The Silence of the Bees

[Orda Khan]

As a member of a beekeeping society, I do not claim to be an expert, far from it but there are members with decades of experience who are rightly concerned.
CCD has been reported outside the USA, but to a lesser degree and just what is the cause is still baffling. The alarming fact is that hives affected by CCD are avoided by other bees and creatures that would usually rob the honey stores.
The western honeybee Apis Mellifera and particularly the subspecies Ligustica and Carnica is the most commonly managed bee. Unfortunately, like just about everything else, mankind is responsible for a multitude of problems. Bee products, that could be wax foundation as much as Queens, etc are transported around the World and certainly spread problems that never existed before. Varroa mite and Nosema are two examples. Unmanaged colonies are guaranteed to be affected, which means here in the UK almost the entire bee population are from managed hives. In these hives there has been a marked reduction in numbers, my friend has seen his apiary reduced from seven hives to just two. Certainly colonies do fail, usually over wintering but failure to the degree being experienced over the last few years is worrying indeed.
In the UK the majority of hives are non commercial, which is not the case in the States. Even here, hives are transported to locations for crop pollination but not the vast distances that American hives are. The natural habit of the honeybee is to forage on a variety of plants, is it beneficial to the colony to feed on nothing but Almond blossom only to then be transported to a new location and a completely different food source? Maybe not but this is not a new practise.
Then we could consider GM crops or maybe air pollution? It seems everyone these days owns a mobile phone and the latest 'must have' trend is for SatNav.
Whatever the cost of reseach into this matter, it must certainly be far more important than finding out if there is/was water on Mars.
At least these girls are healthy and look like they will make it through the winter....