Colony Collapse Disorder

Michigan’s current level of food production and its agricultural economy are in jeopardy due to drastic honey bee population declines across the state over the past seven years. This problem should be a priority for policy makers; honey bee losses affect almost everyone in the state because over a third of the food we consume is pollinated by bees. The causes of honey bee population decline are multiple and interconnected. A growing body of research shows that the principal factors involved are parasites and pathogens, environmental stressors, and monocrop farming, widespread use of pesticides, and industrial beekeeping practices within the paradigm of conventional industrial agriculture. In addition to individual stressors, there are synergetic interactions between some stressors that increase the vulnerability of managed honey bee colonies. Many of Michigan’s agricultural products—such as soybeans, dry beans, apples, blueberries, cherries, cucumbers, and other produce—depend on honey bee pollination to produce a good crop. Michigan is a state that relies heavily on pollination services to maintain its agricultural production, but it has been hard hit by honey bee population declines. Honey bee losses of more than 30% annually have been reported by Michigan beekeepers over the past few years, with the 2013/2014 winter poised to be even worse. Honey bee population declines in Michigan will likely not improve, and could continue to worsen, unless the problem is addressed by policy makers and other stakeholders in a substantive way. Because the problem involves many different causal factors and actors spanning agricultural production and consumption, potential solutions are also complex. There are various local-level mitigation measures that beekeepers, farmers, and the general public can implement, such as improving communication with beekeepers about pesticide application, reducing or eliminating the use of insecticides, and improving the area of habitat for bee-friendly forage. Initiatives to connect and support Michigan beekeepers using sustainable practices are also promising. But on their own, local steps are likely not enough to stem honey bee population declines; higher-level institutional approaches are also needed. A combination of facilitated dialogue among key Michigan stakeholders, legislation, and litigation originating at the state or national level could provide the additional impetus needed to rein in and reverse honey bee colony losses in the state. This paper provides recommendations for effectively implementing a multi-stakeholder dialogue process, and proposes modifications to legislation targeted at improving honey bee populations nationally.

High bee colony losses in the United States this past year can be attributed in part to an unresolved syndrome termed Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). An extensive genetic survey found one virus, Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV), to be strongly associated with CCD. Using DNA sequencing and phylogenetic analyses, we provide evidence that IAPV was present in U.S. bees collected several years prior to CCD, and prior to the recent importation into the U.S. of honey bees from Australia and New Zealand. While downplaying the importance of bee importation for the appearance of CCD, these results indicate an urgent need to test specific strains of IAPV for their disease impacts.

The islet of Gozo, Malta is known for its rural landscapes and attractive tourist destinations. It is also home to a variation of honeybees, maintained by the beekeepers of Gozo, and desired by farmers for the purpose of pollination. In July of 2016, I spent three weeks on this
islet, practicing skills in applied anthropology through the Off the Beaten Track field school. I was interested in the means of production that go into the creation of honeybee products, and specifically the people that make this process possible. During my time in Gozo I met Adam, a
60-year-old beekeeper, who provided me with some of his perspectives on honeybee production. Working alongside Adam and his honeybees offered me a glimpse at what it means to be a keeper in Gozo. Recently this practice is experiencing new challenges, shaping the tasks and
concerns of Gozitan beekeepers. These keepers express their perceptions of potential bee extinction as signs of colony collapse disorder (CCD) arise. With this, Gozo’s environment is facing unfamiliar conditions that are potentially related to climate change. These issues are ultimately met by a community of beekeepers that survives the practice of beekeeping on Gozo through the exchange of local knowledge and dialogue. I left Gozo with further questions about
how the islet’s environment shapes beekeeping and what the future of this practice will look like given our warming planet.

The determinants of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a particular case of collapse of honey bee colonies, are still unresolved. Viruses including the Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV) were associated with CCD. We found an apiary with colonies showing typical CCD characteristics that bore high loads of IAPV, recovered some colonies from collapse and tested the hypothesis if IAPV was actively replicating in them and infectious to healthy bees. We found that IAPV was the dominant pathogen and it replicated actively in the colonies: viral titers decreased from April to September and increased from September to December. IAPV extracted from infected bees was highly infectious to healthy pupae: they showed several-fold amplification of the viral genome and synthesis of the virion protein VP3. The health of recovered colonies was seriously compromised. Interestingly, a rise of IAPV genomic copies in two colonies coincided with their subsequent collapse. Our results do not imply IAPV as t...

