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Links on colony collapse disorder.
Updated on Apr 11, 09
Created on Mar 31, 09
Category: Science
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Peter Dearman's List: CCD
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Apr 11, 09
Everything you didn't want to know about Colony Collapse Disorder
It sounds like the start of a Kurt Vonnegut novel:
Nobody worried all that much about the loss of a few animal species here and there until one day the bees came to their senses and decided to quit producing an unnaturally large surplus of honey for our benefit. One by one, they went on strike and flew off to parts unknown. -
Apr 11, 09
"Natural" beehives appear less affected by the strange new plague dubbed colony collapse disorder.
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we are told that the honey bee is totally responsible for the pollination and thus the growth of about 30 % of our fruits and certain of our vegetables, so if we were to lose a majority or especially all of our honey bee pollinators for these crops even for one growing season, it would devastate our agriculture for that period.
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Aug 13, 08
Good Newsweek story on CD. early 2008
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there are no bees to carry the pollen. Instead, thousands of villagers climb through the trees, hand-pollinating them by dipping "pollination sticks"—brushes made of chicken feathers and cigarette filters—into plastic bottles of pollen and then touching them to each of the billions of blossoms.
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Dr. Peter Kevan, an associate professor of environmental biology at the University of Guelph in Ontario, says the cause of CCD remains a mystery. It might be caused by parasitic mites, or long cold winters, or long wet springs, or pesticides, or genetically modified crops — or stress. "We’ve been pushing them too hard," Kevan told CBC News Online. "And we're starving them out by feeding them artificially and moving them great distances."
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May 11, 07
More evidence that an ecological approach is needed.
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Wild bees are much less efficient than honeybees to crop pollination. But where wild bees were abundant, honeybees were much more effective in pollinating. There may be two reasons for this.
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"When I was a teenager, I produced comb honey and extracted honey for income to buy more beekeeping supplies," Stormer said. "My primary reason for raising bees in the past 10 years has been to try to develop a strain of honeybees that are naturally resistant, or immune, to many of the diseases, viruses and pathogens prevalent today." In short, his goal is to get "the best of the best." Coming through the last winter with 108 colonies after 20.5 percent losses, Stormer shrugs off his success rate. However, many locals average 50 percent losses. Stormer added, many professors of Entomology from Penn State also find it difficult to maintain colonies at this rate.
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