Bees first appeared 40 million years ago, according to fossil records. Over the last 12,000,000 years bees and flowering plants have evolved side by side and have done very will. Bees are responsible for almost half of the world’s fruits, nuts and seeds and have been so since the dawn of time. It’s one of the oldest stories “The story of the birds and bees” but this is changing and could disappear over night!
Worldwide bees are vanishing at an alarming rate. Last year in the U.S.A. alone, 25% of their honeybee population deserted their hives. Beekeepers first started seeing significant losses 4 or 5 years ago. The winter of 2006 was partially hard on transient beekeepers in the southern states. In some areas beekeepers lost all of their hives. Three years ago (2004) Quebec’s beekeepers lost 50% of their hives and in France 2003 one third of the honeybees died. Since 1999, Prince Edward Island’s beekeepers have reported serious losses of 50% to 80%.
There has been a lot of research and debate about what is happening to the honeybee. Researchers can explain many of the die-off but sometimes they can’t. The mysterious disappearance of honeybees is rising. Colony collapse disorder (CCD) is what researchers call this problem.
What happens is one day the beekeeper checks on the bees and they’re fine. The next time they’re gone! Just vanished! The bees don’t come back to the hive so there are no dead bees to examine. All that’s left in the hive is the queen and some brood and when examined these hives had problems but nothing to explain the sudden disappearance of tens of thousands of bees.
I talked with James Doan of Doan Family Farms in western New York State. He operated 4,300 beehives in the fall of 2006 for honey production. By March 2007 that had drop to about 1,900 hives. He’s a transient beekeeper moving his bees form New York to Florida for the winter. He spoke to me from Florida.
Fred: What sort of things are you seeing? What’s left in the hive after it’s been deserted? James: Well, basically, there’s nothing left in the hive. I’ve been through all my bees in the last few weeks. There might be some brood but there are no bees and if you walk around in the bee yard you don’t find any bees, no dead bees. Not in the amount that you would see with a colony that had up to 100,000 bees in less than a month ago.
Fred: Do you think that there is any correlation between the crops that you’re pollinating? James: I think that there is a correlation between lots of things. I think that genetically modified plants are having some affect. We know with monarch butterflies that some of the GMOs are toxic. I’m going to guess that there are some issues there. We also have a lot of new types of pesticides which are suppose to cause insects to disorient and to stop eating and that’s exactly what we’re seeing with honey bees. Certainly there are viruses out there, as we’re finding out. A lot of these viruses have been around for 10-15 years. The viruses really aren’t new; it’s just that they’re newly being discovered.
Fred: And what pesticide is that? James: It falls under a lot of different trade names from Amazed to Admire, Goucho. It’s made by several different companies, the biggest company is Bayer. From what we can see it’s very lethal to bees
Fred: Wasn’t it banned in France? James. That was banned in France, yeah... Like I said there are other issues out there. France totally banned it but they still use it on some products. It’s not used on fruit and vegetable production, from what I understand.
Fred: When did you first have your first colony collapse? James: We probably started first experiencing it about four or five years ago. We blamed it on a lot of other things up to this point. We blamed a lot of our problems on mites and viruses that might spread. But as we’re learning now, the mites aren’t nearly the problem that some of these other issues are, like with the bee viruses.
Fred: Like the Israeli virus. James: With the Israeli virus, I guess it’s in every hive that died but it’s not every hive of bees. A healthy hive of bees does not have the Israelie virus. If only the hives that died had the Israelie virus, how did they contract it? That’s something to do with the immune system. We don’t understand the researchers and myself, how they’re picking it up. Where are they getting it from?
Fred: I read 90% of the bees in Australia and New Zealand have the Israeli virus.
James: That’s what I understand also. The Australians were kind of lax in telling me that they had these problems. They have some other problems, too, that their not admitting too. Fred: How much money have you lost to CCD?
James: We’ve lost well over $350,000. That’s from going out and buying bees. We had to go out and buy bees to replace the bees we lost.
Fred: Where do you get bees from?
James: I found another New York State bee keeper in Florida that had healthy hives or what we consider healthy and we bought him out.
Fred: Can you tell me if you know anything about any problems here in Canada?
James: Yes. One guy was Charlie Carper up in Queensville, Ontario and he was well over 90% (loss). He lost almost 5,000 hives. The Canadians, the government denies it (CCD) but if you talk to the bee keepers, they’ll tell you that there are significant problems. It’s a pretty sticky issue up there and I don’t know if you heard but the bee keepers received up to $100,000 per bee keeper to replace the bees that they lost.
