A new study has pinpointed some of the probable causes of bee deaths and the rather scary results show that averting beemageddon will be much more difficult than previously thought.
Scientists had struggled to find the trigger for so-called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) that has wiped out an estimated 10 million beehives, worth $2 billion, over the past six years. Suspects have included pesticides, disease-bearing parasites and poor nutrition. But in a first-of-its-kind study published in the journal PLOS ONE, scientists at the University of Maryland and the US Department of Agriculture have identified a witch’s brew of pesticides and fungicides contaminating pollen that bees collect to feed their hives. The findings break new ground on why large numbers of bees are dying though they do not identify the specific cause of CCD, where an entire beehive dies at once.
In North America, Europe and many other parts of the world, bee populations have plummeted 30-50% due to colony collapse disorder, a fact not lost on artist Aganetha Dyck who for years has been working with the industrious insects to create delicate sculptures using porcelain figurines, shoes, sports equipment, and other objects left in specially designed apiaries. As the weeks and months pass the ordinary objects are slowly transformed with the bees’ wax honeycomb. It’s almost impossible to look at final pieces without smiling in wonder, imagining the unwitting bees toiling away on a piece of art. And yet it’s our own ignorance of humanity’s connection to bees and nature that Dyck calls into question, two completely different life forms whose fate is inextricably intertwined.
“The documentary film, Vanishing of the Bees, narrated by Ellen Page, takes a piercing investigative look at the economic, political and ecological implications of the worldwide disappearance of the honeybee. Directors George Langworthy and Maryam Henein present not just a story about the mysterious phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder, but a platform of solutions, encouraging audiences to be the change they want to see in the world.”
Colony Collapse Disorder is a devastating disease that’s been wiping out bees colonies all over the world. As yet there is no clear-cut scientific explanation as to the cause of this disorder. However, good news may be on the scientific-horizon:
“Now insights from the honeybee genome could overthrow guesswork in the effort to diagnose the cause of the die-offs.May Berenbaum at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and her colleagues looked for genetic differences between bees from US colonies that have suffered CCD and bees that were sampled before colony collapses shot up in 2006. CCD killed off about a third of US honeybees in 2007 and 2008. The team found 65 genes that were distinctly different in CCD bees. They also discovered unusual snippets of genetic material that are typical of infection with the RNA viruses known as picorna-like viruses. They found no evidence to suggest that pesticides or bacterial infection are the primary cause of CCD. Berenbaum thinks picorna-like viruses may be the root cause, making the bees highly vulnerable to other viruses, pesticides and bacteria.”
