Dee makes good points about winter and fungus, mold, yeast. And I've seen
some mighty nasty looking pollen sub, if it sits in the colony without being
consumed. So, a fungus, whether in soil, in hive, could be involved, and I
understand why its critical that we consider it. As I said, some of the Penn
State folks are investigating that scenario. Others are looking at viruses,
and still others at imidacloprid with respect to the bee losses -- and I'd
have to agree that each or all are candidates. We're looking at HMF and some
other things. Problem is, every factor that might be involved is nullified in
some instances -- although we may be looking at a common syndrome with
multiple causes.
Dee did cause me to remember that we (UM), some years ago, did some work
with Bassiana, a microbial pesticide. It didn't affect bees in strong colonies,
but it was sensitive to elevated temperatures. It did affect adult honey
bees in cages as well as bumble bees, but not adult honey bees in strong
colonies. We thought it might be because the honey bee colony keeps the
temperature too high for the fungus to survive. We did note that once we had
inoculated hives with this fungus, we could still recover it some years later -- so it
was persistent.
It would be ideal if one of the many factors, like a fungus is common to all
of the bee losses. I'm afraid I'm a skeptic with respect to many of the
obvious variables, like toxic honey dew, new chemicals, chemicals inside hives,
since I've already looked at too many cases -- we've now documented the bee
losses in 16 states. My prejudice, all of the chemicals being thrown into hives
has to have an adverse effect -- but an organic guy in one of northern
states doesn't use lots of chemicals, yet experienced the same syndrome this fall.
As we get samples from different regions, and as people fill out surveys, we
hope to narrow down the field, with the Penn State and USDA ARS taking the
lead with respect to possible biological agents and/or new generation
pesticides. We're focusing on the bigger picture, trying to get out and sample over
a broad scale, share samples with the rest of the group, overlay maps of
affected locations with climate data, etc. (trying to find out whether a weather
event may trigger, such as just the right conditions for a toxic fungus to
take off. We're also trying some new approaches for identifying sick/weak
colonies. So far, the CCD team has been freely sharing samples and results --
and we all plan on next going to California, since we getting reports from
there, and USDA has a longer term study ongoing in California.
If you've bees in California and are seeing this collapse, please let us
know. We may want to visit you.
Thank
Jerry
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