No answers in case of missing bees

Once again the nation has found itself caught up in a mystery of disappearance, though not of the criminal, seedy, sex-tinged variety to which we’ve become all too accustomed.  This time, the missing are millions of honeybees. 

In at least 24 states around the country, including Florida, California, Texas, Pennsylvania and Montana, beekeepers are reporting missing bees. Not dead bees or sick bees, but bees that are simply gone.

Beekeepers are opening their hives and finding that 50- to 90-plus percent of the approximately 60,000 bees that typically constitute a healthy hive have gone missing.  Colony collapse disorder, or CCD, is the name that has been given to this mysterious vanishing act, which was first recognized last fall by beekeepers in Florida. 

“We definitely do not know what causes this at all,” said Patty Denke, an entomologist and apiary inspector at the Montana Department of Agriculture. 

Honeybees have always been susceptible to diseases, such as bee dysentery, and infestations, such as mites. And large bee losses are often known by such names as autumn dwindle, spring collapse or May disease. 

Denke said the main difference between CCD and the other syndromes is that no dead bees are being found in or near the hives. There have been only a few anecdotal reports of bees seen leaving hives in large numbers, though evidence suggests that the exoduses are being done on a massive scale. 

“We’re using the word ‘collapse’ in this instance because ‘dwindle’ implies a gradual disappearance,” Denke said.

The main groups of researchers collaborating on the mystery of CCD are at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Penn State University and right here in Missoula at the UM-affiliated Bee Alert Technology Inc. Bee Alert also does research in using bees to detect environmental pollution and toxins, and training bees to detect landmines and bombs.

According to Jerry Bromenshenk, the chief executive officer of Bee Alert, CCD could have a huge impact on the agricultural economy in Montana. Montana has more than 6,000 registered commercial apiaries, and beekeeping is the fourth-largest agricultural industry in the state, behind beef, dairy and hogs.

In recent years a shift has occurred in the beekeeping industry. Many commercial beekeepers now earn more income from leasing their bees out to farmers than they do from selling honey and wax. The bees are trucked to farms, sometimes clear across the country, to pollinate such crops as apples, cherries and, most notably, almonds.

California almond growing, according to Bromenshenk, is a $2-billion industry, and is completely reliant on bees for pollination. Almond growers pay around $135 to lease one hive. One-fifth of the 1.2 million hives needed for almond pollination come from Montana. 

This year almond growers in California had to scramble to get enough bees, and some even had bees flown in from Australia. 

Though Bromenshenk is still uncertain about the cause of CCD, he suspects that the stress put on bees by all the moving could be a major factor. He pointed out the well-established link between stress and illness in humans, a link he believes could well be found in bees. 

Bill Mitchell, a fourth-generation beekeeper who keeps about 1,150 hives throughout the Missoula valley, is one of the few Montana beekeepers who still makes most of his money from selling honey. This year, for the first time, he sent one truckload to California for pollination. Most of the hives, he said, were not affected by CCD.

Like many other Montana beekeepers, however, he won’t know how the rest of his bees are doing for about another two weeks. The reason is that in cold climates, bees must be “wintered over.” Beekeepers put their hives in sheds, build tarpaper barriers around them or use other tactics to shield them from the cold. They don’t check on the hives again until spring.

The true extent of CCD in Montana and other cold-climate states won’t be known until beekeepers begin lifting the lids to their hives. 

Theories abound on the causes of CCD.  Bromenshenk said that the Penn State research team is mostly looking into viruses, while the USDA is focusing on pesticides, amoebas and protozoa. The Bee Alert team, he said, is taking a broad-spectrum approach, gathering as much data as they can from beekeepers around the country to try to find existing similarities or patterns.

Bee Alert has set up the Web site http://www.beesurvey.com where beekeepers can go to answer questions about their hives.

In addition to the lack of dead bees found in the hives, Bromenshenk pointed out a few other odd similarities that exist between hives afflicted with CCD. One is that even drones, the male bees that exist only for the remote chance that they might get to mate with the queen bee, leave CCD-affected hives. Usually, drones will only leave the hive to mate, or if physically pulled out by several worker bees.

“Drones are the couch potatoes of the bee hive,” Bromenshenk said.

Another oddity is that hives deserted due to CCD are not immediately subject to infestation by pests, or other types of bees like yellow jackets, who usually will take any opportunity to rob a weak or deserted hive of its honey. After about two weeks invaders will move in, but not immediately.

Bromenshenk said that this points to the possibility that CCD is caused by a chemical that dissipates after a certain time period. After the chemical agent has gone away, the hive is once again safe or tempting for prospective robbers. 

“[Bees] are a neat animal and I think people appreciate that,” Bromenshenk said about the considerable public interest that has been shown in CCD. “What most people don’t understand is [bees’] importance in agriculture.”