My team got together after covering Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Florida.
Another member will be looking at hives in California tomorrow. So far, no
simple answers, but it does seem to have connections, showing up in beekeepers
who work together, seemingly spreading, at least within yards.
We've traced this syndrome to Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Connecticut, South
Carolina, and the aforementioned states. The reported losses in Texas are
not nearly as severe as we initially heard, and the bees appear to be
recovering. Either the Texas incidents are something different or represent a much
milder situation. The Texas beekeepers have agreed to let us know if this
changes.
We've heard rumors of losses in California, but at least some seem to be a
result of the stresses of moving, with dead bees in boxes, on the ground.
I'll know more next week when Larry Tarver gets back from California.
I've just finished reading the discussion on Bee Source, but I can't respond
to that group until they approve my registration. They discussed mapping the
problem, confidentiality, and are talking about a making up their own
reporting system. That's fine, but it may be a duplication of effort, and we hope
that beekeepers won't get confused.
Two weeks ago we launched a national survey of this problem. We developed
and carried a detailed survey form to Florida, Pennsylvania, Georgia. We
asked lots of experts to review our form and responded to their comments. After
seeing the problem firsthand, we're revising our initial questionnaire - we
anticipated issues that are no longer relevant, and we missed others that are
critical.
We will be at both the National Bee Meetings and will have copies of our
revised survey available for distribution. We hope to get the survey form
published in the bee journals, magazines, and we will be posting it on our web
page, soon -- but first we have to finish a bunch of year end reports.
Then, we will need your assistance. Its obvious that because there are so
many factors, we will need lots of beekeepers to tell us what and where their
problems are, and tell us about their management practices. And, we need to
backtrack affected hives at least 3-6 months, maybe a year.
We have a well-developed, multi-media, database system that is
geo-referenced. For every location, we can tie in everything from reports to pictures and
video. We've got analytical tools to process this information, which is one
of the reasons we've joined this investigation. So, we're not just running
a survey, we're building an information database that hopefully will help
sort this all out.
We are well aware of confidentiality issues in terms of any survey, mapping
exercise. We are conducting this investigation via our small technology
transfer business, rather than the university. As a private business, we have
much more control over data, who gets it, and in what form; than we do under
our University projects.
It is not our purpose to point a finger of blame, single out beekeepers,
'turn in' beekeepers who use illegal materials. It is our purpose to try to
isolate factors responsible for or contributing to the current problem. We need
to run to ground the origin, current distribution, and possible spread of
this syndrome. We're particularly interested in seeing if this is spreading to
nearest neighbor yards, or if there's a common denominator such as sudden
weather changes that may induce the disappearance of the bees, or use of some
chemical or food material that is common to those suffering from this. We
need to find the leading edge, so that we have a chance of catching colonies
before and as they are failing. We need to move from autopsy to diagnosis.
We hope you will participate in our national survey, and we hope that the
national beekeeping associations will support our efforts. If nothing else,
getting a handle on how widespread and severe this phenomenon is may help raise
its visibility among beekeepers, the general public, and policy makers.
Currently, its appears to be throughout many of the eastern states. Let's hope
it doesn't jump to the west coast.
Thanks
Jerry
J.J. Bromenshenk
CEO, Bee Alert Technology, Inc.
"Putting Technology to Work"
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