"For almost as long as I have been working in the field of human-animal studies, I have wanted someone to seriously investigate people's relationships with insects. With Buzz, Lisa Jean Moore and Mary Kosut have made a unique, important, and fascinating addition to the literature. Both authors are talented and observant believers in hands-on research.After reading Buzz, you will forever see bees and those who care for them differently."-Clinton Sanders,author of Regarding Animals

"Bees are essential for human survival—one-third of all food on American dining tables depends on the labor of bees. Beyond pollination, the very idea of the bee is ubiquitous in our culture: we can feel buzzed; we can create buzz; we have worker bees, drones, and Queen bees; we establish collectives and even have communities that share a hive-mind. In Buzz, authors Lisa Jean Moore and Mary Kosut convincingly argue that the power of bees goes beyond the food cycle, bees are our mascots, our models, and, unlike any other insect, are both feared and revered.

In this fascinating account, Moore and Kosut travel into the land of urban beekeeping in New York City, where raising bees has become all the rage. We follow them as they climb up on rooftops, attend beekeeping workshops and honey festivals, and even put on full-body beekeeping suits and open up the hives. In the process, we meet a passionate, dedicated, and eclectic group of urban beekeepers who tend to their brood with an emotional and ecological connection that many find restorative and empowering. Kosut and Moore also interview professional beekeepers and many others who tend to their bees for their all-important production of a food staple: honey. The artisanal food shops that are so popular in Brooklyn are a perfect place to sell not just honey, but all manner of goods: soaps, candles, beeswax, beauty products, and even bee pollen.
 
Buzz also examines media representations of bees, such as children’s books, films, and consumer culture, bringing to light the reciprocal way in which the bee and our idea of the bee inform one another. Partly an ethnographic investigation and partly a meditation on the very nature of human/insect relations, Moore and Kosut argue that how we define, visualize, and interact with bees clearly reflects our changing social and ecological landscape, pointing to how we conceive of and create culture, and how, in essence, we create ourselves."

and subjective parameters are quite different; migrants are able to obtain long-term residency or even citizenship and over time bring their families. Yet the features of the domestic sector they work in and the conflicts inside the Ukrainian diaspora in the United States do not allow them to be anchored within any social group. The subjective perception of the Ukrainian women in California remains that migration to the United States was an opportunity, and they invest all their efforts into bringing family members over instead of sending remittances to Ukraine. The book finishes with conclusions. What I find the most inventive about this book is the manner in which, through traditional ethnographic methods, the author has constructed a very coherent argument about the influence of migration patterns on the process of nation-building. In particular, Solari argues that ‘‘babushka’’ migration into Italy makes a very strong contribution to the painful transformation of Ukraine into a capitalistic European state by the transmission of social remittances from women to their children, often unintentionally illuminating them with the difference between the ‘‘collective’’ and ‘‘individual’’ I. The author also shows how on many occasions female migrants, though living and working in precarious circumstances on the outskirts of the receiving society, have succeeded in deconstructing their inner ‘‘I’’ to capture their own needs and self-interests, in place of previous self-sacrifice for a family, a local community, or a working place. Yet they are not certain about their ultimate future or that of their families. They feel that if they return home, they would probably not be able to suppress the existing culture of masculinity and youth as well as a limited social order denying them a role in nation-building apart from the function of ‘‘sacrificing’’ mothers. If they stay abroad and bring their families, as in California, their zeal for the genuine capitalist transformation paradoxically results in quick separation from the ‘‘Americanized’’ children who live atomized lives without leaving too much space for their mothers. I find the idea of structuring this book around the emotionally marked concepts of ‘‘exile’’ and ‘‘exodus’’ to be among the very few disadvantages of the book. It is not entirely clear why those terms were selected and whether they only refer to the subjective dimension—that is, migrants’ perception of their migration experience—or to the more structural factors, such as migration policies. My initial understanding was that the author in a biased way assessed the United States as a dream destination, understating the benefits that migration to Italy offers. In the course of the book, I observed a more nuanced assessment of the application of both concepts; yet maybe some broader explanations could have been given earlier. Finally, the role of ethnic/regional differences in Ukraine and how they influence migration patterns and subjective migration narratives could be investigated in more detail. In the introduction, Solari provides solid information on ethnic and cultural divergence in Ukraine, and perhaps those factors could have been incorporated more systematically into the actual interpretation of the obtained results.

