Honeybee Mystery Could Hurt Food Supply

CBNNews.com - Where have all the honeybees gone? Millions are disappearing all over the world and scientists don't know why.

The mystery is called Colony Collapse Disorder. Beekeepers say it's a great concern for all consumers - not just those who love honey.

A healthy colony normally has as many as 60,000 bees buzzing around with honey in abundant supply. However, those numbers have been greatly reduced in some cases, and beekeepers are counting their losses.

"Overnight almost, it was vacant. I don't know what happened to the bees. They're just gone," said Beekeeper Warren Seaver.

Seaver believes his bees are being lost to CCD.

Researchers say CCD has killed millions of bees worldwide, and around half of the 2.5 million colonies in the United States.

Warren Seaver, president of the Delaware Beekeepers Association, said his hives have definitely taken a hit.

"It was very disheartening, to say the least, to lose this many hives," Seaver admitted.

Last fall, Warren had around 250 colonies. CCD took out about half of them, and for someone whose primary source of income is the honeybee, that was not welcome news.

Warren says CCD doesn't just hurt bees and their keepers, but also consumers who eat fruits and vegetables like apples and cucumbers. His bees alone pollinate around 4,000 acres in Delaware. The self-proclaimed "Beeman," as stated on his license plate, hauls hives to local fields to pollinate crops.

Seaver pointed out how it impacts everyone, "This is very serious. One-third of what we eat depends on the honeybee and other pollinators for pollination."

Scientists agree with him. "We take away the pollinator, or in this case put some additional stresses on them -- more of them dying -- then we don't have the quantity, the quality of food that we need, that we want," said Dr. Dewey Caron, an Entomologist at the University of Delaware.

He explained how taking away honeybee pollination would drastically change our diet, making it less colorful and more expensive. "Do we want to become a country that becomes dependent upon foreign sources for the foods that we eat? Do we want to become dependent upon a single type of grain for our diets?"

Caron said it's a very serious problem. His university alone has lost 11 of its 12 colonies to CCD. Dr. Caron is part the "CCD Working Group." It's a nationwide task force looking into the problem.

Caron said in his 40 years of working with bees, he's never seen anything like this before.

Beekeepers and scientists agree the cause of CCD is a mystery. They say it's tough to hone in on a cause, and subsequently a cure, when there's a lack of evidence to analyze. In many cases, bee "bodies" are nowhere to be found.

"No, nothing out in front of the hives. Nothing. Just gone," Warren said.

"The older bees, the bees that should be taking care of their young, off foraging, they're just simply not present." Dr. Caron added.

Researchers like Caron are forced to become detectives, in hopes of solving the problem of the disappearing bees.

They're looking at three primary areas for possible causes of CCD: pathogens or viruses, stress from the environment and certain pesticides.

"These things cause disorientation; cause loss of short-term memory. Perhaps the bees are going out. They're being exposed to some of these types of chemicals, and then simply not having enough memory to get back to their home, dying because they starve; they run out of food," Caron said, in explaining one possibility.

Some have suggested cell phone interference may be confusing honeybees as well. However, Dr. Caron does not believe cell phones and their electromagnetic emissions are to blame. "Certainly, the cell phone connection was based on bogus science and was a misinterpretation of what was actually going on."

Whatever is behind the disappearance of millions of honeybees, researchers are scrambling to discover it for the sake of people like Warren Seaver.

"I want to plan to build back up to about 250 colonies, but it's going to take me several years to reach that goal," Seaver said.

Researchers also want to help a population hungry for a diverse diet.