Colony Collapse Disorder A Secondary Worry —

Natural Causes Create Concern

Among Connecticut Beekeepers

By Nancy K. Crevier

In the spring of 2007, after losing 14 of the 15 hives he keeps at Cherry Grove Farm in Newtown, Danbury beekeeper and Backyard Beekeepers Association member Dick Marron mulled over the idea that the hives could have succumbed to the then newly recognized colony collapse disorder (CCD).

Colony collapse disorder is characterized by the sudden disappearance of bees from a hive, with some hives losing an entire squadron of worker bees in just a few days. Unlike other bee diseases, where keepers find dead bees littering the ground in front of the hive or evidence of infestation, with CCD bees seem to simply leave the hive and do not return. Researchers continue to investigate what would cause CCD, not ruling out pesticides, a combination of stressors, or pathogenic agents that could alter a bee’s innate ability to track its way to and from the hive.

But Mr Marron, once again starting over this spring after devastating losses, believes that Connecticut beekeepers are struggling more with normal issues such as queen bee problems, disease, swarming, and the miserable winter and spring weather this year, than with CCD.

While his hives in the spring of 2007 had the earmark of CCD-affected hives, with a lack of dead bees around the hives and no bees present, after much research he is still unsure that anything other than natural causes created that die-off.

Bees do not necessarily respond to logic, Mr Marron said, adding that beekeeping is actually more of an art than a science. As an organic beekeeper who prefers to not use the compounds that could keep more of the hive-destroying mites at bay, Mr Marron said that losses are inevitable for him. “I started all over again this spring. I lost most of the 13 hives I have this past winter to a variety of causes, all of which could have been natural causes.”

Unlike the spring of 2007, when his bees from several hives seemed to just disappear, this winter’s losses he believes are attributable to the weather and mite infestation. Queen bee problems are always an issue for the home hobbyist beekeeper, as well, said Mr Marron.

“The furor over CCD in Connecticut has died down,” said Mr Marron. “It never was a big deal in Connecticut. Bees die.”

Even with hobbyist losses at around 50 percent this year, he remains unconvinced that CCD is a problem in our state. “The long winter and long, wet spring were harder on the bees here than any CCD problem in Connecticut,” he said. With the cold, rainy weather, said Mr Marron, “The bees would just about get started and the nectar would get washed away. A rainy day is like a lost day to a bee.”

Ted Jones of Jones Apiaries in Farmington has 350 colonies in yards all around the state. Mr Jones, the president of the Connecticut Beekeepers Association, said that beekeepers do unofficially track losses among registered yards, and that this past year was “not too bad.”

“The [Connecticut Agricultural Experimentation Station in New Haven] as of two months ago, has not detected any CCD cases this year,” said Mr Jones. What is a problem for Connecticut beekeepers is the verroa mite. Like Mr Marron, he initially thought his 2007 losses were due to CCD, but has since determined it was a varroa mite problem. “The mites are devastating the hives in the fall, so the hives go into the winter with no young bees,” he explained. “Then in the spring, keepers suffer a loss that they attribute to the winter weather or CCD, but it’s the mites,” he said.

The difference between CCD and mite collapse, said Mr Jones, is that upon examination of the lost hive in a mite situation, the keeper will find all of the bees dead and no brood left behind. With CCD the queen and brood are left behind in the abandoned hive.

No Smoking Gun

Following a meeting of the Eastern Apicultural Society in New York in August, Mr Jones said that “no smoking gun” has yet turned up to fully explain CCD. “Researchers are leaning toward the theory of two or three events coming together to cause CCD,” he said.

One theory that has been espoused by researchers is that fungicides sprayed on crops may be ingested by the bees, killing the friendly bacteria in the bee’s gut and weakening the bee.

According to an August 24 Associated Press report, a study by researchers in the Department of Entomology at the University of Illinois has “disclosed fragments of ribosomal RNA in [bees’] guts, an indication of damage to the ribosomes, which make proteins necessary for life.” RNA is central to protein production. The researchers reported that “sick bees suffered an unusually high number of infections with viruses that attack the ribosome.” A compromised ribosome prevents a bee from responding to pesticide use, fungal infections and bacterias, and leads to inadequate nutrition, according to a statement by May R. Berenbaum, head of the University of Illinois Department of Entomology.

Even though it appears that Connecticut is not suffering greatly from CCD, beekeepers still must keep an eye open for the syndrome, cautioned Mr Jones. “CCD is in Massachusetts and it is in New York,” he warned.

It is the big beekeeping outfits across the nation that have suffered the most from CCD, according to Mr Marron, who is a regular contributor to Bee Culture and The American Bee Journal. Where 15 percent losses were once considered normal for large operations that move hives between states to provide pollination to crops, normal losses since the advent of CCD range between 30 and 50 percent, and researchers are still unsure what CCD is or how it is spread.

On August 18, National Resources Defense Council, an environmental action group out of Washington, D.C., filed a lawsuit alleging that the United States Environmental Protection Agency has evidence of a connection between pesticides and CCD that has been withheld. In a press release issued that day, the NRDC said that the “EPA has failed to respond to NRDC’s Freedom of Information Act request for agency records concerning the toxicity of pesticides to bees, forcing the legal action.”

“Recently approved pesticides have been implicated in massive bee die-offs and are the focus of increasing scientific scrutiny,” said NRDC Senior Attorney Aaron Colangelo. “EPA should be evaluating the risks to bees before approving new pesticides, but now refuses to tell the public what it knows.”

The suit refers specifically to a pesticide approved in 2003 and manufactured by BayerCrop Science, known as clothianidin. That pesticide was banned in Germany and France due to the negative impact on bees in those countries.

Increased bee die-off could result in food cost increases as fewer crops are pollinated. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, honeybees pollinate approximately $15 billion worth of US crops.

Beekeepers in Connecticut generally are not large-scale producers, though, said Mr Marron. When a keeper has only two or three hives on average, even if all of them die off, it is generally not considered that unusual, nor is it possible to say that it is because of CCD.

There is no doubt that something is contributing to the huge losses that big beekeeping operations are seeing in other parts of the country, though, added Mr Marron, and that cause must be uncovered. “We might never know exactly how big those losses really are though,” he said, “because those big operations don’t really want everyone to know how bad their losses are.”

Ten years ago, there were five million registered hives in the United States, said Mr Jones. This year there were only 1.5 million. If there is one good thing about CCD, said Mr Jones, it is that the attention brought to the plight of the honeybee has dramatically increased the number of hobbyist beekeepers in Connecticut. “People feel like they want to be part of the solution. It’s important to the equation.”