Bee Colony Collapse Disorder Solved?

In a collaborative effort between scientists and military, the mystery behind what is killing honeybee colonies throughout the United States and Europe may be solved. Since 2006, over a third of the managed honeybee colonies in the United States have disappeared. One of the difficulties in determining what was causing the mass death of millions of honeybees was that scientists could not perform autopsies on bees. Once afflicted the bees don't die immediately but fly away from their hive and die. Causes of the high death rate have been blamed on everything from cellphones, global warming, mites, pollution, pesticides, to genetically modified food. Fortunately a cure may not be far off.

A fungus tag-teaming with a virus have apparently interacted to cause the problem, according to a paper by Army scientists in Maryland and bee experts in Montana in the online science journal PLoS One.

Exactly how that combination kills bees remains uncertain, the scientists said — a subject for the next round of research. But there are solid clues: both the virus and the fungus proliferate in cool, damp weather, and both do their dirty work in the bee gut, suggesting that insect nutrition is somehow compromised.

Read more about the unique technology that a brother tag-team and Army specialists combined to find the facts behind Honeybee Colony Collapse disorder.

Cell Phones Cause Of Bee Disappearance?

More discoveries of bee colony collapse in Europe and United Kingdom with speculation pointing a finger at telephone radiation.

Nigel Hurst, the editor of the Scottish Beekeeper magazine, said: "One or two people here have lost colonies. More and more, we are hearing about unexplained losses. "A good one-third of the food we eat is affected in some way by the bee population. The quote that's normally given is from Einstein, who said, 'If all the honey bees were wiped out, mankind would follow in about four years'."
Beekeepers across the UK have found hives deserted by bee colonies, even though there is no obvious reason, such as disease.
Mr Hurst said: "There's all kinds of guesswork going on - a lot of money is being spent in America to try and find out exactly what the problem is."
Janice Furness, the secretary of the Fife branch of the Scottish Beekeepers' Association, said: "We have had some cases - we've been calling it the Mary Celeste syndrome. A hive seems fine, then the next week it is empty and there are no more dead bees inside than you would normally expect. They have left behind developing broods and eggs. It is totally against all their instincts to do that."
Ms Furness said bees sometimes left their hives in the autumn and moved elsewhere, but that mass abandonments early in the year were extremely unusual.
She added: "If they do something like this in February, there's no chance of setting up a new colony - it's mass suicide." She said one beekeeper in her area had lost 12 out of 15 hives for no apparent reason.
Ms Furness added: "One of my beekeeping friends is convinced it has something to do with telephone masts. Bees are very sensitive to radiation from these things."
Ms Furness added that the government needed to put more money into research.
She said: "I don't think that they realise how important bees are. About 80 per cent of pollination is through honey bees. If anything affects that, it could be very serious."
In Spain, thousands of colonies are said to have been lost, and up to 40 per cent of Swiss bees are reported to have disappeared or died. Heavy losses have also been confirmed in Portugal, Italy and Greece.

Read Colony Collapse Disorder Solved?

Read Hernando County's Florida Native Plant Society member Sharon's wonderful article on Little Known Pollinators.
 

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