Bye, Bye, Bees
When I was a kid here in DC, I had to be careful running barefoot in the park during the summer because of the good chance I'd step on a bee and get stung. But for many years now we haven't had a lot of bees around — so few, indeed, that I've noticed and often remarked on it — though I assume some must be left or else we'd have had reports of problems with our flowering plants (Washington has abundant flora). But a nascent crisis has emerged nationally and worldwide over the past year: colony collapse disorder, or CCD, with losses of up to 90% of commercial hives in certain areas. What's going on? And is this how the world ends, with a die-off of bees that makes commercial agriculture impossible?
Nobody knows what's causing hives to fail but speculation (grounded in sparse facts) ranges from the use of genetically modified crops to superabundant cell phone use. Some bee experts say this is a natural cycle for beekeeping, but most beekeepers don't think so. If it isn't, and the hive die-offs continue to accumulate at their current rate, I should think we'd be facing the prospect of catastrophic collapse of our agricultural system within a few years. No bees, no pollinated crops, no food — bye, bye, mankind.
Of course, if I were a bee, with my hive owned by a huge corporate conglomerate, being trucked from assignment to assignment over a polluted highway — essentially a bee-slave — I'm not sure I wouldn't rebel and zoom away, either. Probably part of what may well turn into emergency measures will involve encouraging local bee-keeping, good from the bees' point of view, part some crash research, perhaps part quarantine of less affected or unaffected areas, but I'm not so sanguine about a fix that saves the day. It's a situation to watch closely.
Posted by George Kenney on April 15, 2007 7:40 AM 
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Comments
So do the bees just disappear? Are they going somewhere else? Or there there masses of dead bees which can be examined? Is there any possibility that the bees are suffering some endemic pathology, bacterial or parasitic? This would be the first time I've heard of this sort of thing that was NOT due to endemic pathology. Can it be true that certain factors to do with habitat temperature are responsible? I don't know much about it. Good topic for a show with an expert.
Posted by: Andrew Large | April 18, 2007 1:30 PM
From a WikiPedia link:
Imidacloprid (This pesticide, while banned in France, has been rapidly increasing in usage in the USA)
"In France, Imidacloprid started being used in 1994 as a seed-coating for sunflowers. The following years, some beekeepers mentioned the possibility of a relationship between the pesticide and some behavioral troubles in bees. Bayer CropScience made some studies on the topic, which concluded Gaucho was non-toxic to bees. At this point, most discussions were kept rather private between Bayer and beekeeper associations.
However, during summer 1997, heavy losses of bees where observed in several regions of France and the controversy became public."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imidacloprid_effects_on_bee_population
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Interesting how this ten year history of missing bees has almost disappeared down the memory hole.
Good thing that Bayer's studies proved that Bayer was absolutely blameless. This wonderful insecticide could not possibly affect bees.
That, plus the memory hole, should allow "rapidly increasing in usage in the USA" to continue.
Posted by: James Fiji | April 18, 2007 7:53 PM