Fred: And this is not an industry that can be insured, is it? Do some bee keepers have insurance? James: There is no insurance, currently, for bee keepers. If we don’t find a cure for it, it’s going to put a lot of bee keepers out of business pretty quick.
Fred: It could make a lot of hungry people too. James: You’re exactly right!
Fred: What are you going to do this year to try and protect yourself, protect your bees? James: I’ve already been in Florida for three weeks that I don’t normally spend this time of year. Normally I send my bees down and then I don’t come to Florida until maybe the first or second week of December, for a week and then Steve wouldn’t come down until January with a crew. I’ve just spent three weeks down here just looking at my bees, treating bees. Just doing things I normally would wait and do later. I was scared to let them go.
Fred: What sort of treatments are you doing? James: We’re doing mite treatments, right now. I don’t see a lot of mites but I don’t want to take a chance that the mites are going up on me. Mites are something that I can do something about. I can’t do anything about viruses. There’s no treatment for viruses.
James also told me that he testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture about all of theses problems in March.
I call Dr. Rob Currie a Professor of entomology specializing in honeybee diseases at the University of Manitoba to ask him about CCD.
Fred: When was the first time you became aware of CCD? Robert: I guess CCD probably came up about early to mid-November last year as a serious concern primarily in the southern and northeastern parts of the United States.
Fred: Is CCD in Canada? Robert: We haven’t really identified symptoms that are mostly associated with CCD here in Canada. We have had serious colony losses in the past winter season, last year, which were not all that different from the scale of losses that were found in the U.S. The symptoms that are associated with what many researchers in the U.S. call “Colony Collapse Disorder” aren’t apparent here. The symptoms that we see or the losses that we see could be attributed to other causes, I guess.
Fred: What can you tell me about the absence of dead bees? Robert: In the third classic symptom of CCD you would have a colony which is normally, relatively healthy, has lots of brood, lots of pollen available and over a fairly short period of time these seem to disappear leaving behind large amounts of sealed brood, large amounts of pollen and stored food. Possibly just a small cluster of bees left with the queen and most of the workers have disappeared from the colony. That’s quite unusual symptoms. Normally when you would have a colony that would collapse like that from a known disease like pearl mites or whatever, there would be lots of symptoms associated with pearl mites’ presence in the hive. Lots of damaged brood, you’d be able to find mites in the brood and those types of symptoms. Those types of normal causes are missing in the colonies that are experiencing this colony collapse phenomenon.
Fred: What was happening in Canada last winter? Robert: Most of the colonies that died here in Canada seem to have died for reasons not associated with those symptoms of CCD. They either had very high levels of mites. They had a lot of problem controlling mites because the mites are resistant to the one or two chemicals they have registered to treat them. We’ve had other cases where the colony for whatever reason, in the fall, didn’t take down feed properly because of environmental changes in areas. It didn’t allow the bee keepers normal amount of prep for the winter. A lot of losses we see here is associated with diseases that are easily identified.
Fred: Could you explain toxic GMO pollen to me? Robert: If you look at genetically modified plants there are some that have a gene from a bacteria incorporated in with the plant material. That gene is designed to protect the plant from insects feeding on it. Basically it’s a bacterium that would normally be found in the ecosystem. When an insect eats it, the toxin then helps to kill the insect by disrupting its gut. When the insect consumes enough of it, it inevitably dies. Taking the genes from that bacteria and incorporating it into plants that now produce the same effects so that the insects that are directly feeding on the foliage would consume that same toxin and be controlled by it. There is some evidence that it can get up into the pollen and they have shown in laboratory studies that it can happen in fact on insects that might feed on the pollen but that hasn’t been successfully followed up. If you took a butterfly and set it on the pollen in the lab you can see the possible effect but on the ecosystem level it doesn’t seem to be very good evidence that it’s causing an impact on the butterfly population, according to a few recent studies that have been done.
Fred: Do you see vaccines coming out in the future for bees viruses? Robert: I wouldn’t like to say no to anything but the problem with the concept of using vaccination of honeybees is that a single colony would have 40 to 60 thousand individuals in it. Those individuals are relatively short lived so it would have to be an oral vaccine in order to get it to even work and it would probably have to be reapplied frequently. So probably a better approach would be to try and prevent viruses from being spread around by eliminating the vectors which are easier than mites. Also by breeding bees that are more tolerant to the viruses. Anti-viral drugs for humans are fairly expensive and wouldn’t be economical to apply to a bee colony.
After talking to a Farmer and Scientist I decided to speak to someone in the government. I found Doug McRory the provincial apiarist working with the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural affairs from Ontario.
