LANSING, Mich. — Michigan beekeepers are reporting a good honey crop this year, according to Mike Hansen, the state apiarist.

Last year, they had a poor honey crop. Much of it has to do with weather, Hansen said. One large-scale beekeeper this year reported he was getting colonies with 165 pounds of honey stored in them.

But this doesn’t mean Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has gone away or is no longer a problem. CCD has been reported in 35 states, including Michigan and the entire upper Midwest.

Hansen said CCD is a useful label. He compared it to the concept of the “flu” in humans and said when people get a “cold” or the “flu” they don’t really know precisely what they have. All they know for sure is they have certain symptoms, such as a runny nose or a sore throat.

“For right now, Colony Collapse Disorder is a fair name for ‘we don’t know,’” he said.

He pointed out beekeepers in Canada experience a similar loss of bees as their counterparts in the United States, but since Canadian beekeepers either keep their colonies indoors through the winter or wrap their hives, the bees don’t have an opportunity to fly away. Thus, in Canada, there is no CCD as such. Beekeepers in Michigan lose an average of 35 percent of their bees each year.

“Eight percent of honeybee losses can be attributed to the unknown, which can be called Colony Collapse Disorder,” Hansen explained.

Researchers in European countries have not found any solid evidence that any one pesticide or any specific group of pesticides are responsible for honeybee losses, even though the European public has grabbed onto the idea that pesticides are responsible for bee deaths. Neonicotinoids, a new family of pesticides that replaced organophosphates, have been targeted by activists and some have theorized these may be responsible for CCD.

“One of the European studies found no link between neonicotinoids and bee losses,” Hansen said. “Studies done in the U.S. found no connection between neonicotinoids and bee losses.”

According to a recent report by a European think tank called OPERA Research Center, based in Italy, any link between pesticides and bee losses is tenuous.

“Pesticides are listed by many authors as a potentially contributing factor to honeybee colony losses, but there are only few investigations that claim to have found concrete evidence for a key role of pesticides,” the report stated. “Reported pesticide incidents typically lead to a varying degree of damage on the colony, but rarely the loss of damaged colonies.

“The most frequent cause of pesticide-related incidents is the misuse of products and ignorance of label statements by farmers, combined with a poor communication with beekeepers, or disregard by beekeepers for good practices.”

According to the report, CCD has not been reported in European countries, so far. According to Hansen, another concept that’s been around for at least the past couple of years is synergy.

“All of the big research groups are saying that Colony Collapse Disorder is not cause by one factor,” Hansen said. “The synergy idea takes into account everything. Mites continue to be a major problem; they are a vector for different viruses.”