Disappearing Disease
Posted on April 9th, 2007 By laura at 1:08 pm (All, Six Legs, Two legs)
Everyone is talking about bees and how entire colonies are leaving their hives and disappearing, never to be seen again. Whatever is causing it has been known by a lot of names (including ‘disappearing disease’) but ‘Colony Collapse Disorder’ seems to be the most widely accepted ‘official’ name for whatever it is. Quite honestly, this scares the bejeebers out of me. Its something I generally try not to talk about in front of my children because I remember being in middle school and being told by a teacher that when I became an adult I would have to have an actual wheel barrow full of money in order to buy one loaf of bread. I always took stuff like that to heart and generally suffered a lot of anxiety all through childhood. But, I digress.
There are several theories about why bees might be disappearing including global warming, genetically modified crops, pesticides, and neonicotinoids (now strictly limited in France because of their implication in the die off of bees). The general consensus is that whatever is killing them is a new threat, so it seems to me that traditional pesticides can be scratched from that list since, in reality we are probably using fewer of those now than we were back in the 1950’s and this die off is relatively recent (although not so recent that it shouldn’t have been getting more attention before now). The neonicotinoids are interesting though, because I think everyone thought that because it is derived from nicotine (so wonderfully natural) that we were using ’safe’ chemicals, but, Mother Nature laughs at us as usual. While neonicotinoids are considered to be very safe for people we shoot ourselves (and our crops) in the foot because they are extremely harmful to pollinators like bees (suppressing their immune systems and leaving them susceptible to opportunistic diseases like mites and fungi). And, no pollinators, no food!
I’m hungry just thinking about it.
Barb! said,
April 9, 2007 at 10:44 pm
Yes, I agree that this is quite scary. I was reading something about this issue, and the scientist discussing the die off said that Albert Einstein had said that if bees died off then the human race would only have about 4 years to live. Like you said, no pollinators, no food!
Rebecca said,
April 10, 2007 at 12:21 pm
I wonder…if it is a climate thing, are other countries finding themselves having more bees?
This is alarming to say the least.
laura said,
April 10, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Actually it’s becoming a worldwide problem. Apparently it originated in the U.S. but now other countries are reporting the same issues. I read that Switzerland, Germany, Poland and Spain are seeing similar die offs in their beekeeping industry. Another thing I read that is apparently troubling is that with a ‘normal’ die off, wild bees will quickly take over the hive but that isn’t happening with the CCD die offs. So, they think that the bees leave ’something’ behind that makes the hive uninhabitable to other bees.
laura said,
April 10, 2007 at 3:23 pm
Rebecca, I just reread your comment which I apparently misunderstood the first time. I didn’t see anything about an increase in bees elsewhere, but it seems that it would follow if that theory were to be proven.
Rebecca said,
April 10, 2007 at 4:57 pm
Sure - if other places are becoming unseasonably cooler or warmer for their area and are better for the bees…are they ending up there? Do bees migrate?
I find myself becoming obsessed with the lives of bees now.
laura said,
April 10, 2007 at 5:29 pm
I’m certain that honey bees hibernate. I saw a month by month check list for beekeepers and it definitely indicated that the bees should be in the hive all winter.
Barb! said,
April 15, 2007 at 8:51 pm
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/04/15/are_cellphones_killi.html
Barb! said,
April 16, 2007 at 11:20 pm
well i posted a different link about this, but it seems to have vanished…but this is the basic idea…
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2449968.ece
laura said,
April 17, 2007 at 10:43 am
That’s really interesting. At first when I was reading it I was like, cell phones. yeah, whatever. But, the fact that when they put a cell phone near a hive it keeps the bees away is compelling. It doesn’t explain why other wild species won’t take the hive over eventually though. Maybe it makes the bees secrete some “evil lies here” pheromone?
Rebecca said,
April 17, 2007 at 2:03 pm
They had a blurb on the news this morning, Laura, about cell phones affecting hives and I thought about you. I was going to follow up today online but I haven’t had time…
Alice said,
April 18, 2007 at 9:15 am
Do you think people would sacrifice their cell phones for the bees? Maybe it will be the Samon vs. Lumber industry except Verizon vs. Food. I always thought the government would collapse first and send us into appocalyptic mayhem.
laura said,
April 18, 2007 at 10:57 am
Nope, Alice. Text messaging will be our ultimate demise.
LJR Enterprises » Blog Archive » Salvation said,
April 18, 2007 at 11:27 am
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Alice said,
April 20, 2007 at 9:46 am
oh no! i hate text messaging. i hope the bees come through.
Mary said,
April 30, 2007 at 9:32 am
I was a backyard beekeeper in the mid seventies, into the mid eighties. At the end of my back-yard beekeeping stint, I had seven to ten colonies, which rapidly dwindled to just a few. I had inspectors from Michigan State out to help me with the problem. They described the phenomenon as an uncommon but growing problem called ‘disappearing disease’. I had no cell phone then, did not live in an industrial area, and was an organic backyard gardener. Where was the global warming theory then? Cell phones? And bees do not hibernate. They move around in a particular attern within the hive all winter, emerging on sunny todays to ‘relieve themselves’, and then return to the hive if they do not freeze on the way back. Seems we might need to go back to the books on what is causing this one.
Mary
laura said,
April 30, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Thanks for correcting me on the ‘hibernating’ mistake. I knew they didn’t migrate, just had the wrong word for what is they do.
As far as global warming not being a factor, just because it wasn’t getting the mainstream media attention it does today doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. When climate scientists talk about global warming, they are generally looking at at least the past 100 years. And, as I’m sure you know, it is unlikely that your bees stayed strictly within the confines of your organic, backyard garden.