I know this won’t come as a surprise to many of our readers, nor to the many organic beekeepers that have been commenting on our posts, but there have been several reports of organic bee colonies surviving where the ‘industrial’ bee colonies are collapsing. Here is the latest to come to my attention:
Pollination, as practised for 1000s of years?Sharon Labchuk is a longtime environmental activist and part-time organic beekeeper from Prince Edward Island…. In a widely circulated email, she wrote:
I’m on an organic beekeeping list of about 1,000 people, mostly Americans, and no one in the organic beekeeping world, including commercial beekeepers, is reporting colony collapse on this list. The problem with the big commercial guys is that they put pesticides in their hives to fumigate for varroa mites, and they feed antibiotics to the bees. They also haul the hives by truck all over the place to make more money with pollination services, which stresses the colonies.
Her email recommends a visit to the Bush Bees Web site, where Michael Bush felt compelled to put a message to the beekeeping world right on the top page:
Most of us beekeepers are fighting with the Varroa mites. I’m happy to say my biggest problems are things like trying to get nucs through the winter and coming up with hives that won’t hurt my back from lifting or better ways to feed the bees.
This change from fighting the mites is mostly because I’ve gone to natural sized cells. In case you weren’t aware, and I wasn’t for a long time, the foundation in common usage results in much larger bees than what you would find in a natural hive. I’ve measured sections of natural worker brood comb that are 4.6mm in diameter. What most people use for worker brood is foundation that is 5.4mm in diameter. If you translate that into three dimensions instead of one, it produces a bee that is about half as large again as is natural. By letting the bees build natural sized cells, I have virtually eliminated my Varroa and Tracheal mite problems. One cause of this is shorter capping times by one day, and shorter post-capping times by one day. This means less Varroa get into the cells, and less Varroa reproduce in the cells.
Who should be surprised that the major media reports forget to tell us that the dying bees are actually hyper-bred varieties that we coax into a larger than normal body size? It sounds just like the beef industry. And, have we here a solution to the vanishing bee problem? Is it one that the CCD Working Group, or indeed, the scientific world at large, will support? Will media coverage affect government action in dealing with this issue?
These are important questions to ask. It is not an uncommonly held opinion that, although this new pattern of bee colony collapse seems to have struck from out of the blue (which suggests a triggering agent), it is likely that some biological limit in the bees has been crossed. There is no shortage of evidence that we have been fast approaching this limit for some time.
We’ve been pushing them too hard, Dr. Peter Kevan, an associate professor of environmental biology at the University of Guelph in Ontario, told the CBC. And we’re starving them out by feeding them artificially and moving them great distances. Given the stress commercial bees are under, Kevan suggests CCD might be caused by parasitic mites, or long cold winters, or long wet springs, or pesticides, or genetically modified crops. Maybe it’s all of the above… - InformationLiberation
That’s funny - that’s just what I said…
Let’s hear it for the natural/organic beekeepers out there! I hope this CCD incident will reinforce that natural systems respond far better to imitation and cooperation than reductionist arbitrary control. Work within the system, observe and learn. There’s a lot more to nature than meets the eye, or the microscope.
Further Reading:
view Celsias projects related to this topic >>
May 15th, 2007
Nice find. This seems to make too much sense. Maybe a movement toward smaller, more natural, agricultural practices is the answer.
May 15th, 2007
It will have to happen Ross - it’s just a matter of how long we’ll keep our head in the sand, clinging to our post WWII centralised system.
The sooner we cotton on, the easier the transition will be.
May 17th, 2007
Here is a follow-up article:
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/5/2/111815/2043
Quote:
Organic honey production is tough. For one thing, for honey to be free of pesticide and other chemical residue, bees can’t forage on conventionally managed farm fields. Thus organic certification requires that hives not be placed within foraging range — about six miles — of conventional farms.
Also see the letter section:
However, the original writer (Tom) should know that there is a large group (about 1200 and counting) of beekeepers that don’t use ANY chemicals (including formic acid) in their hives.
You can read more about it here from the folks that pioneered the method: http://www.beesource.com/pov/lusby/index.htm
And not a single one of us have experienced CCD either, for what it’s worth.
Another interesting article:
http://www.dailynews.com/santaclarita/ci_5883227
So far, Lindsay’s 80 bee colonies have been untouched by colony collapse disorder, a mysterious problem killing droves of bees nationwide.
