Researchers Ponder Crisis of Honey Bee Decline
July 30th, 2010
By Chris Torres, Lancaster Farming
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Bees are in trouble. Serious trouble. But solving their plight may be as complicated as figuring out why they are dying off.
Penn State held the first International Conference on Pollinator Biology, Health, and Policy this week.
The conference ran from last Saturday to Wednesday and featured dozens of experts and speakers from around the world.
Experts from as far away as Brazil, Israel and Kenya gave their take on the decline of pollinating bees and other pollinators, and the impact it is having on crop production around the world.
Representatives from several government agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the USDA talked about the federal government’s response to pollinator decline, in particular Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), which was first discovered by a commercial beekeeper in Pennsylvania in 2006.
At a press conference Monday afternoon, Jeff Pettis, leader of bee research at USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS), said the impact of CCD has not waned since the term was coined four years ago.
It is a big reason why honeybees, in particular, are in decline. But he added it’s not the only reason.
“CCD is one of many things that affect honeybees. It is unsustainable,” Pettis said.
A survey two years ago, he said, showed a 29 percent decline in the number of managed commercial bee hives as a result of CCD and other factors.
This past winter, another 34 percent of commercial bee colonies was lost.
Penn State, which has been one of the lead universities researching CCD, has been unable to come up with a definitive answer for what is causing the ailment.
Diana Cox-Foster, professor of entomology at Penn State, said at the press conference that the current consensus is that CCD comprises multiple factors, including deadly parasites, viruses and pressures from pesticide use.
“CCD is not the only cause of bee die-offs. It is a complicated issue,” Cox-Foster said.
When it comes to the ag community’s role in figuring out ways to solve the bee crisis, Tom Van Arsdall of the Pollinator Partnership, said the challenge will be balancing farmers’ needs with the need to adapt better conservation methods.
“When it comes to production ag, their job is making sure they do enough on the land to make a living,” Van Arsdall said.
Meetings with representatives of the American Farm Bureau Federation, he said, have been productive but also contentious.
He said farm bureau leaders are worried that farmers will lose crop protection tools they have been using for years to accommodate bees and other insects.
“You have to respect their concerns and understand that and connect with them,” he said. “Everybody has a stake in it. The question is, how do you find a solution.”
Mace Vaughn, pollinator program director at the Xerces Society, a nonprofit organization that protects wildlife through the conservation of invertebrates and their habitat, said some farmers, including ones the society has worked with, welcome better conservation measures.
“They see it as part of their overall conservation aspect of the farm. Farmers see this as part of the wildlife habitat on the farm,” Vaughn said.
A panel of researchers, experts and government officials took part in a session Monday morning on “Evolving Policies on Pollinator Risk Assessment and Conservation.”
The session, held at the Nittany Lion Inn in State College, was broadcast over the Internet.
In England, the value of pollinators is estimated at $750 million or 10 percent of the total value of agriculture, according to Stuart Roberts, research fellow at the Centre for Agri-Environmental Research at Reading University.
Replacing these pollinators, he said, could cost billions of dollars.
Many projects in Europe are focused on conservation efforts, and 27,000 sites throughout Europe are now protected and being used as habitat areas for pollinators.
But Roberts calls pollinator conservation a multisector and multiscale challenge.
Doug Holy, national invasive species specialist for the USDA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), said the agency has been looking at alternatives to honeybees, including solitary bees and wild bees.
The agency has also been looking at expanding economic incentives for pollinator conservation. The conservation title of the 2008 Farm Bill, he said, encourages pollinator habitat and development.
Some research, Holy said, has gone into developing pollinator seed mixes depending on the region where a particular crop is being grown. There are also some demonstration gardens in development.
Thomas Moriarty, team leader in the pesticide re-evaluation division at the EPA, said the agency is working with states to develop better reporting mechanisms that beekeepers can use to report mass bee die-offs.
The agency is also encouraging pesticide manufacturers to label products better, and it is reviewing neonicotinoids, compounds that affect the central nervous system and have been suspected as a cause of CCD.
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August 8th, 2010 at 1:43 pm
hi! I am giving a presentatin on pollinator decline, specifiically honey bees andbumblebees, on monday(!) and am puzzled about something; I remember hearing aabout the decline of honey vbees WAY before 2006…..like,when i lived in washington state which was like,1997,98?( it was buried on page 6 of the seattle paper.) can anybody help me figure out the discrepancy in the time line ? I would appreciate a reply asap, for i would like to incllude this info in my presentation,monday a.m. Thank you! Lore Witt
August 25th, 2010 at 8:27 pm
Sorry, this is late for your presentation Lore. You are correct that honey bees were on the decline way before 2006. However, CCD was not being reported until around 2006. As I’m sure you’re aware pollinators have been challenged by a multitude of issues over the last several decades. CCD is only the latest thing to hit bees. Before that we had 2 seperate mite infestations starting (I believe) a couple of decades ago. Combine that with loss of habitat and less bee keepers among other things over multiple years and it’s easy to see why we’re having more and more trouble sustaining bee populations.
September 19th, 2010 at 1:58 pm
Hi! It just very well may be neonicotinoids that is comprising the honey bees immune system making this species more susceptible to the invasive behavior of parasitoid species and CNS dysfunctions. If someone can advise or inform us on any statistical studies between the introduction of neonicotinoids and the immediate on set reaction of CCD behavior and Apis decline on a global wide basis, then some light may just be shed that can put neonicotinoids as the potential culprit on the suspect list. Through the years I’ve witnessed on numerous occasions in the most latter part of the day and even an hour after dusk, “honey bees encountering difficulty with flight, great disorientation, and exhaustion.” It is my guess these are the ones that end up unaccounted for at their respective colony or hive because of their inability to navigate their way back. The effects of neonicotinoids should be a prioritized study to CCD. Thanks, Mario Cinquina
September 19th, 2010 at 9:50 pm
NOTE: Your comment is awaiting moderation, dear moderator or moderating committee.
In the first sentence please change the word “comprising to compromising.”
October 31st, 2010 at 10:01 am
Hi Maria and Lore. not sure if you’ll get to see this, as it’s some time since you wrote your posts, but there is quite a lot of info on this site (not sure if we are allowed to post sites, but will give it a go) – 2 pages: http://bit.ly/bcY8Cf and http://bit.ly/9GiGyb There are links to other evidence too.
But regardless of whether or not neonicotinoids cause CCD, surely we need to be asking, “do they kill/have harmful effects on bees? ”
Don’t know whether you’ll get this, but I hope you do. All the best!
November 30th, 2010 at 1:05 pm
I’ve been curious about this topic for a little while. I just started reading up on it.
Until now I have not come across any mention a thing I noticed (the thing got got me started with this). When I take a walk on my street (at any time of day) I see bees crawling around on the pavement. There are bees out there every day and they just look lost and tired out. I’m not a scientist. But it struck me that I have never seen so many bees in this condition. It seems like they cannot find their way back to their hives.
Anyway. Mario Cinquina pointed this out back on Sept 19th. Maybe he’s got something there with neonicotinoids? I also thought that maybe bees brought in from the southern hemisphere to bolster native populations may not be able to navigate in the northern hemisphere for some reason. But that is a guess.
Thanks