Bees what is happening

For our wild bees we only really have good data for populations that are endangered or that have completely disappeared. The good news is that the past decade has seen plenty of progress in understanding the mystery of Colony Collapse Disorder.

For all bees, foraging on flowers is a hard life. It is energetically and cognitively demanding; bees have to travel large distances to collect pollen and nectar from sometimes hard-to-find flowers, and return it all to the nest. To do this they need finely tuned senses, spatial awareness, learning and memory. Anything that damages such skills can make bees struggle to find food, or even get lost while trying to forage.

A bee that cannot find food and make it home again is as good as dead. Modern intensive agriculture disturbs bee nutrition , which impairs their brain. Climate change interferes with the relationship between bees and the plants on which they feed. In addition, managed honey bees are afflicted by a range of pests, viruses and predators that have been spread around the world as a side-effect of international trade.

The worst is the ominously named Varroa destructor mite , which causes brain development disorders. Fewer cars on the roads means other benefits for bees too.

The number of bee deaths is likely to fall as car journeys decrease during lockdown, Brown notes. A study by Canadian researchers estimated that 24 billion bees and wasps are killed by vehicles on roads across North America every year. And as UK councils are tightening their purse strings due to coronavirus, many have stopped maintaining road verges which have turned into lush habitats as a result.

Brown suggests that councils may now be discovering both the financial and environmental benefits of not cutting back verges during lockdown, and could continue the practice once restrictions are lifted. Commercial beekeepers and farmers who rely on them to pollinate their crops are struggling because of travel restrictions.

Commercial beekeepers in Canada and many European countries depend heavily on seasonal workers and on importing queen bees from around the world to replenish their colonies, according to Jeff Pettis, president of Apimondia, the international federation of beekeepers. The UK, for example, gets many of its queen honey bees from Italy. Usually the bees are transported by plane, but since flights have been grounded they are being driven across the continent, says Pettis.

That means the bees split and swarm earlier to form new colonies, making management difficult for the beekeepers. This could have serious knock-on effects for arable farmers, as commercial travelling hives are often relied upon for crop pollination. Simply put, bees are running out of flowers. Fields of wildflowers that were once a pesticide-free zone are being paved over for housing and industrial development or turned into huge mono-cropping pastures.

Interestingly enough, the warm summer weather that most people associate with bees might just be contributing to their demise. The recent climate change and drastic weather fluctuations make bees think that it is time to stop hibernating and get straight back to work. They leave the nest and when the warm snap is over, the bees are not back in time keep the queen warm as they usually do in cold winter months and she freezes to death. Varroa mite, Image courtesy of UKY. Varroa mites have arguably been the biggest cause of bee decline in the past 20 years.

These creepy creatures feed on the blood of bees and their larvae, weaken and shorten the bees lives, and can cause broods to be born with defects. Scientifically speaking, Varroa mites are real bastards, and if an infestation is left untreated they can kill full colonies of bees. Longer-term, it may also force a rethinking of some agricultural practices including our heavy reliance on human-managed bees for pollination.

Scientists call it "colony collapse disorder" CCD. First reported in Florida last fall, the problem has since spread to 24 states. Commercial beekeepers are reporting losses of between 50 and 90 percent, an unprecedented amount even for an industry accustomed to die-offs. Many worry that what's shaping up to be a honeybee catastrophe will disrupt the food supply. While staple crops like wheat and corn are pollinated by wind, some 90 cultivated flowering crops — from almonds and apples to cranberries and watermelons — rely heavily on honeybees trucked in for pollinization.

Honeybees pollinate every third bite of food ingested by Americans, says a Cornell study. Research is only beginning and hard data is still lacking, but beekeepers suspect everything from a new virus or parasite to pesticides and genetically modified crops. For many entomologists, the bee crisis is a wake-up call.

By relying on a single species for pollination, US agriculture has put itself in a precarious position, they say. A resilient agricultural system requires diverse pollinators. This speaks to a larger conservation issue. Some evidence indicates a decline in the estimated 4, potential alternate pollinators — native species of butterflies, wasps.

The blame for that sits squarely on human activity — habitat loss, pesticide use, and imported disease — but much of this could be offset by different land-use practices. Moving away from monoculture, say scientists, and having something always flowering within bee-distance, would help natural pollinators.

This would make crops less dependent on trucked-in bees, which have proved to be vulnerable to die-offs. The stress on honeybees grew as native and wild pollinators diminished and farmers came to rely more on honeybees.

We've put "all of our pollination eggs in the honeybee basket," says Mace Vaughan, conservation director of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation in Portland, Ore. Meanwhile, beekeepers are seeing hives empty in a matter of weeks, sometimes days. The entire adult bee population vanishes, except for a few juveniles.

This makes CCD difficult to study. Eerily, the stored honey in the hive remains untouched. Raiding bees from nearby colonies never materialize, as is common. Records of suddenly empty hives go back as far as the late s, but never on this scale. Beekeepers dubbed it "autumn collapse," "spring dwindle," or "disappearing disease.