bee crises before, but this is the first national affliction.
Now, in a mystery worthy of Agatha Christie, bees are flying off in search of pollen and nectar and simply never returning to their colonies. 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.

As researchers scramble to find answers to the syndrome they have decided to call “colony collapse disorder,” growers are becoming openly nervous about the capability of the commercial bee industry to meet the growing demand for bees to pollinate dozens of crops, from almonds to avocados to kiwis.
Along with recent stresses on the bees themselves, as well as on an industry increasingly under consolidation, some fear this disorder may force a breaking point for even large beekeepers.
A Cornell University study has estimated that honeybees annually pollinate more than $14 billion worth of seeds and crops in the United States, mostly fruits, vegetables and nuts. “Every third bite we consume in our diet is dependent on a honeybee to pollinate that food,” said Zac Browning, vice president of the American Beekeeping Federation.
The bee losses are ranging from 30 to 60 percent on the West Coast, with some beekeepers on the East Coast and in Texas reporting losses of more than 70 percent; beekeepers consider a loss of up to 20 percent in the offseason to be normal.
Beekeepers are the nomads of the agriculture world, working in obscurity in their white protective suits and frequently trekking around the country with their insects packed into 18-wheelers, looking for pollination work.
Once the domain of hobbyists with a handful of backyard hives, beekeeping has become increasingly commercial and consolidated. Over the last two decades, the number of beehives, now estimated by the Agriculture Department to be 2.4 million, has dropped by a quarter and the number of beekeepers by half.
Pressure has been building on the bee industry. The costs to maintain hives, also known as colonies, are rising along with the strain on bees of being bred to pollinate rather than just make honey. And beekeepers are losing out to suburban sprawl in their quest for spots where bees can forage for nectar to stay healthy and strong during the pollination season.
“There are less beekeepers, less bees, yet more crops to pollinate,” Mr. Browning said. “While this sounds sweet for the bee business, with so much added loss and expense due to disease, pests and higher equipment costs, profitability is actually falling.”
Some 15 worried beekeepers convened in Florida this month to brainstorm with researchers how to cope with the extensive bee losses. Investigators are exploring a range of theories, including viruses, a fungus and poor bee nutrition.
They are also studying a group of pesticides that were banned in some European countries to see if they are somehow affecting bees’ innate ability to find their way back home.
It could just be that the bees are stressed out. Bees are being raised to survive a shorter offseason, to be ready to pollinate once the almond bloom begins in February. That has most likely lowered their immunity to viruses.
Honeybees Vanish, Leaving Keepers in Peril


Mites have also damaged bee colonies, and the insecticides used to try 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.