Unlike bee colonies that are moved from farm to farm, bees that stay in the valley are more healthy because their food source is varied and untainted by pesticides, Goit said.
Here is also a report from the CCD Working Group:
http://www.ento.psu.edu/MAAREC/CCDPpt/CoxFosterTestimonyFinal.pdf
Originally, CCD collapses were reported primarily by commercial migratory bee keepers who move their colonies from one area to another. More recently, it is clear that non-migratory beekeepers are also experiencing CCD.
May 17th, 2007
Also a quick resume of links from the web for anyone researching the pesticide imidacloprid as it relates to CCD:
Mysterious Bee Deaths Strike Central Valley:
http://www.valleyvoicenewspaper.com/vv/stories/beedeaths.htm
COMPOSITE DOCUMENT OF PRESENT POSITION RELATING TO GAUCHO / SUNFLOWER and BEES:
http://www.beekeeping.com/articles/us/gaucho/manifestation_paris_us.htm
Is Imidacloprid Harmful to Bees?:
http://www.bbka.org.uk/freefiles/imidacloprid/swiss-research-on-imidacloprid.pdf
Effects of sub-lethal imidacloprid doses on the homing rate and foraging activity of honey bees:
http://www.bulletinofinsectology.org/pdfarticles/vol56-2003-063-067bortolotti.pdf
Environmental Fate of Imidacloprid:
http://www.cdpr.ca.gov/docs/empm/pubs/fatememo/Imidclprdfate2.pdf
Imidacloprid + fungus = CCD?:
http://208.69.121.208/forums/showthread.php?t=209924
May 17th, 2007
First read this -
Baylor Study 2005 -In Georgia and Mississippi, scientists recently discovered that the antidepressant Prozac, in water downstream from sewage plants, can kill tadpoles, stunt the growth of others and befuddle the survivors so they swim in circles and can’t flee from predators.
Then this -Posted today on MAAREC site -From page 4 of 8 - This may be explained by the fact that some pesticides can cause a disturbance in the dance language or in the orientation abilities of worker bees [39, 40, 41]. See this PDF.
Main reference page for the above link - http://www.ento.psu.edu/MAAREC/ColonyCollapseDisorder.html
Substitute the word “bees” for “fish” - Baylor study 2007 -“The pharmacological properties of these compounds in humans will likely provide an indication of their specific effects in fish.”
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/529543/
May 18th, 2007
french bees have died massively 8 years ago when a new systémic pesticide was introduced in France ;this pesticide called Gaucho or Regent was a neurotoxic and was wrapping seeds and found later in the flower ; after a long fight from beekeepers the pesticide was finally forbidden 2 years ago ;
this spring the hives are OK; and honey is abundant ;Beekeepers are happy as they have never been since a long time! You can contact french federation if you want ! the name is UNAF ; good luck
Corinne
Editor’s Note: Thanks Corinne - for your interest, we have referenced this some weeks back in the ‘Pesticides & Herbicides’ section of this post.
May 19th, 2007
But where are the wild bees? My yard is full of white clover blossoms, but nary a honeybee…and I live deep in the mountains, surrounded by forest, with a national park nearby. Miles and miles away from chemically-treated suburban lawns and farther still from large farms using pesticides. There was a time when the white clover was humming with bees.
And do large-scale, migratory beekeepers supplement their bees’ diets with protein? Has anyone investigated a melamine connection with bee mortality?
May 19th, 2007
Jackie, google is your friend. Many web articles are blaming the decimation of wild honeybee population on the double-whammy of tracheal and varroa mites, spread by bees visiting other hives (not to mention habitat loss,pesticides, and bad weather).
Note that “wild” honeybees are just escapees from non-native managed hives, whose beekeepers took protective measures. Maybe “natural”-size cells only protect if they are small. Find a way to support native pollinators and tell the rest of us how!
May 22nd, 2007
I’m facinated by the reference to smaller bees. I’m not a bee keeper but I’m a bee friendly gardener and I’ve always maintained that there are at least 5 different species of bees (in addition to all the wasps and flies) that visit my suburban garden. Bee keepers I’ve mentioned this to have scoffed and insisted there aren’t that many species of bee. But two of the ones I see are very like the standard honeybee in their markings, but only half as big.