Fred: Dose the government acknowledges Colony Collapse Disorder? Doug: In Ontario and Canada the Professional Apiarist Cultureless Association called CAPA, we’ve all taken the position that CCD is something that’s occurring in the States but we haven’t any evidence that it’s occurring in Canada. Basically CCD is a colony in the late fall that has four or five frames of active brood in it. The bees are actively working bringing in honey and pollen and stuff like that. You go to your colony two weeks later and there are no adult bees in it. We don’t have that phenomenon happening here. We have over winter losses and even the losses in the northern tier of the states last year weren’t CCD. That they were basically the normal over wintering losses that you can explain by various situations that weather might do and poor treatment times that happened last fall and we had this really poor weather in the fall last year. We lost 37% of our bees in Ontario last year. Probably 2/3 of the losses where in three counties; Agra Hull, North Fulcran and Hamilton Wentworth.
Fred: So 30% loss of bees is acceptable, normal? Doug: No and in fact they were up to 30% loss of bees right across Canada. Alberta had a major loss, about 45%. New Brunswick has 65% loss. It’s not sustainable for the industry to have losses like that but it was a series of events that happened in each different place, that we as apiculturalists haven’t been able to figure it out what has gone on. Beekeepers, they’re running pretty scared this year. They’re doing everything possible to make sure that the mites are controlled, that feeding is done right. There is a new species of nosema ceranae that has been discovered in North America. Nosema ceranae, this is a fungus disease that apparently attacks the gut lining of adult bees. We’ve always had nosema apis.
Fred: Is that new to the world or just new to this part of the world? Doug: It’s new to the world in fact Dr. Ingamir Priest from Sweden found it in China in about 1994 but it hadn’t been reported in very many places until the CCD committee was looking at all the different microorganisms that were affecting the bees in the United States.
Fred: What can you tell me about the varroa mite? Doug: Yes varroa mite. They actually have two mites that really cause trouble. We have varroa mite and honeybee tracheal mite. The tracheal mites are really invidious. They live right inside the breeding tube of the bees. You cannot see them. They live on the blood of the bees. They’re creating wounds in the trachea and when they do that viruses get into the blood of the bees and reproduce. You end up with the bee having say no wings because it has cloudy wing virus or paralysis virus will attack them. There are 14 different kinds of bee viruses that we know about.
Fred: Are they dominant in Canada or world wide? Doug: They’re world wide. They were always here before mites they’re obviously here after. They’re activated by the mites. The varroa mite lives on the brood, right in the brood cells. They pierce the brood and take blood. When they do that they stimulate production of the viruses which cause problems in the feed.
Fred: Is the government compensating beekeepers for losses? Doug: There has been $100 per colony paid out in September. They did put a cap of $100,000 on the program in the last part of August. There are four beekeepers that are affected by that cap, I understand, they’re negotiating with the government, I believe, but I haven’t heard anything more than that.
Fred: Is it your opinion that CCD is an American phenomenon? Doug: At the moment we think so because of the different way bees are managed in the United States. CCD is mainly amongst the migratory hives. They put bees on trucks, on 18-wheelers and take them to Florida, California. David Hackenbird, from Pennsylvania told us at one time he was moving half of his bees seventeen times the other half 21 times to pollinate various crops and that really stresses the bees. Our bees get moved maybe two times or three times to pollinate something. It does stress them, we know that!
Fred: What sort of protections has the government put in place here in Canada or Ontario to protect our bee population? Doug: In Quebec they are working on an over wintering insurance plan.
Fred: Is that by the government? Doug: Yes it is. It’s involved in the crop insurance plan. Quebec has a major loss three years ago they lost about half of the bees in the province. The beekeepers sat down with the government agency there and came up with a plan through crop insurance. The beekeeper pays, like an insurance plan, you pay in and if you have a loss over a certain percentage you get reimbursed to help get back into business.
Fred: Is there anybody else who has a plan like this? Doug: The only one that I’m aware of in Canada but I’m sure that by next season we may have something in place.
Fred: Is there any place that we have banned bees from, totally. Doug: We only accept bees from Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii. We will accept queens from mainland China. Now we’ve opened up to Chile.
Fred: Are you aware that the Americans are considering putting a ban on Australian bees?
Doug: That has come up. In the testing that the CCD committee in the United States did they basically found a new virus that is called Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus.
Fred: They have discovered that the Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus is in every colony that collapsed. Doug: Yes, but it’s also in one of the samples that they got from what appeared to be a healthy hive. We have brought Australian bees into Canada for 18 years. The Australians really reacted to the U.S. statement about Australian bees. They have a virologist over there, Dr. Denis Anderson, and he doesn’t believe anything of what the Americans have come up with and they haven’t seen anything in Australia that would indicate that the virus is causing major problems. There are lots of researchers that debate everything in the world.