Colony Collapse Disorder
Entomologists are puzzled over a strange phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder, where bees in 25 U.S. states have left their hives, never to return. You may not be bothered about bees, but pollination of U.S. crops and honey stocks worth $14.6 billion are at risk, and the syndrome is spreading abroad to Canada and possibly Europe. A variety of wacky possible causes have been suggested, from cellular phones to mysterious unidentified viruses. Now it has been suggested that the unicellular microsporidian fungus Nosema ceranae may be involved, although it seems unlikely that this is the only cause. It is now looking less likely that this is a “disease” with a specific causative agent which satisfies Koch’s postulates – another sign of environmental stress perhaps?
I just found your site doing a search on colony collapse disorder. I read a rather lengthy article on it, called To Bee or to Be. I’m curious as to what others are saying about this situation.
One possibility that occurred to me is that the bees are acting something like a canary in a coal mine. I saw in my brief research that the genome of the honey bee was published last year and that its biological clock is more similar to that of mammals than of flies. Could it be that they are sensing something in the environment that will later affect mammals? Some environmental change that doesn’t register on the radar of more complex organisms yet?
[...] June 20th, 2007 Back in April the media was buzzing (sorry, couldn’t resist) with news about colony collapse disorder – unusually high rates of colony loss as bees woke from their wintering slumber. A new paper in [...]
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