Talk:Colony collapse disorder/Archive 5

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Error in the pesticides section

Fipronil is described as a neonicotinoid insecticide, which it is not. Fipronil belongs to a different chemical family, the phenylpyrazoles (refer to Wiki page for Fipronil).

The editor who inserted that sentence must not have realized this; I've removed the reference to Fipronil. Dyanega 16:58, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Semi-protected

This article has been semi-protected for a week due to edit warring by anonymous IPs. Please discuss any potentially controversial changes to the article on this talk page instead of edit warring. --Akhilleus (talk) 22:08, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

A Possible Cause

People are trying to figure out what's causing the bee's demise, but I think I may know the answer. How about plain good old fashioned human STUPIDITY???

"Yesterday residents at the Village Apartments in Bridge City thought they put their bee burden to rest when they found and destroyed at least 30 hives ... 'We had a huge mound that as in the front of my building but moved to the back, one of the tenants that lives here got a big huge stick, pulled the plywood down in the back, in the top of the building and bee hives, like 30 of 'em he knocked down to the ground.'... The apartment complex had an exterminator kill the bees, and ... "Thought we destroyed the problem until this morning, it looked like a tornado in my front yard, bees were flying as big as a tornado... now they have landed on my front window and they're up in the cracks. Verret says she and her children have been afraid to open the windows or even walk out of their apartment for fear of getting stung"

http://www.kfdm.com/news/bees_20379___article.html/bee_apartment.html

Them Texans, they ain't too bright ay they? 4.246.206.201 14:29, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Addendum:

Is anybody else noticing this? This is all recent news.

Ted Vorhees is one of twelve residents of a single Delray Beach development whose home has been overrun by bees. A beekeeper removed thousands of the buzzing bugs from his wall two months ago, but the bees quickly came back.

[1]

TWIN FALLS, Idaho – For a couple of hours, a hospital here had several thousand unwanted visitors. A swarm of bees took over a crabapple tree near the northeast entrance of the St. Luke's Magic Valley Regional Medical Center on Wednesday for about two hours. 'There was quite a bit of alarm about it,' hospital groundskeeper Sam Hutchins told the Times-News. 'We thought about spraying them but decided not to because we could have excited them.' The bees massed in the tree in a swarm about 10 inches thick and 3 feet long. The area was roped off to keep people away.

[2]

Even Poe was impressed with the size of the swarm. He estimated the mound of bees to weigh as much as seven pounds - far more than what's available commercially ... 'They were amazed at the size and number of bees that were there,' said Mrs. McCormack. 'It was amazing. There were just thousands and thousands of them. Those who saw it couldn't believe the size of it. They'd never seen that many bees gathered together in one place.' this one reportedly still had the queen within the swarm. [3]

More headlines

Huge swarm of bees settles in Chico couple's backyard

City Hall swarmed with bees

In the UK,

Thousands of bees have set up home in the chimney and gardens of two neighbouring houses in Kidlington - and the angry owners are desperate for them to 'buzz off'. again the locals tried to kill them. Swarm of bees invades houses

Shoppers avoid swarm of Bees

Buzz stop: The swarm of bees on the bush in Keith Chisholm’s ...

Lots more here [4].

Back to the idiot files:

Last week, Gov. Janet Napolitano signed into law a bill that adds wild honeybees to the list of public nuisances because they endanger public health. [5]

Maybe normal swarming for this time of year? In any event, I think word needs to go out to stop spraying (and otherwise harrassing) the bees and the flowers they visit. 4.246.206.201 14:29, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

