Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Fears for Crops as Shock Figures From America Show Scale of Bee Catastrophe
by Alison Benjamin  Published on Sunday, May 2, 2010 by The Observer/UK
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/02/food-fear-mystery-beehives-collapse
   The world may be on the brink of biological disaster after news that a 
third of US bee colonies did not survive the winter

Disturbing evidence that honeybees are in terminal decline has emerged from 
the United States where, for the fourth year in a row, more than a third of 
colonies have failed to survive the winter.

[Bernard Vallat, the World Organisation for Animal Health's director-general, 
warned: "Bees contribute to global food security, and their extinction would 
represent a terrible biological disaster." (photo by Flickr user Steve 
Punter)]Bernard Vallat, the World Organisation for Animal Health's 
director-general, warned: "Bees contribute to global food security, and their 
extinction would represent a terrible biological disaster." (photo by Flickr 
user Steve Punter)
The decline of the country's estimated 2.4 million beehives began in 2006, 
when a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD) led to the 
disappearance of hundreds of thousands of colonies. Since then more than 
three million colonies in the US and billions of honeybees worldwide have 
died and scientists are no nearer to knowing what is causing the catastrophic 
fall in numbers.

The number of managed honeybee colonies in the US fell by 33.8% last winter, 
according to the annual survey by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the US 
government's Agricultural Research Service (ARS).

The collapse in the global honeybee population is a major threat to crops. It 
is estimated that a third of everything we eat depends upon honeybee 
pollination, which means that bees contribute some £26bn to the global 
economy.

Potential causes range from parasites, such as the bloodsucking varroa mite, 
to viral and bacterial infections, pesticides and poor nutrition stemming 
from intensive farming methods. The disappearance of so many colonies has 
also been dubbed "Mary Celeste syndrome" due to the absence of dead bees in 
many of the empty hives.

US scientists have found 121 different pesticides in samples of bees, wax and 
pollen, lending credence to the notion that pesticides are a key problem. "We 
believe that some subtle interactions between nutrition, pesticide exposure 
and other stressors are converging to kill colonies," said Jeffery Pettis, of 
the ARS's bee research laboratory.

A global review of honeybee deaths by the World Organisation for Animal 
Health (OIE) reported last week that there was no one single cause, but 
pointed the finger at the "irresponsible use" of pesticides that may damage 
bee health and make them more susceptible to diseases. Bernard Vallat, the 
OIE's director-general, warned: "Bees contribute to global food security, and 
their extinction would represent a terrible biological disaster."

Dave Hackenberg of Hackenberg Apiaries, the Pennsylvania-based commercial 
beekeeper who first raised the alarm about CCD, said that last year had been 
the worst yet for bee losses, with 62% of his 2,600 hives dying between May 
2009 and April 2010. "It's getting worse," he said. "The AIA survey doesn't 
give you the full picture because it is only measuring losses through the 
winter. In the summer the bees are exposed to lots of pesticides. Farmers mix 
them together and no one has any idea what the effects might be."

Pettis agreed that losses in some commercial operations are running at 50% or 
greater. "Continued losses of this magnitude are not economically sustainable 
for commercial beekeepers," he said, adding that a solution may be years 
away. "Look at Aids, they have billions in research dollars and a causative 
agent and still no cure. Research takes time and beehives are complex 
organisms."

In the UK it is still too early to judge how Britain's estimated 250,000 
honeybee colonies have fared during the long winter. Tim Lovett, president of 
the British Beekeepers' Association, said: "Anecdotally, it is hugely 
variable. There are reports of some beekeepers losing almost a third of their 
hives and others losing none." Results from a survey of the association's 
15,000 members are expected this month.

John Chapple, chairman of the London Beekeepers' Association, put losses 
among his 150 members at between a fifth and a quarter. Eight of his 36 hives 
across the capital did not survive. "There are still a lot of mysterious 
disappearances," he said. "We are no nearer to knowing what is causing them."

Bee farmers in Scotland have reported losses on the American scale for the 
past three years. Andrew Scarlett, a Perthshire-based bee farmer and honey 
packer, lost 80% of his 1,200 hives this winter. But he attributed the 
massive decline to a virulent bacterial infection that quickly spread because 
of a lack of bee inspectors, coupled with sustained poor weather that 
prevented honeybees from building up sufficient pollen and nectar stores.

The government's National Bee Unit has always denied the existence of CCD in 
Britain, despite honeybee losses of 20% during the winter of 2008-09 and 
close to a third the previous year. It attributes the demise to the varroa 
mite – which is found in almost every UK hive – and rainy summers that stop 
bees foraging for food.

In a hard-hitting report last year, the National Audit Office suggested that 
amateur beekeepers who failed to spot diseases in bees were a threat to 
honeybees' survival and called for the National Bee Unit to carry out more 
inspections and train more beekeepers. Last summer MPs on the influential 
cross-party public accounts committee called on the government to fund more 
research into what it called the "alarming" decline of honeybees.

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has contributed 
£2.5m towards a £10m fund for research on pollinators. The public accounts 
committee has called for a significant proportion of this funding to be 
"ring-fenced" for honeybees. Decisions on which research projects to back are 
expected this month.
WHY BEES MATTER

Flowering plants require insects for pollination. The most effective is the 
honeybee, which pollinates 90 commercial crops worldwide. As well as most 
fruits and vegetables – including apples, oranges, strawberries, onions and 
carrots – they pollinate nuts, sunflowers and oil-seed rape. Coffee, soya 
beans, clovers – like alfafa, which is used for cattle feed – and even cotton 
are all dependent on honeybee pollination to increase yields.

In the UK alone, honeybee pollination is valued at £200m. Mankind has been 
managing and transporting bees for centuries to pollinate food and produce 
honey, nature's natural sweetener and antiseptic. Their extinction would mean 
not only a colourless, meatless diet of cereals and rice, and cottonless 
clothes, but a landscape without orchards, allotments and meadows of 
wildflowers – and the collapse of the food chain that sustains wild birds and 
animals.