We have just finished and posted an update of our national Bee Alert bee
loss survey.
You can download it at beealert.info.
As of June 1, we have received nearly 700 surveys from 43 states, Puerto
Rico, and 5 provinces.
Since everyone on Bee-L seems to want to see numbers, we have kept our
report simple, charted things by number of respondents, so you can see the actual
numbers. At the end of the report, we summarize the main points in charts
that provide the same information in terms of the percentage of beekeepers
reporting various things.
We do include a multivariate analysis of the reports of suspected pathogens
that might cause CCD.
We've also provided an updated map, contrasting 2006/2007 with 1975. There
are 7 states that we have not listed on the map due to too few surveys,
ambiguous information. We still haven't heard from Alaska or some of the
southwestern states.
Note, on our web site, we also include a link to the infamous LA report of
N. cerana. The headline is very misleading - DeRissi did NOT claim to have
found the answer to CCD. DeRissi's lab did find N. cerana, and lots of it, in
some of the California bees from the almond groves that we provided to the
Army.
DeRissi also found an interesting array of viruses - he and the Army are
still working through the results, but he found infla viruses, including black
queen cell virus, sacbrood, and possibly other viruses. None of this was new,
both PSU and USDA Beltsville had found and reported these viruses, knew
about N. cerana in U.S. bees.
DeRissi got samples the week before, got his results over the weekend, and
got an unexpected call from a reporter early in the week, just as our Army
colleagues were discussing their/his findings at the Beltsville meeting.
DeRissi couldn't find any references to N. cerana in the U.S., so he told the
reporter that he had found it, that he had read that some European countries
(namely Spain), thought that N. cerana was a major factor in bee loss.
Of course, we now know that Jeff Pettis has been tracking this for some
time, and Jeff told me that he doesn't think its a primary pathogen, more of a
secondary invader. There seems to be some questions about N. cerana/apis
identification, how long N. cerana has actually been in the U.S., whether its a
much of a problem, etc.
So much for the history lesson, just shows what an editor can do to spin
things up.
Anyway, I hope that the Bee-L members will find the updated survey to be
informative. And, please keep in mind, a volunteer survey has some inherent
bias - but its the best that we could do on short notice and a shoe-string
budget. Finally, we wish to thank Lance and Patty Sundberg, Sundberg Apiaries,
Columbus, MT for a donation to us via the ABF Foundation that has enabled us to
continue the survey.
Jerry
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