Colony Collapse Disorder

   All day, every day, people tell me "Isn't there a huge shortage of bees?" or ask me "you know there is supposed to be a big bee shortage?" or otherwise bring up the subject as if I, a professional bee handler, have somehow managed to remain oblivious and have just been waiting around for someone to repeat to me what they overheard on Fox while flipping through channels the night before. So I'm assuming you have heard about it as well: Honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).
   If you've heard about it at all, what you have probably heard is "some U.S. honeybee hives have lost 90% of their bees to Colony Collapse Disorder." When researching the subject the other day this was practically the only statistic I could find in media. As I pointed out yesterday, "some US hives," have also lost "90% of their bees" due to bears, vandalism, and freak automobile accidents. And more seriously, "some US hives" have certainly lost 90% of their bees to varroa & trachael mites, wax moths, or the Small Hive Beetle (I have some pictures of the destruction these pests have wrought on some local colonies, it is not pretty).
   Yesterday I was researching the subject in search of material for the press releases. I called several commercial beekeepers and entomologists who specialize in honeybees, as well as trawling the open sources of the internet. I found the most concise and dependably accurate source to be a Congressional Research Service report thats only a month old.
   The Bee shortage everyone is talking about turns out is actually a loss of 38% of hives on average over winter as opposed to the normal average of 16%. Only a quarter of surveyed beekeepers reported symptoms of CCD, though these beekeepers lost an average of 45% of their hives.
   Basically, no, 90% of the bees are not gone. Yes, there is an unknown ailment effecting bees and the beekeeping industry is concerned. Its a matter of lost profits and increased costs though, not of the pending extinction of bees.

   But what IS CCD really? I find its symptoms to be rather strange. Basically, the bees just disappear. There is no corresponding evidence of dead bees. Affected hives are found to still be stocked with honey, and have a healthy queen who is still laying eggs (and a few recently hatched bees are still around) -- but 95% of the bees from that hive are simply not to be found!! Its a bit Bermuda-triangle esque if you ask me.
   The hive basically appears healthy except for the fact that for some reason all the worker bees have left. Wax Moths which usually are quick to invade any weak colony avoid the colonies completely for a few weeks after they've been thus abandoned. If one takes the hive box and places it on top of another healthy hive (hives usually consist of stacked boxes ("supers"), see picture to the right), the healthy hive dies. These facts would make you think there is something toxic about the hive, but I don't believe anything has been detected yet.
   Leading theories for cause are either a new or newly more virulent bee disease, or pesticides. Reports on "OrganicConsumers.org" report that from over a thousand organic beekeepers surveyed, not one reported CCD symptoms -- this might mean the cause is somehow linked to either pesticides or the rigours of commercial bee life (which often include a lot of being shipped around in flatbed trucks and other stressful activities), but I'm rather distrustful of information from pro-organic sources -- they're often way too enthusiastic to proclaim "organic" is the answer to everything. Anyway, also there are no reports of Colony Collapse in feral colonies ... not that anyone necessarily would report that though.
   Also, some media sources have apparently mentioned that "some people" think cell phone tours may be causing this. This is not a theory which is being seriously considered by any of the experts I've talked to or any of the professional reports I've read. This is just another technology-hating-hippie-theory. (=

   In other news, at least in Southern California, the extremely low levels of rain we have gotten this year is certainly having a greater effect on the number of bees in the area than CCD is.

Countering the Hype

   This is the letter-to-the-editor I wrote and submitted today, on behalf of my boss:

Dear Editors,

   Recent news reports have hyped up some mild hysteria regarding Honeybee Colony collapse Disorder (CCD) by mentioning that “some U.S. hives” have lost “as much as ninety percent of their bees last winter” (“Mystery bee disease may destroy hives worldwide,” OC Register 06/25/07). While this may be true, “some U.S. hives” have also lost 90 percent of their bees due to bears, skunks, or freak accidents.
   A recent congressional report (“Recent Honey Bee Colony Declines,” Congressional Research Service, 06/20/07) puts more reliable numbers to the problem.
   Compared to an average normal loss of 16% of colonies over winter, beekeepers on average lost 38% last winter. While this increase is alarming, it is by no means the mass extinction that the citation of extreme cases has lead the public to believe.

