Study Points to Virus in Collapse of Honeybee Colonies

By Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post, September 7.

Scientists yesterday identified a virus as one of the likely causes of the recent wave of honeybee colony collapses across the country.

The study, co-authored by researchers at Pennsylvania State University, Columbia University, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and several other institutions, suggests that the Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV) helps trigger the mysterious condition known as colony collapse disorder, which destroyed about 23 percent of U.S. beehives last winter. The paper is being published today in the journal Science.

Beekeepers, scientists and public officials have been searching for the cause of the disorder, which surfaced in 2004 and was formally recognized last year. Unlike other diseases that strike hives, the collapse disorder leaves a colony without most of its worker bees despite the presence of plentiful food, a queen and other adult bees. It has devastated an industry that produces honey and pollinates lucrative crops such as almonds, oranges and apples.

read more (Washington Post)

In Honeybee Mystery, Plot Thickens And Suspect Emerges

By Amy Ellis Nutt, Newhouse News Service

Bees are among the most sensitive and hardest-working creatures in nature.

A mysterious ailment, however, is causing the great pollinators to lose their way home. The disorder, called "colony collapse,'' has resulted in the deaths of millions of honeybees worldwide and up to half of the 2.5 million colonies in the United States.

The chief suspect, say many scientists, is the most commonly used insecticide on the planet: imidacloprid.

Launched in 1994 by Bayer, the German health care and chemical company, imidacloprid is used to combat insects such as aphids that attack more than 140 crops, including fruits and vegetables, cotton, alfalfa and hops. Sold under various brand names, such as Admire, Advantage, Gaucho, Merit, Premise and Provado, imidacloprid also is manufactured for use on flowers, lawns, trees, golf courses and even pets in the form of flea collars.

read more (Newhouse News Service)

Natural Beehives Less Affected by Colony Collapse Disorder

By Sharon Labchuk

Colony Collapse Disorder in domestic honey bees is all the buzz lately, mostly because honey bees pollinate food crops for humans.

However, we would not be so dependent on commercial non-native factory farmed honey bees if we were not killing off native pollinators. Organic agriculture does not use chemicals or crops toxic to bees and, done properly, preserves wildlife habitat in the vicinity, recognizing the intimate relationship between cultivated fields and natural areas.

While no one is certain why honey bee colonies are collapsing, factory farmed honey bees are more susceptible to stress from environmental sources than organic or feral honey bees. Most people think beekeeping is all natural but in commercial operations the bees are treated much like livestock on factory farms.

I'm on an organic beekeeping email list of about 1,000 people, mostly Americans, and no one in the organic beekeeping world, including commercial beekeepers, is reporting colony collapse on this list. The problem with commercial operations is pesticides used in hives to fumigate for varroa mites and antibiotics are fed to the bees to prevent disease. Hives are hauled long distances by truck, often several times during the growing season, to provide pollination services to industrial agriculture crops, which further stresses the colonies and exposes them to agricultural pesticides and GMOs.

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