America was called the ‘land of milk and honey’ by the old world, yet neither cows nor honeybees are native to the Americas. Surprisingly, it is not the honey from the bees that is so critical to our economy. Pollination by bees adds over 15 billion dollars to our economy (Flores). Around 130 crops need honeybees in order to thrive (Kaplan). In the United States, honeybees produce about 200 million pounds of honey, worth 125 million dollars, and about 3.9 million pounds of beeswax, worth 7 million dollars (Doebler). Beekeeping is a serious business, not only for our economy, but for our food. Around one third of our food depends on pollination, including coffee, green chile, soybeans, apples, berries, squash, almonds, and many others (NRDC). In California alone, the almond slit requires the service of about half the United States bee colonies, around 1.2 million (Flores).

Unfortunately, the bee business isn’t going so well. A novel phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has been taking a sizable toll on our honey bees. During fall 2006, beekeepers in many countries around the world noticed a sudden disappearance of managed honey bee colonies, and for no apparent reason. These hives were formerly healthy, but for some reason bees simply abandoned their hives, often leaving just the queen and a few caretakers. In February 2007, the syndrome had been named (Kaplan). Congress recognized Colony Collapse Disorder as a threat in 2007 and granted emergency funds to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to search for honey bee disappearances. The 2008 Farm Bill granted the Department of Agriculture $20 million each year to support bee research and related work (NRDC). Research is underway to try to determine the causes of CCD, and how to prevent it from occurring. Possibilities involve combinations of pesticide exposure, invasive parasitic mites, inadequate food supply, transportation, and many different viruses. As the cause is believed to be from multiple sources, pinpointing them will be difficult. Many viruses are believed to be passed on by the mites, which in of themselves are devastating enough.

At an apiculture conference, a commercial beekeeper cries in front of the audience. In 6 months, he was broke, loosing his house, and his entire beekeeping operation had been wiped out. The cause of his disaster was two little parasites. One, the varroa mite, is described by James Tew, a specialist in beekeeping at Ohio Place University, as the “biggest catastrophe to befall apiculture since its establishment in this country in the 1600s… In only a few years, the varroa mite redesigned nearly 300 years of North American apiculture in ways akin to the dramatic way the boll weevil restructured the cotton-producing industry … in the early 1920s.” Varroa mites are large enough to be seen by the eye. Female varroa mites attach to bees between abdominal segments, feeding on a substance similar to our blood, called hemolmph. When females enter a nursery cell, called a brood cell, the mites lay eggs. The mite nymphs then feed on the developing bees. The mites and bees leave the brood cell together, as adults. The mites cause many birth defects, such as shortened abdomens, deformed wings and legs, or sometimes cause death. Colonies infested with varroa mites that are not treated can survive for about 8-18 months. Scott Camazine, an entomologist at Penn State University, believes that the mites aren’t the main problem. He says that the mites are simply making viral transmission faster (Doebler).

The other mite feeding on honeybees are tracheal mites. These mites are much smaller than varroa mites and believed to be less uncertain. These parasites live and feed in the bee’s trachea, clogging the airway and limiting respiration. The major effect of this is that bees cannot raise their metabolic rate to sustain warm while they fly. Beekeepers frequently position grease patties or menthol chips inside the hives when honey is not being produced to plain the spread of tracheal mites.

Many studies trying to choose the cause of CCD are built on a project started for the California almond crops. The study started as a arrangement to artificially supplement the honeybee’s diets in order to form larger colonies (Flores). As California is a major consumer of honeybee use for pollination, it is not surprising that the first effort to fight CCD have started there.

Entomologist Jeff Pettis, research leader of the ARS Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, is working on several collaborations to try to determine the cause of CCD. One study is looking at the combination of pesticide use and Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV), found in a previous study with university researcher Jay D. Evans, to be strongly associated with CCD. The second experiment will look at the effects of varroa mites and pesticides combined. If these two studies fail, other combinations will be explored. One of the issues with these and other CCD studies is that samples have only been taken after CCD has been reported. Therefore, Pettis has begun his study with three different beekeepers one both healthy and affected hives. Hopefully, the samples will give information to previous signs and causes of CCD (Kaplan). John Adamczyk, the acting research leader for ARS’s Honey Bee Research Unit in Weslaco, Texas, explains the hope for the study: “At the end of the 5-year cycle we’ll have specific recommendations that the beekeeper could use on how to manage bees more efficiently during long-range transport for pollination. We want to be able to transfer that technology to be useful by the end user” (Flores).

A major issue is the huge outburst of IAPV. Some thought that importation of bees from Australia and China had brought the disease with them, but entomologists Yanping (Judy) Chen and Evans, both also with the ARS Bee Research Laboratory, found otherwise. Chen said that “Our explore shows that, without seek information from, IAPV has been in this country since at least 2002. This work makes it clear that IAPV is not a recent introduction from Australia” (Kaplan). This however, does not rule out IAPV as a cause of CCD.

American foulbrood a bacterial disease of the honey bee, which is very devastating to bee colonies. The most obvious symptom is a creamy or dark brown glue-like larval remain that can be pulled out in a rope. This test is known as the ‘matchstick test.’ It affects the brood cells, killing bees before they are productive, usually while pupae, and occasionally with larvae. Brood cells may be spotted, showing early signs (de Graaf). Introduction of American foulbrood, or any other foulbrood, can kill off all future generations of honey bees is not spotted and treated immediately. A new drug, tylosin tartrate (TYLAN Soluble), has been favorite for spend to treat foulbrood (Honey Bees). If treated, colonies can continue to thrive.