At any rate, I’m seeing plenty of wild bees here this year, and probably about as many honey bees.
May 24th, 2007
I have posted on the other tread about CCD.
I’m a beekeeper of 38 years. I belive in organic and natural.
MY bees are doing fine this year.The lead on this is very good.
We do have a mega problem with big agriculture. We have pushed nature to a point that it will balance us in the overall picture. We are not above nature , just part of the picture. So now we are faced with too many eggs in one basket. We have killed off most of the natural pollenators with pesticides and became dependent on honeybees for pollenation for our food.
The money machine has blinded man to the way nature works. We have thought that we could improve everything we do with chemicals and GMO’s. Now the price will be paid with interest.
This problem has been going on for a long time.The varroa mite and mans fix was a good example of short sitted thinking. It took 3 chemicals and 9 years to hit the brick wall. I posted on the the Bee-L at the very front end of varroa that the beekeepers would hit the brick wall at 100 MPH. Winter of 2004-2005 they did.Lost 50% of the bees. Now the next winter we have CCD. This is a good one. The USDA will look in all the wrong places. Funding for open honest research will not happen. It has to do with money and who runs the USDA. Just happens to come from Monsanto. Its a loaded deck. We have some of the very best researchers in this world here in the US. There hands are tied with no grants for open research. The research that was blessed by the USDA was put in a little box, fungus in the soil. So the good science will come out of Germany and France. They are against GMO’s - Bt. Some work has been done in Germany 2004 , Bt will break down the stomach linning of the bee. That opens it up to many fo the 22 virues thet affect the bee.
We will see how this will play out over time. It will be a lesson for Man. We do not learn very well. Money seems to drive man against nature. Who do you think is going to win? Best Regards
Roy Nettlebeck
May 24th, 2007
An open letter to scientists studying Colony Collapse Disorder, beekeepers and farmers -
Earlier this year the scientists who did studies on Climate Change/Global Warming were asked to “negotiate” their findings.
One report said, “There was little doubt about the science, which was based on 29,000 sets of data, much of it collected in the last five years.’For the first time we are not just arm-waving with models,’ Martin Perry, who conducted the grueling negotiations, told reporters.
The United States, China and Saudi Arabia raised the many of the objections to the phrasing, often seeking to tone down the certainty of some of the more dire projections.”
Another stated, “The climax of five days of negotiations was reached when the delegates removed parts of a key chart highlighting devastating effects of climate change that kick in with every rise of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, and in a tussle over the level of scientific reliability attached to key statements.”
At several points scientists walked out of the conference in protest to the negotiations as reported here – “Some of the world’s best-informed climate change scientists walked out of an all-night drafting session of yesterday’s report on global warming, as tempers flared.”
Please, do not allow your findings to be diluted. Please do not bow to the pressures of government and business. The people impacted by Colony Collapse Disorder have a right to know the truth and all the facts.
Please, do your science and research to the best of your ability and publish with the same scincerity as you have have done in the past. We all depend on and will support you.
May 27th, 2007
The small-cell approach to varroa mites was challenged, for example here:
“If this was true then feral colonies would not have been wiped out.”
http://www.correntewire.com/organic_bees_not_dying
In fact the Bush farms did respond to this question on their website:
“The first assumption is that the feral bees have all but died out. I have not found this to be true. I see a lot of feral bees and I see more every year.”
Read the rest of their response here:
http://bushfarms.com/beesnaturalcell.htm
June 14th, 2007
Here’s a sad but ironic twist: imidacloprid is being used to prevent some entire forest ecosystems from getting wiped out by invasive pests.
Search for “imidacloprid forest ecosystem”
June 17th, 2007
I manage a beekeeping website and we have gotten many calls and emails this year from beekeepers across the US, both large beekeeping operations and hobbyist beekeepers. The concensus is that if beekeepers are using organic practices they are not seeing CCD. There has been an enormous increase in people wanting to get hives to keep bees to have them to pollinate their gardens and farms. Our site offers an alternative type of hive (top bar) making beekeeping accessible to anyone that has the call to be a guardian for the bees and to shift the guardianship to people that truly care and love the bees but are not concerned with commercial profit. You can download the plans to build your own hive or purchase a hive on our site. We truely believe it is time to make this shift to growing food locally and having the pollinators at hand to be part of that process.