   The OC Register has encouraged people who find themselves hosting unwelcome feral bee swarms or colonies to have them removed live by Orange County Beekeepers Association volunteers, in order to mitigate this perceived bee decimation (“The Secret Lives of Beekeepers,” 05/19/07; “More Buzz on Bees” 07/21/07). This advice is problematic for several reasons.
   Firstly, it is far more cost effective for a commercial beekeeper to recoup their bee stocks by breeding from their existing colonies or commercial
scale bee breeders than it is for random feral colonies to be shipped and integrated.
   Secondly, feral colonies are unhygienic. Honeybees suffer from a variety of ailments which can be controlled in clean commercial hives but run rampant in feral colonies: varroa and tracheal mites are serious causes of bee mortality, for example [And certainly DO cause the "loss of 90%" of the bees in "some US hives!"]. And in fact, as the causes of CCD are currently not known, and may very well be some form of communicable pathogen, beekeepers are more reluctant than ever to introduce bees of dubious hygiene into their apiaries.
   Thirdly, on a related note, Africanized Honeybees are known to have colonized Orange County. Commercial beekeepers do not want Africanized Honeybees, and it requires extensive DNA testing to determine if a colony or swarm is Africanized or not.
   In conclusion, commercial beekeepers do not want Orange County’s feral bees.

   The May 19th OC Register article also noted that the OC Beekeepers Association volunteers will "tame" Africanized colonies by introducing a European queen. What actually occurs is that the European queen produces European offspring who gradually replace the Africanized bees when they die at the end of their 40
day lifespan [Actually what ACTUALLY happens frequently is the African bees create an African queen, kill the European queen, and go about their African business]. In short, one is not actually saving a colony, but merely replacing it. The existing bees will die in 40 days regardless, and the new queen could just as easily be used to regenerate a commercial hive rather than replacing a colony no one will want.
   The OC Register’s continuing encouragement of live removals is misleading and unwarranted. Overhype of CCD by reporting extreme cases as if they are the norm actually does the Register’s readers a disservice and leaves them less informed than they started.

Sincerely,
David Marder
Former president,
Orange County Beekeepers Association

   Additionally, I wrote the followed press release:

CONTACT: Dave Marder – (949) 497-6264
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

RESCUE OF FERAL COLONIES NOT THE ANSWER TO COLONY
COLLAPSE DISORDER

   Recent news reports have hyped up some hysteria regarding Honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) by mentioning that “some U.S. hives” have lost “as much as ninety percent of their bees” (“Mystery bee disease
may destroy hives worldwide,” OC Register 06/25/07). The OC Register has recently been encouraging people to have feral swarms and colonies removed from their property live to mitigate this problem. David Marder, of Bee Busters Incorporated, a Laguna Hills based company specializing in bee control, disagrees.
   David Marder has been involved in beekeeping and bee control for over 25 years. He was on the Governor’s Steering Committee on Africanized Honeybees and is certified by Dr Steven Theones as an Africanized Honeybee expert. Marder was the president of the Orange County Beekeepers Association for two years, has been featured on CNN, Discovery Channel, National Geographic, and Wallstreet Journal, and has guest spoken at countless venues. Marder is licensed by the state of California to perform structural pest control.
   “Live removal of feral swarms and colonies from Orange County poses a serious risk to public health and domestic animals,” says Marder. Feral bees in Orange County are likely to be Africanized, and only DNA testing on a given specimen can tell for certain. Africanized bees are not always readily identifiable by their behaviour, and hosting them in close proximity to dense human habitation is an accident waiting to happen. Shipping them elsewhere may actually exacerbate the spread of Africanized honeybees.
   Additionally, as the causes of CCD is currently unknown and may well be caused by a communicable bee pathogen, mixing clean domestic bees with unhygienic feral bees is likely to make the situation worse.
   “I used to do live removals,” says Marder, “but when Africanized Honeybees were discovered in Orange County, Dr Eric Mussen (notable bee researcher at UC Davis) said to me during a ride-along, ‘there are two things I don’t want you doing, one is keeping feral bees, and two is giving those bees to beekeepers.’”
   Recently, a swarm rescued by Orange County Beekeepers Association members and given to a hobbyist beekeeper has resulted in the death of a pet dog.
   Additionally, the volunteers who perform live removals often lack the technical or legal qualifications to perform the work. Bee Busters technicians have had a number of calls to clean up removal attempts that had been botched by volunteers. Many, if not all, the volunteers also do not meet the State Pest Control Act requirement that anyone performing live removals have $25,000 of insurance posted to cover the potential liabilities (§ 8555g).
   “You should never allow someone to work with bees on your property who is not properly licensed and insured” urges Marder, “its just too much of a liability.”

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   So there you have it. You may think "of COURSE you as a pest control company are biased against saving the bees" -- BUT keep in mind we DID do live removals but stopped for the exact reasons outlined above: no one wanted them and experts told us it was unsafe. Suprisingly, if we ever did have another bumblebee call (which I'm not sure we've gotten in literally years), we WOULD try to save the bumblebees, because they ARE nearly extinct in this area -- but you don't hear about that because no one cares about bumblebees.

   Next post I believe I will write about the actual Colony Collapse Disorder