Scientists stumped as bee population declines further

[Shiloh]

Source: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.bd2664988112b33ebe7091069cfec28e.8b1&show_article=1

Scientists stumped as bee population declines further
Mar 29 03:52 AM US/Eastern

The decline in the US bee population, first observed in 2006, is continuing, a phenomenon that still baffles researchers and beekeepers.

Data from the US Department of Agriculture show a 29 percent drop in beehives in 2009, following a 36 percent decline in 2008 and a 32 percent fall in 2007.

This affects not only honey production but around 15 billion dollars worth of crops that depend on bees for pollination.

Scientists call the phenomenon "colony collapse disorder" that has led to the disappearance of millions of adult bees and beehives and occurred elsewhere in the world including in Europe...

 

[Shiloh]

Re: Scientists stumped as bee population declines further

SOurce: http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20100607/NEWS/6070318/Epidemic-stings-beekeepers

Epidemic stings (Delaware) beekeepers
Disease, harsh winter take a heavy toll on colonies

By WALLACE McKELVEY ? The (Salisbury, Md.) Daily Times ? June 7, 2010


FRANKFORD -- Between the twin blows of a cold, wet winter and a mysterious global epidemic, Stan Schaffer said, most of his bee colonies didn't stand a chance of pollinating strawberries this year.

By the time flowers were in bloom, just 28 of his 96 hives remained.

In some colonies, he found the cold-blooded insects dead of starvation, grouped together for warmth just inches from their stores of honey.

Other colonies had abandoned boxes that contained a full supply of food, one of the telltale signs of colony collapse disorder.

"I can't give you a number of how many that happened to," he said. "They're dead, and that's it."

Last winter was particularly hard for beekeepers, as more than one-third of their colonies failed to survive the winter.

According to Dewey Caron, a professor of entomology at the University of Delaware, bees suffered a 33.7 percent mortality rate nationwide.

Numbers collected from Delaware and Maryland fell in line with those losses, he said.

"We found significant losses across the county with large-scale beekeepers, small-scale beekeepers and backyarders," Caron said. "The number is much too high, and we're still losing unsustainable levels..."