Karen
www.backyardhive.com
June 19th, 2007
organic beekeepers on that list are mostly backyard and hobbyists. few make their living with bees or have any large numbers of hives to sustain a livelihood. the claims of organic not having a problem are disengenious, since small beekeepers in general are not exeperiencing CCD.
one of the big problems with all the hoopla is many reports of CCD come from beekeepers, no one else inspects their hives. some inexperienced beekeepers lost their bees and read the news and incorrectly determine its CCD.
this whole story is overblown, the losses occured last fall and the whole episode of CCD is likely past history just like other bee losses going back 100’s of years around the world.
whats funny to most of us beekeepers is the wacko nonscientific theories floated by treehuggers and the like waxing on the apocalyptic decline of mother nature. you folks don’t know squat about bees so why woudl you think anyone gives a rats behind what you think
life goes on and the 2007 honey production season is underway…business as usual. we’ve had other big losses and survived just like other crop failures in farming. this is interesting but not anywhere near the calamity which so many internet and media sources would like one to believe.
file this under the title of S__t happens in farming, its a tough business.
June 21st, 2007
I’m wondering along with Jackie about the wild bees. We live in a Houston neighborhood, and have always had lots of local bees (no beekeepers around here!). We had the usual number this spring, but I have not seen a bee in my yard now for about a month. Well, I’ve seen a couple of dead ones, but none live. I have a lot of citrus, and none of them are setting fruit, and none of them have any bees. They’re usually covered with them.
June 21st, 2007
Bud Dingler, the CCD Working Group proved CCD is a serious problem, and has surveyed thousands of beekeepers. Do you know more than them?
http://www.ento.psu.edu/MAAREC/CCDPpt/CoxFosterTestimonyFinal.pdf
Also, it is smarter for people to be concerned about their environment than celebrity gossip.
Finally, CCD could be caused by something you are not an expert in either - such as a new pesticide technology. Blind reliance on “experts” who have a huge vested interest financially would be dumb.
Thanks to all the beekeepers and small farm operators for hanging in there.
June 21st, 2007
Karen, thanks for a great link on what people can do. Here’s an excerpt from another:
If you want flowers, fruits or vegetables, be concerned about the loss of bees, both native and cultivated.
Experts urge us to encourage native bees.
Use a wide variety of flowers and plants, rather than large expanses of just one kind or color. Have a water source with a shallow sloping edge, so bees can safely gain access to it.
Ellis e-mails that bees in particular are attracted to blue, purple and yellow flowers. He recommends including herbs such as basil, dill, lavender and oregano, and fruit trees and vegetables such as squash and peas.
Other highly touted plants to help bees include hardy salvias (especially Mexican bush sage, Salvia leucantha), African basil, almond verbena, bee balm (Monarda), coneflowers (Echinacea), coral vine, crape myrtles, esperanza (Tecoma stans), goldenrod (Solidago) and mist flower (Eupatorium).
Mercer Arboretum & Botanic Gardens horticulturist Suzzanne Chapman urges gardeners to leave deadwood, such as large branches and small brush piles, where bees like to live. She inserted a couple of river birch branches for accents in her garden and was delighted to see solitary bees move in. Native bees nest in almost anything, including the ground. She also says white bee balm has been a major bee attractor this year.
At the West 11th Street Park, volunteers are installing houses to encourage more native bee populations. These boxes, they stress, will not pose any danger to people who use the park.
Bee boxes are solid blocks of untreated wood with holes drilled in them. The park’s blocks are roughly 4 inches tall by 4 inches wide by 8 inches deep. Block size is not as important as hole size, explains Wally Ward, who heads the project.
Boxes can be attached to poles, posts, fences or trees. Poles and posts may work best so you can treat for ants. (Ward recommends a sticky product called Tanglefoot.) Wood posts should also be treated for termites.
Face boxes southeast, so warm morning sun will stir bees into action. Ward says bees prefer darker boxes, so rub the outer wood with charcoal (not treated briquettes).
Each hole will become a nest for a solitary bee, who lays its eggs inside then seals the hole with mud or chewed vegetation.