If bees swarm, they should take their queen with them. Dysmorodrepanis 18:36, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Well I'm just wondering if maybe the bees are not dying enmasse as we are assuming but are just up and moving sans the queen and little ones [later added note: something similar to this actually seems to occur already in bee populations called "absconding" [6] where the bees all abandon their hive and apparently is particularly common in african bees]. Or with a new queen (or something mimiking the scent of a queen). Nobody seems to be finding masses of dead ones. They just disappear. Could they be simply abandoning their contaminated human-made hives for all the reasons listed and relocating as a last ditch survival option, many to town - only to be killed by those who depend upon them the most out of fear that they are "killer bees" [7]? Maybe with the dearth of rainfall this year the usual flowering of plants is abbreviated or gone then some scout discovers a bonanza in town with flowers in front of every house (possibly sprayed)? Has anyone tried placing new, clean nesting boxes somewhat near the old ones to see if they move to them? Or placing them near wildflower fields? How are wild bee populations doing? Native bees? I am not an apiarist, just wondering. Please excuse if these are ignorant questions.4.246.206.70 07:33, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

I see where someone else is thinking along these lines, from a "beekeeping novice" "I think with all these wild bees that are invading the homes," he said, "it's possible we have something very positive going on here" [8]. Well I wouldn't call it "very positive", but maybe it's better than completely gone, if this is what's happening. 4.246.206.70 08:24, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

One last thought (thanks for indulging me), and I know that plenty of others have suggested it, our crop fields tend to be monocultures with only one or a few kinds of flowering plants being grown there. This is good for business mass production but not so good for bees which naturally may visit many kinds of flowering plants in a given wild field. Why not begin planting native wildflowers throughout these fields (not just the periphery). This would mean, though, discontinuing the use of genetically modified crops which are designed to be sprayed with toxic herbicides that kill all plants within those fields except the laboratory made GMOs [9]. 4.246.201.229 20:36, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Interesting Further Research

We've been reading dire reports about the loss of crops, but further research reveals that the immediate threat is to fruit. Vegetables, roots (eg, carrot), tubers (eg, potato, radish), leaves (eg spinach, lettuce), stems (eg, celery), bulbs (eg, onion) which are usually harvested prior to pollination, will still produce their edible parts - so long as the seeds hold out.

Additionally, with regard to fruit, growing of seedless varieties, known as vegetative Parthenocarpy, do not require pollination, and should continue (most hopefully by natural breeding not genetic engineering). Examples are apparently the cactus (prickly) pear, the fig, the banana, the cucumber, the breadfruit and eggplant.

It's interesting too that there is at least one company that would benefit from CCD, that being Monsanto. This company that specializes in genetically modifying crops ("Thus, genetic engineering will most likely give consumers parthenocarpic fruit in many other species in the near future" [10] is also "the largest seed and biotech company over all" [11] [12]. A big issue with them has been their creation of what is called "Terminator" seeds (a.k.a. "suicide seeds"), seeds genetically modified so that the resultant crops produce seeds that are sterile, denying farmers the ability to replant the seeds to continue growing (a traditional and economical practice), and thus forcing farmers in the Roundup Ready System to have to buy their seeds anew from Monsanto every year [13]. Who needs Terminator when the natural pollinators themselves are going away. No accusations, just random paranoid thoughts. 4.246.201.47 19:34, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

"Thus, genetic engineering will most likely give consumers parthenocarpic fruit in many other species in the near future" - such announcements always need to be taken with an unhealthy dose of salt, just as "genetic engineering will give us the AIDS vaccine, the Cure for Cancer", etc). There is no general genetic mechanism known to induce parthenocarpy at at will. Interestingly, most parthenocarpic plants have berries; as these are a rather simple type of fruit anatomically and ontogenetically, that may have something to do with it. If so, good luck waiting for parthenoigenetic apples, cherries and strawberries (especially strawberries - the growing seeds are apparently directly responsible for the fruit growing and ripening in these).