Over the last two winters, there have been large-scale, unexplained losses of managed honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) colonies in the United States. In the absence of a known cause, this syndrome was named Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) because the main trait was a rapid loss of adult worker bees. We initiated a descriptive epizootiological study in order to better characterize CCD and compare risk factor exposure between populations afflicted by and not afflicted by CCD. Of 61 quantified variables (including adult bee physiology, pathogen loads, and pesticide levels), no single measure emerged as a most-likely cause of CCD. Bees in CCD colonies had higher pathogen loads and were co-infected with a greater number of pathogens than control populations, suggesting either an increased exposure to pathogens or a reduced resistance of bees toward pathogens. Levels of the synthetic acaricide coumaphos (used by beekeepers to control the parasitic mite Varroa destructor) were higher in contro...

Honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies continue to experience high annual losses that remain poorly explained. Numerous interacting factors have been linked to colony declines. Understanding the pathways linking pathophysiology with symptoms is an important step in understanding the mechanisms of disease. In this study we examined the specific pathologies associated with honey bees collected from colonies suffering from Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and compared these with bees collected from apparently healthy colonies. We identified a set of pathological physical characteristics that occurred at different rates in CCD diagnosed colonies prior to their collapse: rectum distension, Malpighian tubule iridescence, fecal matter consistency, rectal enteroliths (hard concretions), and venom sac color. The multiple differences in rectum symptomology in bees from CCD apiaries and colonies suggest effected bees had trouble regulating water. To ensure that pathologies we found associated with CCD were indeed pathologies and not due to normal changes in physical appearances that occur as an adult bee ages (CCD colonies are assumed to be composed mostly of young bees), we documented the changes in bees of different ages taken from healthy colonies. We found that young bees had much greater incidences of white nodules than older cohorts. Prevalent in newly-emerged bees, these white nodules or cellular encap-sulations indicate an active immune response. Comparing the two sets of characteristics, we determined a subset of pathologies that reliably predict CCD status rather than bee age (fecal matter consistency, rectal distension size, rectal enteroliths and Malpighian tubule iridescence) and that may serve as biomarkers for colony health. In addition, these pathologies suggest that CCD bees are experiencing disrupted excretory physiology. Our identification of these symptoms is an important first step in understanding the physiological pathways that underlie CCD and factors impacting bee health.

Beekeeping has always been vulnerable to various sanitary drawbacks. The mite Varroa destructor (Mesostigmata: Varroidae), an obligated ectoparasite of honeybees, has been in recent times one of the major problems leading not only to economical losses but also to ecological problems related to the role of honeybees as the most important pollinators on Earth. Varroatosis has been treated by methods that include special practices of beekeeping, physical removal, and the use of synthetic acaricides. None of these methods have, however, rendered complete protection, and there is clear evidence for the evolution of resistance to conventional acaricides. Consequently, the need for alternative control means has prompted the onset of several prospecting programs on botanicals with anti-varroa potential. Among these, essential oils appear as good candidates for safer control. In this review, we provide a concise compilation of the information generated in the last years on essential oils wit...

Beekeeping has always been vulnerable to various sanitary drawbacks. The mite Varroa destructor (Mesostigmata: Varroidae), an obligated ectoparasite of honeybees, has been in recent times one of the major problems leading not only to economical losses but also to ecological problems related to the role of honeybees as the most important pollinators on Earth. Varroatosis has been treated by methods that include special practices of beekeeping, physical removal, and the use of synthetic acaricides. None of these methods have, however, rendered complete protection, and there is clear evidence for the evolution of resistance to conventional acaricides. Consequently, the need for alternative control means has prompted the onset of several prospecting programs on botanicals with anti-varroa potential. Among these, essential oils appear as good candidates for safer control. In this review, we provide a concise compilation of the information generated in the last years on essential oils with anti-varroa activity. Future developments in this area demand standardization of bioassay protocols (either in the laboratory for primary screening or in hives), a detailed chemical characterization of the essential oils tested, and comprehensive studies on application methods.