Colony Collapse Disorder presents us with another mystery. Why isn’t it more widespread?
Not only are scientists baffled by what is killing thousands of domestic honeybee colonies across the country, but they cannot explain why the unknown plague’s impact seems to vary from place to place.
Dubbed colony collapse disorder, it suddenly strikes apparently healthy bee colonies, whose numbers rapidly dwindle and don’t seem to respond to any treatment. It has been witnessed from coast to coast and a beekeeper may lose 40 percent to 80 percent of his hives while an apiary a few miles away will remain untouched, one researcher said.
If a disease affects one population, but not another, then there must be a difference between those populations, one that makes a particular group either more or less susceptible to the effects of the malady. The question then is “What peculiar state or condition keeps colony collapse disorder from affecting a particular hive while devastating others in the same local area?”
The Recordnet article offers one possibility; lazy beekeepers.
Instead of colony collapse disorder, Keith Jarrett, owner of CN Honey in Jackson, said, “I call it beekeeper deficit disorder.”
The increased pressure from mites and disease means beekeepers must put in more work to keep their hives healthy, he said. “It’s very poor management, basically, in a nutshell.”
Back in the 1980s, mites were no worry. Bee colonies needed to be tended well in the fall in anticipation of winter. Then beekeepers could take late-October, November and December off, before beginning preparing for the spring bloom.
“Nowadays you can’t,” Jarrett said. “October, November are now are heaviest working months.”
During that time he’s regularly placing supplemental feed in the colonies, coaxing the bees to continue to raise new bees into the winter. From midsummer on, he also constantly checks for mite infestations and treats as needed.
As a result, he’s kept his winter failure rate at 5 percent to 10 percent and this past season matched that.
Otiose beekeeping practices would certainly help explain the outbreak, especially if combined with the nationwide transport I mentioned the last time we talked bees, but it assumes a rather large amount of incompetence within the industry.
Another possibility is species variation within the honeybee population as a whole. There are numerous species of honeybee in the US, including the infamous Africanized killer bees. Though most stories on Colony Collapse Disorder don’t mention the various subspecies, it’s probably a safe bet that the Italian honeybee is the race most affected by the disorder, as it’s the most widely used.
Given that, are the unaffected colonies mostly comprised of another species, or of a crossbreed? Crossbreeding between bee sub species has occurred before–that’s how killer bees arose in the first place, and the species exhibits the hybrid vigor one might expect for a cross-breed, including an increased resistance to the Varroa mite infestations that were the last cause of media-alarm stories on the disappearance of the honeybee.
Or, are the disappearing colonies themselves crossbreeds? One of the repeated features of Colony Collapse Disorder reports is that the deaths of the bees are presumed, for there are no forlorn, fuzzy little corpses to be found in the newly empty hives. What if the hive is empty not because the bees flew off to die in the woods, but because, like the crossbred killer bees, they just flew off?
Africanized honeybees (AHBs) tend to swarm four to six times a year, while our European honeybees (EHBs) tend to swarm once only, in the spring. Fighting swarms is a time-consuming and difficult job. Africanized honeybees tend to “abscond” (all the bees fly off together) when they are routinely disturbed or when food runs short. We disturb our colonies a lot when we move them; when they are placed on pollination contracts, we saturate the fields with bees. They have to live off their stores. AHBs don’t have many stores, and these commercial pollination conditions can make them get up and go.
The Africanized honeybee has retained the ability to breed with the other honeybee subspecies. As that strain begins to reach the northern limits of it range, could it be interbreeding with the extant species rather than driving them out? Both practices have been observed in more southerly climes, but a colder environment would favor the former strategy, as the offspring of colonies that simply drove out native bee species would be less likely to survive the winters than those who were the result of Killer Bees interbreeding with species already adapted to the colder temperatures.
The offspring of a romantic interlude between an Italian queen and an Africanized drone—let’s call her Queen Latifa Corleone–would be more likely to survive the harsh Alabama winter, thanks to the genes she received from her mother. But she would also be more likely to abscond, thanks to the genes received from her father.
If Queen Latifa Corleone did abscond, taking her colony with her, how would a beekeeper tell the difference between that action and Colony Collapse Disorder?
