Randy writes
>There is nothing "undoubtable" that moving bees from one foraging area to
another is stressful. In fact, data from Zachary Huang suggests otherwise.
In my own experience, colonies benefit greatly from being moved to better
forage. 

These are two different things. One has to separate the effect of moving bees from the effect of bees being in a better environment. Better forage will have a positive effect, while simply moving bees without placing them in an improved environment would be expected to cause some degree of harm. Moving bees from a good area to a poor one (for whatever reason) would also produce an effect unrelated to being moved.

* * *

The CCD Working Group concludes that "stress" is a major contributor to the condition, and they itemize a number of stresses that are likely involved. In particular, they mention that migratory beekeeping practices are stressful to the bees. The reasons suggested are confinement and temperature fluctuations during transport. Certainly, added to those reasons are the mechanical vibrations and shocks that colonies on trucks experience, which, when protracted over several days’ duration would be upsetting to the bees. Confinement itself would cause the air within the hives to become stale, with higher than usual levels of Carbon dioxide (CO2) and moisture. Even moving colonies short distances for pollination or honey production is well known to cause the bees to become upset, so moves taking days and over thousands of kilometres would be expected to be stressful on the bees, as well as on the beekeepers.

Rapid movement of colonies of bees across the USA may cause "jet-lag". Yes, bees to sleep and do have regular daily rhythms of activity (just as do people) (Kaiser 1988; Sauer et al. 2003, 2004; Zhang et al. 2006), so one can suggest that a colony of bees being whipped across two or three time zones in a quick move would be subject to some stress.

Migratory beekeeping involves the packing of large numbers of colonies onto the backs of trucks. There, the colonies are un-naturally close together. The CCD Working Group acknowledges that when the bees cluster on the outsides of hives packed as truckloads, mingling of bees between the hives would occur. The bees’ defecation on the outside of the hives would increase rates of transmission of pathogens.

* That transport in and of itself causes colony death and the CCD Working Group reports that 10% to 30% losses are “not uncommon” as a result of moving colonies for pollination. *

With such losses, migratory beekeepers make splits to compensate for the losses. The Working Group notes that the reuse of equipment from hives that have died out is part of the transfer of diseases and chemical contaminants and may contribute to the problem. They also point out that making splits changes the age structure of the colonies being split, and results in an un-natural age structure of bees in the split itself. Thus, the ratio of young, nurse workers to older foragers becomes imbalanced, further stressing the colonies.

Although migratory beekeepers seem to have suffered badly, reports of CCD are not confined to their operations.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in Canada: Do we have a problem?
Peter G. Kevan, Ernesto Guzman, Alison Skinner, and Dennis van Englesdorp
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