Colony Collapse Disorder

[randy_byers]

akirlu recently posted about a huge die-off of whole honeybee colonies that's being reported around the country. A story in the LA Times says that scientists have some new theories about what's causing it. It possibly involves a single-cell fungal parasite called Nosema ceranae that has wiped out colonies in Europe and Asia as well. The LA Times story includes a lot of interesting tidbits about bee pests and pathogens. For example, the Varroa mite, which also kills lots of bees, is itself infected by a virus that is then passed along to the bees. Pests within pests within pests!

Colony Collapse Disorder is such a strange, literal, bludgeoning name. Whatever is causing it, it has killed off a quarter of the commercial honeybee colonies in the US.

Comments

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Some have said (there's that deniable phrase) that cell phone use affects bees so that they don't return home.

I don't know, but I hope they do something about this. Maybe we'll end up paying immigrants to sprinkle pollen here and there.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I believe the article mentions that it might also be related to pesticides or drought-related food scarcity, and that it could be a confluence of a number of factors. However, I hadn't realized that bees used cell phones! I suppose that once they become dependent on cell phones, they can't find their way home on their own when the battery runs out.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Of course they use cell phones. Haven't you ever seen the inside of a hive? The problem, of course, is that they don't make "B" batteries any more.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Ouch, that stung!

[farmgirl1146.livejournal.com]

I think that the use of herbicides and pesticides is the main contributor to this. How can any one support itself and a parasite, or anything else, in a weakened condition? For your own gardens, you should be mason bees, which get parasites, and need to be cleaned and tended, too.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Another factor that was pointed out in comments to akirlu's post was the genetic homogeneity of commercial honeybees (meaning they're all susceptible to the same problems). I would have thought that this was a well-understood problem by now. But the LA Times article also pointed to big die-offs in the '60s and '70s.

Your last sentence seems to have gotten scrambled a bit, and I'm curious what you mean by "need to be cleaned"? How do you clean a mason bee?

[farmgirl1146.livejournal.com]

Mason bees get to be as dirty as they want. However, you clean off the parasites before it becomes a bee by washing its cocoon in tepid water, and putting it back into a clean mason bee house, or you can refrigerate them until needed, like now, and put them into the mason bee house. We are taking some mason bee cocoons to the ranch next week. They are in little jars. We have a mason bee "house" and they will go in there, and make a little place in the mason bee tube so they can lay eggs for next year. Ah, what a life!

We got our bees from Knox Cellars. www.knoxcellars.com/ They have very good information.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I can see there's a lot about mason bees to learn. (Cocoon?!) Why do use mason bees rather than honeybees? (Assuming you use them for pollination.)

[farmgirl1146.livejournal.com]

honeybees are more fragile and need much more tending. Honeybees are more sensitive to sprays, including Roundup, and their hives have to be tended and cleaned. Don't get me wrong, all bees are sensitive to sprays, but honeybees tend to be affected more because they "eat" the honey they store. If you don't want to harvest honey, mason bees are the way to go. They pollinate more than honeybees. Because they are not a hive bee, they will build nests for their eggs in trees, the shingles of your house (we have some in our shingles in Seattle), as well as the houses people supply. They are not aggressive. However, they tend to come out in the spring, and not be around in the summer. We didn't want to get into honeybees, so we chose mason bees. There are many varieties, too.