By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in bee colonies has caused some buzz in the media lately.
“We don’t know what it is,” said OSU Extension Specialist in Beekeeping, Dr. James Tew. “Probably 600,000 of our roughly 2.4 million colonies have died rather unexpectedly from this thing that is being called CCD.”

“Those colony losses have primarily affected commercial beekeepers, those migratory people who maintain the workhorse bees, who are nomadic and truck bees all over the country ... as they follow the bloom,” he said.

When a hive is affected by CCD, the bees are simply, illogically gone, he said. There is honey, a queen and a critical shortage of bees to maintain the baby bees that the colony has already built up. The colony is horribly out of balance for no obvious reason.

“Even in a proper hive, bees live 3-5 weeks. There are always bodies,” Tew said. “But in the case of CCD, they’re not there.”
In the absence of science, many people have their own theories.

Some say it is nutritional, others stress-related, some people blame genetically modified crops, others think it’s a clear example of the effects of pesticides in the environment, Tew said. Even cell phones have been blamed.

Yet this syndrome is not necessarily new. Something like it has occurred at erratic intervals in the past, Tew said.

“If you look at the old literature they’re describing this thing then called spring dwindling, fall collapse, autumn decline, disappearing disease, vanishing bee syndrome,” Tew said. “It is getting more attention because of our modern system of information dispersal. I don’t know if this is the worse instance we’ve ever had or if this is the best documented instance we’ve ever had.”

However, something is happening and that is unnerving because beekeepers do not have a big cushion, Tew said. Beekeeping is hard work. Beekeepers provide critical pollination to almond producers and fruit and vegetable producers.

Perhaps that need has put too much stress on the bees.

As the almond industry in California has grown, the price of pollination has gotten higher. That has caused an economic frenzy in the bee industry to meet that need, Tew said.

“They’re putting bees in the back of a truck, pushing them early in Florida to put them ahead of their season, loading them up to haul them to California, putting them out in a cool spring there,” Tew said.

“About the time the bees recover they put them back on the truck. Is it just a stress issue that allows any resident pathogen or pest to overrun the colony?”

The issue of general colony stress is being reviewed because stationary beekeepers have not been as badly affected. Maybe that’s because they’re not moving bees.

Beekeepers and bee-related agencies are trying to get funding into the 2007 farm bill to look into CCD since no one knows what is causing it. The question is - could it get worse?

“It is being reported in other parts of the world that there is this inexplicable erratic die off in bees,” Tew said. “It makes people in my position very uncomfortable because I tend to cling to science and to logical answers and there is just not enough to go around here.

“I don’t want to unnerve people who are looking into beekeeping ... To a certain group of people with the personality make-up for it, beekeeping satisfies a remarkable number of needs for fulfillment and for a return of product to the environment and a sense of ‘can do.’ Beekeeping is just taking a beating right now.”