Sally Furniss
Well-known member
‘CSI’ Bee Deaths May Wane as Scientists Probe Diet, Hunt Killer
March 13 (Bloomberg) -- Ron Spears, a California beekeeper, says he’s breathing easier about his hives this year because the threat of honeybee extinction may be subsiding.
Beekeepers, or apiarists, are investing more in food and cutting chemical levels in hives to withstand colony collapse disorder, the malady that helped wipe out about a third of the U.S. commercial hives in the past two years, Spears said. Scientists are studying the honeybee genome and relationships involving nutrition, pesticides and mites to resolve the phenomenon’s mystery.
This year’s first, and biggest, test of honeybee capability to pollinate $15 billion annually of U.S. plants -- California’s almond crop -- showed hive-health improvement, insect scientists and beekeepers said. The disorder, found in at least 35 states and Europe and Asia as well as in the plots of the animated comedy “The Simpsons” and the crime drama “CSI,” isn’t over, Spears said. Still, it seems more under control, he said.
“It’s been three, four years since we’ve been able to say this, but there’s been enough bees,” Spears, who trucked half of his 20,000-bee colonies to the state’s Central Valley this year to fertilize the tree nut, said in an interview in Bakersfield, California. He feeds his bees sugar-derived pollen substitute rather than corn syrup. “People are understanding you better take care of them,” he said.
After its identification in 2006, the disorder -- in which seemingly healthy bees suddenly flee their hives and die --helped destroy about a third of all U.S. beehives in 2007 and 2008, according to the Apiary Inspectors of America, a nonprofit organization. That’s more than twice the normal rate of hive loss, said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, the group’s president, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Seeking Explanation
The cause of the malady isn’t known, said May Berenbaum, the head entomologist at the University of Illinois in Urbana.
Scientists studying the disorder say they are still learning how nutrition, pesticides, viruses and mites may be prompting the deaths of billions of bees. Researchers exploring the honeybee genome may be within weeks of another goal: publicly identifying a genetic marker that definitively identifies that collapse has occurred, Berenbaum said.
Bees help keep crops healthy. Fruit-pollinated products are found in items such as Haagen-Dazs ice cream from General Mills Inc. Lip balm made by Burt’s Bees Inc., a unit of Clorox Co., contains wax from the honeycombs of beehives.
Effects of Drought
California, the nation’s largest crop producer, is facing water shortages, and the drought is forcing farmers to cut almond acreage. The water conditions and the effects of the recession are reducing the need for honeybees for almond pollination. The economy, not colony collapse disorder, sparked more talk as Spears and a dozen other beekeepers gathered at a pancake restaurant in Bakersfield at 6 a.m. on a recent day.
Bee deaths from the malady may be declining, said Frank Eischen, a U.S. Department of Agriculture entomologist in Weslaco, Texas, citing anecdotal evidence.
The disorder has catapulted bee health into the public eye. The subject lifted ticket sales for the comedian Jerry Seinfeld’s “Bee Movie” and spurred Haagen-Dazs to create “vanilla honey bee” ice cream, with proceeds going to pollinator research.
Honeybees are the biggest commercial pollinators because they are easy to transport and fertilize most crops that need pollen. Raspberries, pumpkins, citrus plants, melons and pears all receive better yields from bee pollination, according to the USDA.
Almond Production
Almonds, the most valuable U.S. tree nut at $2.2 billion in worth last year, need more bees than any other U.S. plant, enough to require about 1.3 million commercial beehives, more than half of all colonies, according to the USDA. That creates an annual ritual in which beekeepers truck hives thousands of miles to California’s Central Valley, where almost all domestic and 80 percent of the world crop is grown, according to the Almond Board of California, a crop-promotion agency based in Modesto.
“So go the bees, so go the almonds,” said John Replogle, chief executive officer of Durham, North Carolina-based Burt’s Bees, which Clorox acquired in December 2007.
Greg Wegis and his cousin Michael Young grow almost a quarter-million almond trees outside Bakersfield, in an area with roads named for country-music stars Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, who are from the region. Off dirt paths, billions of bees pollinate groves tended by farmers, some of them descendants of the Oklahoma migrants described in John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel “The Grapes of Wrath.”