If the science dept of Monsanto were as prolific as their marketing dept, yes, we'd have parthenocarpic fruits galore. But it isn't; as opposed to marketing, science is limited by the available knowledge, not the imagination. Dysmorodrepanis 20:08, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Fleshed out the "Bee rental" section

I rewrote and expanded the section 'Bee rental and "Mobile Beekeeping"', from an article in "High Country News". I admit I did little other research outside of WP, so if I've lied about anything, I'm sure one of the surprisingly active editors here will adjust it. I tried not to add anything directly pertaining to the debate about cause, just background information on the widespread nature of apiaries on wheels in the US. I didn't remove anything, I don't believe, and I cited my source.

I also added a To-do to the list on this page: cleanup the technical jargon in the middle of this article. Especially in the long section right before "Bee rental", I nearly fell asleep trying to wade through that. Eaglizard 01:31, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

It's more commonly referred to as migratory beekeeping. Pollinator 02:37, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Assumption noted

Assumptions are bubbles that need to be burst, particularly when they run contrary to long years of experience by many expert beekeepers. One was this statement: "Additionally, such continuous movement and re-settlement is certainly a strain and disruption for the entire hive, rendering it less resistant to all sorts of systemic disorder." No matter how many reporters make the claim, there are no real scientific studies that show this, and there probably can't be. It would be hard to design a "one-size-fits-all" experiment that could determine its veracity. Allowing a truck load of bees to get overheated is certainly a stress. It will cause brood death and probably other problems. But it's not a hard and fast situation. Taking bees (in a careful move) from a place where there is a dearth of flowers to a place where there is an abundance can be a healing thing. Bees that sit around with nothing to do tend to build up pathogens, while those which are busy tend to get rid of the pathogens. Likewise the loss of some of the field force could be assumed to be a bad thing, but if the loss is almost all old bees with high levels of parasites and pathogens, it could be a cleansing thing. One of the most consistent results of moving bees frequently, is that the queens are kept laying. This means that the hive average age of worker bees is younger, which is a good thing. It also means that the queens have a shorter productive span, which could be seen as a negative, unless more frequent requeening is done. There are just too many variables here for an absolute statement to be made.

Furthermore there is an underlying tone in such assumtions above that commercial beekeepers are the "bad" guys. But bees are moved as often, in sometimes in a lot worse circumstances, than the bees that are trucked by the commercial guys. I once was in Asheville, NC during a time there was a statewide quarantine on bees entering the state. It was thought that this would prevent the state's bees from getting varroa. I observed a fellow with an SUV containing two beehives. In talking with him, I found that he was a hobby beekeeper from Savannah, Georgia, who had a summer home in Asheville, and always brought his bees up with him for the summer. He had no knowledge of the quarantine (and he didn't care). North Carolina got varroa mite infestations just about as fast as neighboring states did, despite the quarantine which commercial beekeepers observed. Bees moved anyway. Pollinator 03:00, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

A Possible At Least Partial Remedy?

Modern Industrial Agribusiness is a monoculture that is also herbicided, pesticided, genetically modified and just generally screwed with. Not a lot natural about it. If I were a bee I'd keep my distance too.

Anyway, there is at least one thing that could be changed relatively easily that might possibly help the situation to improve (if it's not too late), the routine planting of native wildflowers throughout crop fields as an attractant to bees (honeybee and native) because it is healthier for the bees to have this varied diet. In the wild bees draw pollen from many different species of flower in a given field. In fact I'd speculate that planting wildflowers throughtout crop fields would actually INCREASE pollination (by attracting native bees) and native bee numbers. Perhaps our monocultural industrial agriculture is as draining on the bees as if we were expected to subsist on only one kind of food like, say, pasta (which we may be doing in the not-too-distant future). Re this, I emailed the question to an agricultural librarian at the Ohio Agricultural Research & Development Center at Ohio State University who forwarded it on to Dr. James Tew, of OSU Department of Entomology and apiculture specialist. His reply was, among other things,

You are correct in your concerns about a varied bee diet. Bees do require that in order for the colony to prosper. I sense that commercial growers would not go to the expense of adding a wildflower mix to their monoculture for no other monetary reason than to help bees. No doubt a common argument would be that the pollination rental fee is their contribution to bee management. Upon leaving the commercial fields, the beekeeper would be responsible for providing the varied diet to his bee colonies you have described. I am not opposed to your suggestion and cannot say whether or not it would work, but I can say that it's not presently done.