A very large study involving pesticides has been conducted. 158 pesticides were tested among the honey bee, the leaf cutting bee, and the alkali bee. The leaf cutting bee is a solitary nesting bee that mainly foraging on alfalfa plants. Nests are built in narrow tube-like cavities, and separate cells are made for each egg and lined with alfalfa. The cell is then plugged with alfalfa leaves, and a original nest is made in the area. The alkali bee is also a solitary, bee that builds nests in soil. This western bee likes alkaline soils near water. The nest is between five and twenty centimeters deep, with many oval cells branching off the main shaft. This bee pollinates mainly alfalfa, onion, clover, celery, and mints. A smaller pesticide watch has also been conducted on the bumble bee. Bumble bees are social insects, like honey bees. They gain smaller nests, consisting of only 100-500 individuals. They prefer to nest underground, like the alkali bee, and need undisturbed meadows, old barns or woodlots. Bumble bees work harder than honeybees at cooler temperatures. They pollinate a larger variety of plants, but do particularly well on tomatoes and berries. The results were very similar for all species, although certain bees do better than others with different pesticides (Devillers).

Many researchers have found a completely different solution to the problem of CCD, that is, to simply not have honey bee hives. Wild bees, also known as non-honey bees, have been shown to be better pollinators than the honeybee, although it is still unclear as to whether non-native honey bees are negatively effecting wild native bee populations. Studies are conflicting, and broad pollination results have occurred when used together, yet the large numbers of honeybees could have a large impact on native species if food supplies are exiguous (Paini). Entomologist James Cane has found that a new native bee, called the Osmia bee, or the Mason bee, is a wonderful pollinator of berries. Cane learned of the bee from bee enthusiast Ron yon der Hellen, who told Cane of the quarter-inch long metallic green bee that had housed itself in his wooden nesting boards that he keeps as housing for leaf cutting bees. Cane borrowed several hundred of these bees and found that they visited as many red raspberry flowers as did honey bees in the same amount of time,, and nearly as many blackberry flowers. While red raspberries and blackberries are self-pollinating, bee visits made berries better. Cane found that red raspberry flowers visited by honey bees or the Osmia bees bore berries that were 30% heavier. The Osmia bee however, always gathered pollen, while honeybees did not. Even better, these bees are resistant to the devastating mites. After 5 years of study, Cane plans to give these emerald-green bees to growers and beekeepers (Wood).

Another study shows that native bees are up to five times more efficient at pollinating sunflowers than honeybees alone. Researchers at the Berkeley and Davis campuses of the University of California found that wild bees play a crucial role in the pollinating process. Sarah Greenleaf, the study’s leader, says that, “Up until now, we have concept that honey bees alone were doing most of the pollination, but now we know that a lot of honey bee pollination happens because of their interaction with wild native bees. This means that wild bees are much, much more important that we previously thought.” She and Claire Kremen observed the behavior of honey bees and wild native bees in sunflower fields during two different growing seasons. They found that in fields where wild bees were rare, one honeybee visit produced, on average, three seeds. As the number of wild bees increased, so did the number of seeds produced, up to 15 seeds per visit. To keep their data clean, each flower was bagged before it bloomed, allowed one visit, and then re-bagged until the seeds were produced (Two Bees). The drastic difference shows that native bees are a vital part of the pollination process.

Native bees are shown to be the most important crop pollinators in a recent study of watermelon crops. This study showed that native bees alone are sufficient to pollinate the watermelon. The leer interested 46 species of wild bees, and showed that native bees, given proper habitat, could replace the honey bee if needed. Natural habitat must be provided, open soil for soil-dwelling species, and year round food supply must be available within 0.3 kilometers, although further distances may suffice (Winfree).

Native bees are a possible, and currently the best, solution to the jam of CCD. To encourage native bees to live around your home, farm, or orchard, plant native plants. Native plants will thrive without much care and native bees are already well suited to them. Use diversity in color, shape, and flowering times to attract many species to perform permanent homes. Not all bees like the same colors or the same shape flowers, so be sure to procure a variety. Avoid pesticides, or read the Devillers study to determine what would be safest to use, and when. Certain pesticides can only be used safely on different parts of plants; however there are a few pesticides which have been shown to be completely safe for the studied bees. Nesting sites are a must, so leave so start ground undisturbed, and consider making nesting boxes (NRDC). All these things combined can help a farm or orchard save money by not renting out honeybees, and as CCD becomes more of an issue, these prices may rise.

Although native bees seem to be a solution to the CCD jam, other issues arise. Most wild bees are solitary, making transportation to large crops like the California almonds nearly impossible. If you of honeybees stopped in the United States, the millions of dollars received from honey and beeswax would no longer exist. These products would need to be imported, and prices would rise drastically. As CCD affects the world, these products may someday be completely eliminated if we do not get a handle on CCD. Also, the different native bees have other diseases they are susceptible to, and portion many of the same diseases with honeybees.

Colony Collapse Disorder is a serious scrape effecting beekeepers, farmers, and consumers. If we cannot get a handle on what is causing this, the world may fall into a greater depression, and food prices will coast. To combat this, we need to stop abusing our honey bees and encourage native bees to take residence near farms and orchards. Pesticide use needs to be cut down, used in safer ways, or altogether eliminated. Mass transportation of hives over hundreds of miles needs to be stopped, as this likely causes tall stress to the honeybees, making them more susceptible to disease.

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