Perhaps, like me, you’ve noticed there haven’t been as many bees flying around this year. If you’re the sort of person who gets nervous around bees, this might even seem like a good thing to you. But perhaps, like me, you notice your apple trees have scarcely any apples on them, and you know that the flowers weren’t damaged by a late frost. This is not a good thing. Multiplied by millions of fruit and almond trees in orchards all over the country, it becomes a very bad thing. They’re calling it Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).
Wild Guesses About the Cause of Colony Collapse Disorder
It’s called a disorder because no one knows why it’s happening. Especially in the beginning, there were a lot of wack-a-doo theories circulating around. When something bad happens and the explanation isn’t immediately evident, the human race tends to look around for something–or someone–to be the heavy. It’s easy to blame something equally invisible, like cell phone transmissions, or your favorite arch-enemy, like pesticides, when you don’t know what the heck is causing this scary business.
Researchers getting closer to the truth
Eventually people calm down and try to solve the mystery more systematically. That’s why I really appreciated the New Yorker article that C. L. Fornari, The Garden Lady, brought to my attention. In “Stung,” Elizabeth Kolbert traces the discovery of the problem, dispels the myths, and focuses on possible legitimate causes. Eventually she brings us to the office of scientist Ian Lipkin:
Lipkin had just sent off a paper on C.C.D. to a scientific journal. He was reluctant to discuss its contents, for fear of jeopardizing its acceptance, but he did indicate that it contained what he considered to be a breakthrough. One pathogen in particular was, in his words, â€œhighly associatedâ€ with C.C.D.
Waiting for Lifkin
That article was published on August 6th. I wondered if Lifkin’s study had been published since then. I couldn’t find anything by googling for it, but I did find “As bees go missing, a $9.3B crisis lurks” by David Stipp. This covers a lot of the same ground as Kolbert’s article, but adds some new information as well. As you might expect from a Fortune magazine article, the economic ramifications of the problem are covered in more depth. Stipp also discusses other possible causes in addition to the ones that Kolbert suggested. But his article, published at the end of August, also mentions Lifkin’s apparently still unpublished study.
Identifying the disease doesn’t guarantee a cure
Reading both articles together, it soon becomes clear that there is no silver bullet. As Stipp summarizes entomologist Dewey Caron,
But merely showing that germs selectively turn up in cases of CCD, he cautions, won’t necessarily nail the culprit, for it will leave a key question unanswered: Are such microbes the main killers, or has something else stomped bees’ immune systems, making them vulnerable to the infections?
- Competition from imported honey causes commercial bee-keepers to change their bee husbandry practices, as does increased demand for pollination services.
- Many pesticides used for commercial agriculture and home lawn maintenance are known to be harmful to bees.
- Many native pollinators are also on the decline
- Good weather mitigated the reduced availability of bees, so crops of bee-dependent produce were still good. This kept prices low and legislators ignorant of the coming economic debacle.
- And as Craig Cramer of Ellis Hollow pointed out, lack of genetic diversity in honeybee breeding lines may also play a part.
Do your part: grow plants for pollinators
There are a lot of threads tangled together, and the whole ball of yarn won’t be unraveled for a while. Probably the smartest thing anyone can do is plant as many of the plants bees and other pollinators favor as they can.
We think this has helped our vegetable garden. Several people in the neighborhood used to keep bees, but they have all given it up, not because of Colony Collapse Disorder but because of other bee diseases or the infirmities of the bee keeper. Our tomatoes are setting fruit, while some other gardeners on the street aren’t having much success. We like to think Talitha’s practice of planting corn poppies, cosmos and other posies in amongst the vegetables attracts more pollinators to the vegetable patch. But if Daughter of the Soil is right, we’re probably fooling ourselves, at least in regards to tomatoes.
Update: Bee Virus Story Breaks
6 September 2007–the study that Lifkin referred to hit the news stands today. Here are three different versions, along with the person I have to thank for each: