As bee colonies disappear across the nation, experts are wondering why

By Kelley Chambers
The Daily News
Apr. 01, 2007

Louie Foy has been charming Mother Nature’s pollinators for more than 40 years.

Foy, who keeps bees at his home in Verona, makes honey from his tiny pets and knows everything about them — when they breed, what makes them angry, when they die.

But for the past three weeks, Foy has been stumped. He can’t figure out what drove some 30 of his colonies away.

“They just disappeared,” Foy said. “I have a few dead ones left but very few. Most of them, there’s just nothing there, and I have no idea why.”

Researchers throughout the country are scrambling to find out too. They wonder why colonies like Foy’s are vanishing without a trace or warning. Coined “colony collapse disorder,” or CCD, scholars have several theories but no conclusions.

Area beekeepers learned about it in January at the American Beekeepers meeting in Austin, Texas. Concerns were raised by Maryann Frazier, an apiculture extension associate at Penn State University.

“During the last three months of 2006, we began to receive reports from commercial beekeepers of an alarming number of honey bee colonies dying in the eastern United States,” Frazier said at the meeting. “Since the beginning of the year, beekeepers from all over the country have been reporting unprecedented losses.”

Although Onslow County has no large commercial beekeepers, some mid-level breeders are feeling the pinch.

“This is a relatively new thing; there’s a lot about it we don’t know,” said Jeff Morton, horticulture specialist for Onslow County Cooperative Extension.

Top apiarists, or bee specialists, explained common symptoms and theories surrounding the ailment during the January meeting. Experts believe the disorder affects the bees’ immune system, causing them to flee and die off.

One way scholars are hunting for a cure is through bee and hive autopsies. Attention has also been drawn to nearby colonies that remain but inexplicably become weakened.

“It’s kind of a like a crime scene investigation,” Morton said. “They have some ideas but don’t want to rely on any one theory just yet.”

Certain pesticides have also come into question, Morton said.

“They found one type of fungus growing in the digestive tract that they didn’t not know was there,” Morton said. “They also found a one-celled organism called a flagellate they didn’t know was there, either.”

Although he has an idea why an entire yard, or block of colonies, would up and vanish, Foy still doesn’t understand why others were not affected.

Wipeouts may have been caused by outside predators like mites or moths. With about 140 hives under wing, Foy believes tracheal mites are to blame. Normally when a hive becomes weak, wax moths and hive beetles will jump on it relatively quickly and destroy the hive before it dies out.

But Morton said, many of the affected hives will sit empty for weeks with no wax moths or hive beetles in them.

“Roaches found in hives were also acting erratically, acting in a way you normally don’t expect them to act,” Morton said.

Waiting for state inspectors to come out and observe his affected hives, Foy recalled a similar situation about 20 years ago when tracheal mites wiped out nearly all of his bees.

“Things go in a cycle,” Foy said. “But I really don’t know. This time of year (bees) are really delicate and right in the process of raising their bees.”

Beekeeper Julian Wooten uses 75 colonies to pollinate his Southwest-area strawberry farm and plans on breeding more within the next few weeks. Although he hasn’t noticed any unusual behavior within his colonies, deaths as a result of CCD may be even harder to detect because occasional deficits are normal in the business.

The losses in this area, he said, are caused mainly by tracheal mites.

“I lose some every year; you can’t keep them all alive for various reasons,” Wooten said.

“Losing 20 percent is almost the rule now; mites really work on them during the winter time.”

What is most peculiar about recent losses, Wooten said, was the fact that the hive is left — full of food and unhatched larvae — for no obvious reason. So far there is nothing linking the disappearance to voluntary desertion. But that’s what it looks like, Wooten said.

“Normally you would (also) have collections of bees or bee residue near the entrance of a colony (that) dies from mites,” Wooten said. “This disorder caught everybody by surprise. We need to have them now, some of our biggest producers like citrus and almond (farms) really depend on them.”

Like others in the agricultural sector, Wooten said he would not be able to produce strawberries without his bees. In order for one bloom to be properly pollinated, he said, it must receive at least 20 visits from the migratory insects.

“They’re fascinating, I don’t know better term for them,” said Wooten, who’s been keeping bees for 50 years. “They sting you but to observe them working, maintaining their colony, collecting honey, pollinating — they’re truly an amazing insect.”

Contact Kelley Chambers at [email protected] or 353-1171, ext. 235.