Researchers are also concerned that the willingness of beekeepers to truck their colonies from coast to coast could be adding to bees’ stress, helping to spread viruses and mites and otherwise accelerating whatever is afflicting them.
Dennis van Engelsdorp, a bee specialist with the state of Pennsylvania who is part of the team studying the bee colony collapses, said the “strong immune suppression” investigators have observed “could be the AIDS of the bee industry,” making bees more susceptible to other diseases that eventually kill them off.
Growers have tried before to do without bees. In past decades, they have used everything from giant blowers to helicopters to mortar shells to try to spread pollen across the plants. More recently researchers have been trying to develop “self-compatible” almond trees that will require fewer bees. One company is even trying to commercialize the blue orchard bee, which is virtually stingless and works at colder temperatures than the honeybee.
Beekeepers have endured two major mite infestations since the 1980s, which felled many hobbyist beekeepers, and three cases of unexplained disappearing disorders as far back as 1894. But those episodes were confined to small areas, Mr. van Engelsdorp said.
Today the industry is in a weaker position to deal with new stresses. A flood of imported honey from China and Argentina has depressed honey prices and put more pressure on beekeepers to take to the road in search of pollination contracts. Beekeepers are trucking tens of billions of bees around the country every year.
California’s almond crop, by far the biggest in the world, now draws more than half of the country’s bee colonies in February. The crop has been both a boon to commercial beekeeping and a burden, as pressure mounts for the industry to fill growing demand. Now spread over 580,000 acres stretched across 300 miles of California’s Central Valley, the crop is expected to grow to 680,000 acres by 2010.
Beekeepers now earn many times more renting their bees out to pollinate crops than in producing honey. Two years ago a lack of bees for the California almond crop caused bee rental prices to jump, drawing beekeepers from the East Coast.
This year the price for a bee colony is about $135, up from $55 in 2004, said Joe Traynor, a bee broker in Bakersfield, Calif.
A typical bee colony ranges from 15,000 to 30,000 bees. But beekeepers’ costs are also on the rise. In the past decade, fuel, equipment and even bee boxes have doubled and tripled in price.
The cost to control mites has also risen, along with the price of queen bees, which cost about $15 each, up from $10 three years ago.
To give bees energy while they are pollinating, beekeepers now feed them protein supplements and a liquid mix of sucrose and corn syrup carried in tanker-sized trucks costing $12,000 per load. Over all, Mr. Bradshaw figures, in recent years he has spent $145 a hive annually to keep his bees alive, for a profit of about $11 a hive, not including labor expenses. The last three years his net income has averaged $30,000 a year from his 4,200 bee colonies, he said.
“A couple of farmers have asked me, ‘Why are you doing this?’ ” Mr. Bradshaw said. “I ask myself the same thing. But it is a job I like. It is a lifestyle. I work with my dad every day. And now my son is starting to work with us.”
Almonds fetch the highest prices for bees, but if there aren’t enough bees to go around, some growers may be forced to seek alternatives to bees or change their variety of trees.
“It would be nice to know that we have a dependable source of honey bees,” said Martin Hein, an almond grower based in Visalia. “But at this point I don’t know that we have that for the amount of acres we have got.”
To cope with the losses, beekeepers have been scouring elsewhere for bees to fulfill their contracts with growers. Lance Sundberg, a beekeeper from Columbus, Mont., said he spent $150,000 in the last two weeks buying 1,000 packages of bees — amounting to 14 million bees — from Australia.
He is hoping the Aussie bees will help offset the loss of one-third of the 7,600 hives he manages in six states. “The fear is that when we mix the bees the die-offs will continue to occur,” Mr. Sundberg said.
Migratory beekeeping is a lonely life that many compare to truck driving. Mr. Sundberg spends more than half the year driving 20 truckloads of bees around the country. In Terra Bella, an hour south of Visalia, Jack Brumley grimaced from inside his equipment shed as he watched Rosa Patiño use a flat tool to scrape dried honey from dozens of beehive frames that once held bees. Some 2,000 empty boxes — which once held one-third of his total hives — were stacked to the roof.
Beekeepers must often plead with landowners to allow bees to be placed on their land to forage for nectar. One large citrus grower has pushed for California to institute a “no-fly zone” for bees of at least two miles to prevent them from pollinating a seedless form of Mandarin orange.
But the quality of forage might make a difference. Last week Mr. Bradshaw used a forklift to remove some of his bee colonies from a spot across a riverbed from orange groves. Only three of the 64 colonies there have died or disappeared.
“It will probably take me two to three more years to get back up,” he said. “Unless I spend gobs of money I don’t have.”

Why are honeybees disappearing ?

I met with Dave Hackenberg in Sacramento early January 2008.

Profile of Dave Hackenberg.

(Profile Information taken from his webpage: www.hackenbergapiaries.com

David Hackenberg started Hackenberg Apiaries in 1962 as a Vo-Ag project at Mifflinburg High School in Pennsylvania. Today, he and his son operate approximately 3,000 hives of bees in 5 states for pollination and honey. Hackenberg Apiaries does approximately 7,500 pollination rentals each year, pollinating apples, blueberries, cantaloupes, pumpkins, and cranberries, as well as other fruits and vegetables. Most of the honey produced is sold to commercial honey packers. Hackenberg Apiaries is based out of Lewisburg, PA, with winter headquarters in Dade City, FL. David has served as President of the American Beekeeping Federation and currently sits on the National Honey Board as the producer representative for region 7, representing 18 states in the eastern United States. David also sits on numerous bee research committees across the United States.

One of Pennsylvania's biggest commercial beekeepers, Dave Hackenberg, of Lewisburg, Union County, found in mid-November he had lost about half of the 2,700 colonies he manages. Hackenberg, whose bees pollinate summer blueberries in Maine and oranges in Florida, said he knows at least six other beekeepers from Wisconsin to California who have experienced similar losses.

WATCH THE FOLLOWING VIDEOS ON THE LINK PROVIDED:

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE BEES?

DISAPPEARED

120 STINGS A DAY

BIG TIME BEEKEPPING

THE MYSTERY




http://60minutes.yahoo.com/segment/105/bees?comment_offset=141

Albert Einstein is supposed to have said:

“If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”
And he has been quoted widely and credited with the remark in National newspapers and, apparently, on thousands of blogs.

LINK TO VIDEO: Einstein and the Bees

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbzBswSOtVc&feature=related