Bee researchers closing in on clues to colony collapse
As researchers have poked further into the mysterious lives of bees, one of the things they’ve learned is they produce oleic acid when they die.
That’s a chemical clue to the hive’s bee housekeepers to pick up their shriveled remains and fly them off to a drop point a safe distance from home.
Researchers are still working on a much larger mystery: How to explain hives that are completely abandoned with no sign of either dead bodies or survivors.
As another season of pollen gathering and honey production begins in the Midwest, something called colony collapse disorder is pressing in on Nebraska and Kansas from all sides and from states as far away as California.
Some beekeepers have lost as many as 90 percent of their bees in one ugly episode. And it’s happening under circumstances they’ve never seen before.
Instead of finding piles of tiny carcasses in the hive, they’re discovering that their normally industrious occupants are gone without a trace.
Some regard a phenomenon that reached staggering proportions in 2006 as the equivalent of an environmental alarm bell going off.
Is it the result of an accumulation of pesticide? Is it something that’s transmissible to humans? If the bees disappear, are we next?
Others, including Marion Ellis of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, are trying to get past panicky thoughts to plausible explanations.
So far, all the answers aren’t there.
Such flimsy theories as cell phone signals interfering with bees’ homing instincts haven’t picked up much of a following. Others appear more promising, including tiny single-celled parasites from Asia called nosema ceranae invading the U.S.
“There are beekeepers that continue to be plagued by this,” Ellis said Friday. “And there are others in the same vicinity that are not — which is very perplexing to me and to them.”
Some comfort can be drawn from Nebraska’s relatively clean bill of bee health. But it’s hard for Bennet beekeeper Charlie Simonds to believe it will last.
That’s because the almond industry in California has become such a dominating and lucrative presence in pollination work that more than half of all the bees in the United States are now assembled there during the winter months.
“I’m very much concerned,” Simonds said, “because when we migrate bees to California, they’re coming from all over the country.
“So whatever is all around will be there and mixing together with other bees. So when you bring them back, you bring back whatever has been out there,” said Simonds, whose Honey Bee World is a stay-at-home business geared to drop-by customers.
UNL’s Ellis offers one measurement of the financial geyser spouting along the West Coast:
“Last year was the first year in history that beekeepers earned more money from pollinating one crop in California — and that’s almonds — than they made from honey production in all of the United States.”
George Bunnell of the Oxford area southwest of Holdrege is among those who have been cashing in on the bee business in California over the past decade.
Some 1,400 Bunnell colonies made their most recent 1,500-mile trip back to Nebraska by truck about a month ago.
So far, he’s had no problems with colony collapse disorder. “When it comes right down to it, it seems like the guys that run their bees harder for the whole year and don’t keep up with their mite problems are the ones that suffer more from it.”
But he doesn’t argue the risks that go with congregating so many bees in such a small space.
“It’s very easy for bees to spread disease,” Bunnell said. “I think we’ve seen the spread of mites that are resistant to things we can kill them with.”
Bunnell still collects honey in Nebraska. But drought or some other weather circumstance can blow a big hole in honey profits. Working in the almond orchards has become a surer thing.
“I’m sure that we made more money from pollination, at least the last couple years.”
His most recent routine moves his bees to potato cellars in Idaho so they can rest up during the winter. They typically leave from there for California in January.
Then it’s back to Nebraska for more pollination chores for his and other bees involving alfalfa, apples in the southeast and, to some extent, soybeans.
“There’s just a variety of plants out here that a lot of people don’t pay any attention to” in bee terms.
Bunnell doesn’t expect colony collapse disorder to spin entirely out of control. Following earlier and sometimes devastating disease outbreaks, “what we did is breed bees that were resistant to it.”
Seen from a financial vantage point, “I think beekeepers will keep bees alive as long as there is a market to have bees that are alive. If they can make money at it, they’re going to have bees.”
For the first time, Bennet beekeeper Simonds is acting on advice to give his stay-at-home bees a dose of medicine, “kind of like an antibiotic,” that can control the Asian parasite. “It’s kind of a good idea to start using it.”
Simonds has also noticed an increase in the number of people who buy bees from him for hobby purposes. And maybe they also have some larger purpose in mind.
“We have a lot of people come here,” he said, “and they’ve heard about colony collapse and they think maybe they ought to help out.”
