Plan Bee: Top S.F. Beekeeper Doubts 'Colony Collapse Disorder' Ever Existed -- and Many Scientists Agree
By Joe Eskenazi in Science and Tech
Tuesday, Mar. 10 2009 @ 6:30AM
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| Buzz-Kill: Despite the press' fixation with 'Colony Collapse Disorder,' many scientists and beekeepers aren't convinced it's real |
What he says next would have registered loudly only a year ago -- but is now becoming the contention of more and more beekeepers and agricultural scientists: Gerrie does not believe that "Colony Collapse Disorder," the supposed death-knell of the nation's bees and the beekeeping industry, exists.
The notion of billions of honey bees disappearing -- their honeycombs mysteriously deserted and the inhabitants gone without a trace like winged inhabitants of Roanoke Island -- became a huge story back in 2006. Indeed, men with hardhats and paint-stained boots were seen to lean over to one another on the BART and utter, "Whad'ya think it is with all dem bees?"
Gerrie, for his part, has no idea -- though he admits that if he hadn't read about CCD, he wouldn't have known it existed based on monitoring his own bees and other San Francisco apiaries. That being said, he now doubts that any one magic bullet of a cause is responsible for the 30 to 90 percent hive declines reported by beekeepers worldwide -- and some top scientists agree.
"'Colony Collapse Disorder' has this doomsday type of thing to it. It
just kind of catches the eye of the press," he says. "But before CCD it
was the Varroa mite
-- that caused half the bees to get wiped out in the 1990s. It was
fairly easy to be a beekeeper before the varroa mite showed up. Then
average losses became around 25 percent each winter. And when CCD
showed up, it was 35 percent or so. Whenever I was at flower and garden
shows, people used to say 'what about those varroa mites?' Now they say
'What about that CCD?' They've forgotten about the mites -- but they're
still a problem."
It can't be denied that billions of bees worldwide have died mysteriously. But what scientists are now postulating is that it isn't one, overarching, apocalyptic sickness that is responsible -- and, in fact, colony declines may be cyclical.
"We've seen these kinds of symptoms before during the seventies, during the nineties, and now," U.S. Department of Agriculture scientist Frank Eischen told the BBC. "It's probably not a unique event in beekeeping to have large numbers of colonies die."
Environmental groups, meanwhile, have blamed their own pre-existing bogeymen for the collapse: "People want it to be genetically modified crops, pollution, mobile-phone masts and pesticides," British apiary professor Francis Ratnieks told The Economist. It is "almost certainly none of those."
Various theories for the collapse still abound, be it the mysterious Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus, rampant "supplemental feedings" of corn syrup to bees during winter time, or exposing bees to a monoculture of food sources, leaving them vulnerable to disease. Scientists may never know -- but, optimistically, it appears folks like Gerrie will be getting their 50 stings a year for quite some time to come.
It can't be denied that billions of bees worldwide have died mysteriously. But what scientists are now postulating is that it isn't one, overarching, apocalyptic sickness that is responsible -- and, in fact, colony declines may be cyclical.
"We've seen these kinds of symptoms before during the seventies, during the nineties, and now," U.S. Department of Agriculture scientist Frank Eischen told the BBC. "It's probably not a unique event in beekeeping to have large numbers of colonies die."
Environmental groups, meanwhile, have blamed their own pre-existing bogeymen for the collapse: "People want it to be genetically modified crops, pollution, mobile-phone masts and pesticides," British apiary professor Francis Ratnieks told The Economist. It is "almost certainly none of those."
Various theories for the collapse still abound, be it the mysterious Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus, rampant "supplemental feedings" of corn syrup to bees during winter time, or exposing bees to a monoculture of food sources, leaving them vulnerable to disease. Scientists may never know -- but, optimistically, it appears folks like Gerrie will be getting their 50 stings a year for quite some time to come.
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