June 27th, 2007
I also live in the Houston area and have noticed the shortage of bees. We have a serious problem with pollination in our vegetable garden and have only had three zuchinis this year when usually they are most prolific. There were many bees in the spring during the wildflower bloom and the hollies set fruit, but the veggies and citrus are in sad shape. I wish the cities would pass laws against mowing all the wildflowers before they have set seed. That would help the bees substantially. There are fewer wildflowers every year because of R.E. development and general loss of habitat and wetlands. They even mow the bayou banks and the woods in the Bush reservoir as soon as there are flowers blooming!
July 4th, 2007
Thank you all for your comments. I live in northern New Jersey in a suburb about 10 miles for the George Washington Bridge. I have only seen one bee this year and one yellow jacket when usually I have several species of bees from very tiny to honey bees to bumble bees in profusion. I also usually have wasps. The only insect that seems to be acting as a pollinator is a white (2 inches) moth (gypsy moth?). Even the population of fireflies, flies and misquitos is very low. Reading your comments, I realize I recently planted five rose bushes (Perkins) that are bioengineered with a pesticide. Fake beauty - they’ll have to go. My lawn looks awful because it doesn’t have herbacides but does have clover and about ten other kinds of weeds. Rabbits, deer, ground hogs, possum, skunk, wild turkey, racoon, and fox come around. I am worried about the monarch butterflies coming around in early fall as I have only seen two other butterflies this year. I am very encouraged by comments from organic bee keepers. In our town, people are no longer allowed to keep bees, probably because people don’t eat local honey anymore, develop allergies to bee stings, and don’t understand how important bees are. Hopefully, this crisis will end this prejudice against organic bee keeping.
July 12th, 2007
Me again in Houston. Enid, I’ve noticed a HUGE reduction in wasps this summer, too. We always have lots of them, even under the eaves of the house, but this year there are just next to none. We usually have lots of different kinds of them, too, but they’re just not here! Very odd… We also usually have loads of butterflies, also of a lot of varieties, but not this year. I’ve seen a few, but the reduction in their numbers is remarkable.
Wish I could say the same about mosquitoes, but alas, we have millions of them.
I’m finding next to nothing online about this. I’m surprised more people aren’t finding this somewhat alarming.
July 24th, 2007
i live in Nigeria and keep bees,so far we practice organic beekeeping and we have no record of parasitic mites infestation and bee disease attack on our bees in the hives.We dontpractice migratory beekeeping and moreover our bees are very aggressive and highly productive. This report of organic bee colonies survive bee colonies collapsing is further confirmed.
August 6th, 2007
why don’t you contact the investigative reporter brian ross of abcnews.com and maybe he will look into it and publicize the facts of the use of pesticides, over sized bees and that organically raised bees are not experiencing colony collapse disorder - best wishes.
October 4th, 2007
I am also natural/organic beekeeper.
Click here to read more:
http://www.beebehavior.com/weak_state_bee_colonies.php
Boris Romanov
October 29th, 2007
The fairy tale about organic operations
being free of CCD was clearly debunked
in the “Nature” documentary shown on
PBS TV on 10/28/07.
It was flatly stated that “organic
beekeepers have been hit by CCD”.
So, if organic operations are suffering
from CCD, pesticides can’t be part of it,
or not all who claim to be “organic”
really are organic at all.
This guy, who writes for a beekeeping
magazine, has a lot more facts than
anything else I’ve read:
http://bee-quick.com/reprints/
November 1st, 2007
Steve, nobody farms wasps, organically or not, but here in Houston they, too, are missing or hugely reduced in number. Also, as I posted back a ways, all the “wild” neighborhood bees are gone, too. I have seen probably 10 honeybees and NOT ONE carpenter bee this entire year.
It seems to me that whatever is causing this can’t be attributed solely to something beekeepers are doing. Perhaps there’s something out there that bees and wasps, as they travel about, are coming in contact with.
I am curious, do you know whether these honeybee diseases also affect other types of bees, and do they affect wasps? I have to say, I’m still wondering about Imidacloprid. God knows we have plenty of that being spread about in myriad consumer products.
November 22nd, 2007
If a person comes to me and complain about immunproblem I won´t suggest him to eat more white sugar! I tell him to eat natural honey. Beekeepers around the world must stop the the way they course the immunsystem down in the bees by giving them white sugar. I am a swedish eko-beekeeper.