By TIM THORNBERRY
Kentucky Correspondent FRANKFORT, Ky. — Recent reports about bee colony declines caused by Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has stirred many rumors including the end of civilization, but before we cash in on our life insurance policies, Kentucky bee experts have a welcome message.
Kentucky State University Apiarist Tom Webster said most of the reports are just hearsay. While a significant decline in honeybees has been observed in the past few years, there are many rational explanations for the losses.
“When we have a tough problem that is difficult to solve and takes time to solve, it seems to create an information void,” Webster said. “People feel a need to start filling in that void, and all sorts of unfounded ideas start going around.
“We will see an impact from this decline; some commercial beekeepers have lost 90 percent of their hives. But, we do need to remember that honeybees are not native to North America and civilizations existed before the honeybee arrived.”
Webster suggested the focus should be on the facts about bees and how they survive and die, and not so much on the implications of losses in some colonies.
According to the Kentucky Agricultural Statistics and Annual Report for 2005-06, the state has about 5,000 colonies generating nearly 250,000 pounds of honey. Most Kentucky producers keep a small number of hives - mostly for honey. Due to normal winter losses, these producers will lose a significant portion of their colony.
Kentucky Department of Agriculture State Apiarist Phil Craft said, before deciding that a new disease had created the demise of some hives, it’s important to examine why beekeepers lose colonies in the winter. Kentucky’s beekeepers begin preparing their hives for winter as early as July of each year.
“There are three considerations that we keep in mind in helping a colony of honeybees get through the winter,” he said. “Bees must have sufficient food stores in the hive. In Kentucky that means a hive needs about 50-60 pounds of honey for the bees to feed on during the winter.”
Secondly, Craft said there has to be a minimum bee population of 25,000-30,000 in the hive late in the fall for it to survive the winter.
“By spring, the number in the hive will be greatly reduced, and there is a natural decrease as older bees die,” he said. “The bees cluster together and consume honey to keep warm when the temperature is below 55 degrees - the colder the outside temperature, the tighter the cluster. I always say that as the number of bees in a hive decreases, the hive may reach critical cluster size, below which the survival of the bees is unlikely.”
In normal conditions when a colony is disease and pest free with plenty of food and bees to cluster, half won’t survive until spring, Craft said. “The third consideration is healthy bees,” he added.
“Honeybees that have been weakened by mites or disease will die even sooner. If you don’t monitor and control mites and disease, you can’t tell whether bees are actually as healthy as they appear.”
While this year’s Easter freeze caused catastrophe among fruit, vegetable and grain producers, it was likely responsible for losses in the bee population as well.
“We often have these periods of warm and then cold and then warm again in Kentucky. When it gets warm, bees become more active, consume more honey and then they have to re-cluster during the next cold snap,” Craft said.
“The result is dead bees in multiple small clusters. These days we consider a winter loss of 20-25 percent acceptable. Unfortunately it’s common to lose one or two hives, which means that beekeepers with only a few hives can lose all or most of their bees.”
Webster pointed out that several pathogens and pests could be a factor in the bee decline as well along with a nutrition factor. “If all the plants other than the crop to be pollinated have been treated with an herbicide, that could be hurting the bee population,” he said. “It’s akin to living off of only grilled-cheese sandwiches. What I’m trying to say is bees need a variety of nutrition sources.”
Affecting agriculture A number of crops depend on pollination, in some estimates up to one-third of crop spices in the United States.
UK College of Agriculture Horticulture Specialist John Strang said the honeybee decline could impact fruit and vegetable crops but not as much as the spring cold snap did. He also emphasized that the honeybee has a little native help.
“We’d most likely harvest fewer cantaloupes, watermelons, cucumbers, pumpkins and squash, which would be smaller and could be misshapen,” he said.
“Some fruit trees might not set as much fruit without honeybees, but it’s not going to wipe us out. The recent Easter Freeze was much more devastating to our growers than the bee situation. We have a lot of native bees and bumblebees that do a great job pollinating. We haven’t always had honeybees to do the work, but we depend on honeybees to do a lot of pollination in a short period of time, when we have a large number of crop flowers to pollinate.”
Ounce of prevention There are some things beekeepers can do to help protect their hives. Webster suggested to avoid putting hives where agricultural chemicals are heavily used; give bees diverse food sources; keep well-known parasites under control; and, for unexplained problems, send small bee samples to the KSU lab for analysis.
One of the healthiest things beekeepers can do for their hives is to cull an older brood comb, Craft explained. He also recommended treating all hives with the antibiotic fumalgillin.
“This antibiotic is available from all beekeeping supply companies,” he said. “Add one teaspoon of fumalgillin to each of the first two gallons of sugar syrup fed to each colony.”
While CCD could be an underlying factor in the decline of honeybees in the area, Craft believes the major contributing factor is something a little less scary.
“I believe that losses reported here in Kentucky seem to be more related to starvation and poor condition of bees than to CCD,” Craft said.
“This phenomenon (CCD) has received a lot of media attention. While earlier reports said only migratory beekeepers with large operations were affected, some smaller keepers have reported losses as well – some as great as 50 percent. Losses from CCD are now being reported in about 25 states, but CCD may or may not have been a real factor in all of these cases.”
For more information, Webster can be reached at 502-597-6351 or via e-mail at Thomas.webster@kysu.edu This farm news was published in the June 2, 2007 issue of Farm World, serving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee. |