Frankly, I find that hard to fathom. But about industrial agriculture not being interested in the program my guess is that when the alternative is no crops they may change their tune.

I hate to recommend non-native flowers but as I work in plant nurseries and if I WAS going to recommend one that honey bees seem to adore it would be lavender (Lavendula). Maybe this is because the native home for both (lavender and honey bee) is the same general landmass. Perhaps they evolved together. The same goes for rosemary and honeysuckles. Honeybees love 'em. So I guess a good way to attract honeybees is to find aromatic plants that are also native to the same European/Mediterranean region that honeybees come from (though those places are also suffering CCD) and then plant them throughout these fields.

For this to work though, non-grain Roundup Ready (GMO) Crops would have to be dispensed with since they are the quintenncential monoculture. Herbicide is sprayed to put down all plants except the crop plant itself [14].

But who wants 'em anyway. I mean they are even a suspect in CCD. 4.246.206.160 06:37, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

It's actually easy to fathom; placing OTHER plants in the middle of your monoculture has three negative impacts: (1) can't use herbicides any more (2) likely to complicate the logistics of crop maintenance (planting/watering/harvest), and (3) if the flowers planted are attractive to the bees, then the pollination of the CROP will suffer. All are counter to the interests of the grower. As for GMO crops being "suspects" in CCD, there aren't data to back this up - and, in fact, the number of things that are counter-evidence to this theory are diverse and considerable; of all the genuine competing theories presented in the article (i.e., not including phones), the case for GMO crops is by far the weakest. If nothing else, CCD has been around for decades, and GMO crops have not. Dyanega 16:34, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

can't use herbicides any more, that may be a negative to you but organic agriculture is able to manage just fine, and they are booming. likely to complicate the logistics of crop maintenance (planting/watering/harvest), I doubt that very much. Most native wildflowers, especially in the west, are both drought tolerant and can take water too. And if people get some wildflowers in with their crops, so what? Obviously you only plant safe varieties, and you experiment a bit. if the flowers planted are attractive to the bees, then the pollination of the CROP will suffer. Really? Have you tried it? How do you know that it wouldn't attract honey bees including natives? I don't think the above poster meant that one would plant a field with tons of wildflowers so as to out-compete the crops, but perhaps with scattered flowers and clumps. I think I'll take the prof's side quoted above on this, that bees do require a varied diet and that it's not being done. BTW, what's YOUR suggestion for CCD?

About GMOs being cleared in CCD, perhaps so but to my mind that remains to be seen. I don't think anyone is solely blaming GMO's but they may yet turn out to be a contributing factor. No one can afford to be too smug about this crisis.

Can't stand these know-it-alls who don't. 66.14.116.114 20:54, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

(Since you insist on insults...) Then what about critics who know even less? Apis mellifera is one of the best-studied species of insects in the world, and we know what they do under various circumstances because we have observed and documented it, and there have been decades of experiments working out the details. Since individual honey bees do not make independent decisions regarding choice of plants, colonies of honey bees will forage preferentially on the plant that is most attractive to them at any given time; so if there are only two plants available and they differ in quality, the vast majority will only forage on the better one. That means that if your "wildflowers" are more attractive than the crop, then there will be fewer bees pollinating the crop - in proportion to how abundant the wildflowers are, up until the point where the wildflowers alone are enough to support the bees. If you only have a few "scattered flowers and clumps", then the effects will be trivial, but so will the benefits to the bees. If the crop is more attractive than the wildflowers, then the wildflowers are completely superfluous. If native bees aren't attracted to a crop to begin with, then interspersing wildflowers cannot make the crop any more attractive, and can only make it less so. You can't "trick" bees, native or otherwise, into visiting plants they don't like to visit, unless you force them by giving them NO OTHER choices - and this is, in fact, how a lot of honey bee pollination is accomplished. Planting wildflowers in with your crops is one of the worst possible strategies one can imagine in terms of crop pollination under these circumstances. What bees require, and what is best for commercial-scale pollination, happen to be different things. Remember, the grower's sole concern is for their crops; unless the bees die before the crops have been fully pollinated, they're not going to worry about whether or not the bees are nutritionally satisfied, since they're just renting them. As for the other points you dismiss, just ask farmers if they agree with your assessment that plants growing in the same field as their crops are not a drain on their resources, and an impediment to working in those fields. Organic farmers still try to suppress weeds, just not by using herbicides. There are good reasons farmers don't tolerate weeds. Dyanega 22:44, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