Reach Art Hovey at 473-7223 or ahovey@journalstar.com.
That’s a chemical clue to the hive’s bee housekeepers to pick up their shriveled remains and fly them off to a drop point a safe distance from home.
Researchers are still working on a much larger mystery: How to explain hives that are completely abandoned with no sign of either dead bodies or survivors.
As another season of pollen gathering and honey production begins in the Midwest, something called colony collapse disorder is pressing in on Nebraska and Kansas from all sides and from states as far away as California.
Some beekeepers have lost as many as 90 percent of their bees in one ugly episode. And it’s happening under circumstances they’ve never seen before.
Instead of finding piles of tiny carcasses in the hive, they’re discovering that their normally industrious occupants are gone without a trace.
Some regard a phenomenon that reached staggering proportions in 2006 as the equivalent of an environmental alarm bell going off.
Is it the result of an accumulation of pesticide? Is it something that’s transmissible to humans? If the bees disappear, are we next?
Others, including Marion Ellis of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, are trying to get past panicky thoughts to plausible explanations.
So far, all the answers aren’t there.
Such flimsy theories as cell phone signals interfering with bees’ homing instincts haven’t picked up much of a following. Others appear more promising, including tiny single-celled parasites from Asia called nosema ceranae invading the U.S.
“There are beekeepers that continue to be plagued by this,” Ellis said Friday. “And there are others in the same vicinity that are not — which is very perplexing to me and to them.”
Some comfort can be drawn from Nebraska’s relatively clean bill of bee health. But it’s hard for Bennet beekeeper Charlie Simonds to believe it will last.
That’s because the almond industry in California has become such a dominating and lucrative presence in pollination work that more than half of all the bees in the United States are now assembled there during the winter months.
“I’m very much concerned,” Simonds said, “because when we migrate bees to California, they’re coming from all over the country.
“So whatever is all around will be there and mixing together with other bees. So when you bring them back, you bring back whatever has been out there,” said Simonds, whose Honey Bee World is a stay-at-home business geared to drop-by customers.
UNL’s Ellis offers one measurement of the financial geyser spouting along the West Coast:
“Last year was the first year in history that beekeepers earned more money from pollinating one crop in California — and that’s almonds — than they made from honey production in all of the United States.”
George Bunnell of the Oxford area southwest of Holdrege is among those who have been cashing in on the bee business in California over the past decade.
Some 1,400 Bunnell colonies made their most recent 1,500-mile trip back to Nebraska by truck about a month ago.
So far, he’s had no problems with colony collapse disorder. “When it comes right down to it, it seems like the guys that run their bees harder for the whole year and don’t keep up with their mite problems are the ones that suffer more from it.”
But he doesn’t argue the risks that go with congregating so many bees in such a small space.
“It’s very easy for bees to spread disease,” Bunnell said. “I think we’ve seen the spread of mites that are resistant to things we can kill them with.”
Bunnell still collects honey in Nebraska. But drought or some other weather circumstance can blow a big hole in honey profits. Working in the almond orchards has become a surer thing.
“I’m sure that we made more money from pollination, at least the last couple years.”
His most recent routine moves his bees to potato cellars in Idaho so they can rest up during the winter. They typically leave from there for California in January.
Then it’s back to Nebraska for more pollination chores for his and other bees involving alfalfa, apples in the southeast and, to some extent, soybeans.
“There’s just a variety of plants out here that a lot of people don’t pay any attention to” in bee terms.
Bunnell doesn’t expect colony collapse disorder to spin entirely out of control. Following earlier and sometimes devastating disease outbreaks, “what we did is breed bees that were resistant to it.”
Seen from a financial vantage point, “I think beekeepers will keep bees alive as long as there is a market to have bees that are alive. If they can make money at it, they’re going to have bees.”
For the first time, Bennet beekeeper Simonds is acting on advice to give his stay-at-home bees a dose of medicine, “kind of like an antibiotic,” that can control the Asian parasite. “It’s kind of a good idea to start using it.”
Simonds has also noticed an increase in the number of people who buy bees from him for hobby purposes. And maybe they also have some larger purpose in mind.
“We have a lot of people come here,” he said, “and they’ve heard about colony collapse and they think maybe they ought to help out.”
Reach Art Hovey at 473-7223 or ahovey@journalstar.com.
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