Rented Hives
Wegis and Young spend $175 to rent each hive, putting one or two on each of the 2,000 acres that they use to grow almonds. The cost is more than twice what they paid four years ago, Young said. Beekeepers are charging more, partly to make up the costs of improved bee diets, and farmers will pay extra for hives that are better cared for, said Joe Traynor, a regional broker who matches farmers with hives.
Scientists have settled on primary and secondary factors that explain the disorder, said Jeff Pettis, a USDA entomologist in Beltsville, Maryland.
Initial stresses include poor nutrition, mites, and pesticide exposure, he said. These combine with maladies such as the Israeli acute paralysis virus, which disorients bee brains, or nosema ceranae, a gut parasite that saps insect energy. The one-two punch sickens foraging worker bees and rapidly spreads through hives, he said.
Toxic Substances
The honeybee genome, completed in 2006, shows that bees are more vulnerable to mass infection than first suspected, having about half of the genes used to fight toxic substances that insects such as fruit flies have, Berenbaum said. Pesticide accumulations inside hives may create a “sick-building syndrome for honeybees,” Berenbaum said.
Jay Vroom, chief of CropLife America, a Washington-based group that represents Bayer CropScience AG, Syngenta Crop Protection Inc. and DuPont Crop Protection, said pesticides used near bees have been government-tested, with no clear link to colony collapse disorder proven.
Maryann Frazier, an entomologist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, Pennsylvania, said pesticides alone are most likely not a sole cause.
“The levels and frequency of pesticides we’re finding in these hives are pretty amazing” and need more study, she said. “What we don’t know is how they’re interacting with other factors.”
A key to understanding and potentially solving colony collapse disorder will be a genetic test to ensure the phenomenon is consistently reported, said Berenbaum, the Illinois entomologist. Currently the malady is identified and reported by beekeepers themselves. That impedes data collection because apiarists may be inaccurately blaming dead hives on the disorder, Eischen said.
Once researchers find a marker to diagnose the disorder, they may be able to determine what interactions are creating the malady, she said.
“There has been more learned about bees in the past two years than in the previous 20,” Berenbaum said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Alan Bjerga in Washington at abjerga@bloomberg.net
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=arSj62U9E1hE
March 13 (Bloomberg) -- Ron Spears, a California beekeeper, says he’s breathing easier about his hives this year because the threat of honeybee extinction may be subsiding.
Beekeepers, or apiarists, are investing more in food and cutting chemical levels in hives to withstand colony collapse disorder, the malady that helped wipe out about a third of the U.S. commercial hives in the past two years, Spears said. Scientists are studying the honeybee genome and relationships involving nutrition, pesticides and mites to resolve the phenomenon’s mystery.
This year’s first, and biggest, test of honeybee capability to pollinate $15 billion annually of U.S. plants -- California’s almond crop -- showed hive-health improvement, insect scientists and beekeepers said. The disorder, found in at least 35 states and Europe and Asia as well as in the plots of the animated comedy “The Simpsons” and the crime drama “CSI,” isn’t over, Spears said. Still, it seems more under control, he said.
“It’s been three, four years since we’ve been able to say this, but there’s been enough bees,” Spears, who trucked half of his 20,000-bee colonies to the state’s Central Valley this year to fertilize the tree nut, said in an interview in Bakersfield, California. He feeds his bees sugar-derived pollen substitute rather than corn syrup. “People are understanding you better take care of them,” he said.
After its identification in 2006, the disorder -- in which seemingly healthy bees suddenly flee their hives and die --helped destroy about a third of all U.S. beehives in 2007 and 2008, according to the Apiary Inspectors of America, a nonprofit organization. That’s more than twice the normal rate of hive loss, said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, the group’s president, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Seeking Explanation
The cause of the malady isn’t known, said May Berenbaum, the head entomologist at the University of Illinois in Urbana.
Scientists studying the disorder say they are still learning how nutrition, pesticides, viruses and mites may be prompting the deaths of billions of bees. Researchers exploring the honeybee genome may be within weeks of another goal: publicly identifying a genetic marker that definitively identifies that collapse has occurred, Berenbaum said.
Bees help keep crops healthy. Fruit-pollinated products are found in items such as Haagen-Dazs ice cream from General Mills Inc. Lip balm made by Burt’s Bees Inc., a unit of Clorox Co., contains wax from the honeycombs of beehives.