The idea is to grow enough wildflowers to lure the bees and give them some variety without out-competeing the crops. But maybe you're right, and it'd just be a waste of time and effort. Yet something's obviously wrong in the way it's currently being done. And we're not talking a big risk here in that trial are we? If it works great, if not then it doesn't. Rather than dismissing it out of hand perhaps it's worth a try? I am only suggesting this, I'm not a bee expert.

By the way, I'd thought I read that some farmers do plant a variety of other flowering species for just this reason but in spots on the perimeter of their crop fields. The difference here would be growing them scattered throughout so as to lure them to the interior.

Farmers don't tolerate weeds because they want a "clean" crop. 4.246.206.10 13:33, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Scientsts agree that a varied diet (not the monoculture many survive on) is necessary: "If there is not a common thread, such as a pathogen seen in many of the affected colonies, Professor Eric Mussen of UC Davis said he is convinced that a nutritional deficit helps explain how the honeybees were weakened by the smorgasbord of potential causes of death. That is because dry conditions, certainly in California, did not produce flowers in which bees find their required mix of pollens, he said ... "In many situations the bees were weakened by not being able to get a nice mix of nutrients that they needed from the pollens, and I think that weakened them," he said. "Under those circumstances you can take all the other (causes), and there are plenty of them, and combine them together and down go the bees" [15]. 4.246.205.86 16:47, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Allow me to reiterate: "What bees require, and what is best for commercial-scale pollination, happen to be different things". No one is disagreeing that honey bees do better if they can gather pollen from multiple plant species. But using them to pollinate crops at maximal efficiency REQUIRES that they NOT visit species other than the crop. No one who is paying $80 per hive to rent honey bees is going to want them visiting other plants. Why would they care if, three months after the beekeeper leaves, those colonies die? Dyanega 17:55, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

"What bees require, and what is best for commercial-scale pollination, happen to be different things ... Why would they care if, three months after the beekeeper leaves, those colonies die?" I would argue the opposite, that what is good for bees IS also what is good farmers and the evidence of that is precisely what we are now witnessing - colony collapse disorder. If farmers want to be so narrow minded and shortsighted about bee's needs as to disregard them what are they going to do when there aren't any left to pollinate their crops? If money is all that matters it's in their best interests to want to do all they can to protect the bees. 4.246.207.229 22:39, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Some interesting comments from this article:

Just like humans, healthy honeybees need a varied diet, Conrad said. That’s something they rarely get in the affected states, where migratory beekeepers truck them from farm to farm following one crop throughout the year. In many instances, the kind of pollen they are following is not even nourishing to the bees, he said. In California, for example, bees visit one almond farm after another, feasting on what Conrad classified as a kind of junk food. "Almond pollen is mildly toxic to bees," he said. "It’s like going to MacDonald’s every day for a month. Your health is going to get affected and your immune system is going to get weakened. And that makes you more liable to get some other sickness or disease." Jan Louise Ball, who has kept bees in Addison for 10 years, shares a similar outlook on the diet of honeybees. "A species like the bee cannot live on all Big Macs," she said. "I order new plants every year. Everything I buy is with the honeybee in mind."

For an idea of what a junk food diet does to humans see the video Supersize Me [16]. 4.246.207.117 15:29, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

GA comment

Inline citations go directly after the punctuation; go through the article and fix all occurrences. Also, I saw at least one "citation needed" tag, either remove the statement or add a source for it or the article may be quick-failed by whoever reviews the article. --Nehrams2020 18:17, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Case of article title

A Google search shows both uppercase ("Colony Collapse Disorder") and lowercase ("colony collapse disorder") spellings of this disorder. The latter seems more logical to me, as such phenomena generally are not proper nouns. Thoughts? Λυδαcιτγ 02:49, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

The original scientific literature refers to it in uppercase, and the original usage is preferred. Dyanega 23:53, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Meaning of "MT"?

What does MT in the following phrase mean: "due to MT exposure from the DECT base station "? Dougher 23:08, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. Good question. An editor changed that without any explanation at some point, guess I missed it. Dyanega 23:57, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

GA Pass

I have read through the article and it meets GA criteria. It is well written, comprehensive, and is well referenced. Well done - • The Giant Puffin • 09:12, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Congratulations to all the contributors to this article. It's really hard getting good, well referenced information out there while quickly.  kgrr ^talk 13:33, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

delist this article

this article needs a review of it's good article status. i feel like unneccessary weight is put on the mysterious disappearence. i read checked the first ten or so references and most of them speak of dying and sometimes disappearing bees. the article launches right in with saying: CCD has also been called Vanishing Bee Syndrome (VBS) and quotes a bbc article that states It is officially called Colony Collapse Disorder, but a more pithy way of describing it would be Vanishing Bee Syndrome. that is kind of stretching it in my book. the symptoms for cdd are taken from an online survey that might have been designed for all i know to find out if cdd really exists. that apocryphal einstein quote about human being disappearing 4 year after the bees adds to the eery feeling. please something more serious.trueblood 18:48, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Have you read Wikipedia:What is a good article?? If so, which positive criteria, specifically, do you think this article fails to meet - or, conversely, which negative criteria do you see it as possessing? I agree that the bbc link adds nothing to the article, and will remove it, but other than that, can you point to anything specific? Dyanega 20:16, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

hm from the list of criteria, i 'd say the article is weak on 2 a-c on the question if cdd really exists as opposed to just bees dying for numerous reasons, the ref for the syptoms seems weak. in the section scale the following passage sounds like OR to me:It is far from certain however that all reported cases are indeed CCD: there has been considerable publicity, but only rarely was the phenomenon described in sufficient detail. Consider the CNN article referenced above:

"Beginning in October 2006, beekeepers from 24 states reported that hundreds of thousands of their bees were dying and their colonies were being devastated." But as opposed to what the passage seems to imply, presence of numerous dead bees is a near-certain indicator that CCD is not the cause of a bee colony's "death". Of course, as individual bees are dependent on the colony's social network for survival, they will die off if colony health is low—but in CCD, they generally do so away from the hive, and to the observer, they simply vanish without a trace. As of early May, no confirmed CCD cases seem to have occurred in Germany.[73]trueblood 14:49, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

The article is well-referenced, and 2 a and b are quite adequately satisfied. Taking one side or the other as to whether CCD "really exists as opposed to just bees dying for numerous reasons" is not something the article SHOULD do, because that is a matter of opinion! Read WP:NPOV, if you aren't familiar with it. Your point about the quoted passage representing OR bears a little scrutiny because it states "what the passage seems to imply" - and is thus an interpretation, rather than a statement of fact. However, the closing sentence about no confirmed CCD cases is quite significant; the readers need to be aware that there are people who feel that not all of the claims out forward actually represent cases of CCD. I'll try to get this passage into better shape. Dyanega 01:37, 9 June 2007 (UTC)