Effects of Drought
California, the nation’s largest crop producer, is facing water shortages, and the drought is forcing farmers to cut almond acreage. The water conditions and the effects of the recession are reducing the need for honeybees for almond pollination. The economy, not colony collapse disorder, sparked more talk as Spears and a dozen other beekeepers gathered at a pancake restaurant in Bakersfield at 6 a.m. on a recent day.
Bee deaths from the malady may be declining, said Frank Eischen, a U.S. Department of Agriculture entomologist in Weslaco, Texas, citing anecdotal evidence.
The disorder has catapulted bee health into the public eye. The subject lifted ticket sales for the comedian Jerry Seinfeld’s “Bee Movie” and spurred Haagen-Dazs to create “vanilla honey bee” ice cream, with proceeds going to pollinator research.
Honeybees are the biggest commercial pollinators because they are easy to transport and fertilize most crops that need pollen. Raspberries, pumpkins, citrus plants, melons and pears all receive better yields from bee pollination, according to the USDA.
Almond Production
Almonds, the most valuable U.S. tree nut at $2.2 billion in worth last year, need more bees than any other U.S. plant, enough to require about 1.3 million commercial beehives, more than half of all colonies, according to the USDA. That creates an annual ritual in which beekeepers truck hives thousands of miles to California’s Central Valley, where almost all domestic and 80 percent of the world crop is grown, according to the Almond Board of California, a crop-promotion agency based in Modesto.
“So go the bees, so go the almonds,” said John Replogle, chief executive officer of Durham, North Carolina-based Burt’s Bees, which Clorox acquired in December 2007.
Greg Wegis and his cousin Michael Young grow almost a quarter-million almond trees outside Bakersfield, in an area with roads named for country-music stars Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, who are from the region. Off dirt paths, billions of bees pollinate groves tended by farmers, some of them descendants of the Oklahoma migrants described in John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel “The Grapes of Wrath.”
Rented Hives
Wegis and Young spend $175 to rent each hive, putting one or two on each of the 2,000 acres that they use to grow almonds. The cost is more than twice what they paid four years ago, Young said. Beekeepers are charging more, partly to make up the costs of improved bee diets, and farmers will pay extra for hives that are better cared for, said Joe Traynor, a regional broker who matches farmers with hives.
Scientists have settled on primary and secondary factors that explain the disorder, said Jeff Pettis, a USDA entomologist in Beltsville, Maryland.
Initial stresses include poor nutrition, mites, and pesticide exposure, he said. These combine with maladies such as the Israeli acute paralysis virus, which disorients bee brains, or nosema ceranae, a gut parasite that saps insect energy. The one-two punch sickens foraging worker bees and rapidly spreads through hives, he said.
Toxic Substances
The honeybee genome, completed in 2006, shows that bees are more vulnerable to mass infection than first suspected, having about half of the genes used to fight toxic substances that insects such as fruit flies have, Berenbaum said. Pesticide accumulations inside hives may create a “sick-building syndrome for honeybees,” Berenbaum said.
Jay Vroom, chief of CropLife America, a Washington-based group that represents Bayer CropScience AG, Syngenta Crop Protection Inc. and DuPont Crop Protection, said pesticides used near bees have been government-tested, with no clear link to colony collapse disorder proven.
Maryann Frazier, an entomologist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, Pennsylvania, said pesticides alone are most likely not a sole cause.
“The levels and frequency of pesticides we’re finding in these hives are pretty amazing” and need more study, she said. “What we don’t know is how they’re interacting with other factors.”
A key to understanding and potentially solving colony collapse disorder will be a genetic test to ensure the phenomenon is consistently reported, said Berenbaum, the Illinois entomologist. Currently the malady is identified and reported by beekeepers themselves. That impedes data collection because apiarists may be inaccurately blaming dead hives on the disorder, Eischen said.
Once researchers find a marker to diagnose the disorder, they may be able to determine what interactions are creating the malady, she said.
“There has been more learned about bees in the past two years than in the previous 20,” Berenbaum said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Alan Bjerga in Washington at abjerga@bloomberg.net
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=arSj62U9E1hE