[NatureNS] Colony Collapse Disorder

To: naturens <naturens@chebucto.ns.ca>
From: Kent Mullin <kmullin@ns.sympatico.ca>
Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 22:06:57 -0300
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Hi Dave & All,
                          You're not alone, I'm no honeybee expert  
either.
                          Not quite. While the hive or colony is  
socially, very highly organized, the skillsets are not individually  
limited, but rather evolve as a function of age. It would seem that  
they are genetically coded. All worker bees are sterile females and  
they form the majority of the hives population. The youngest are  
called house or hive bees and their job is hive construction and  
maintenance. They make new combs, tend the brood, see to the needs of  
the queen and drones, receive nectar, pollen and other supplies from  
the foragers and store the same, make honey by evaporating water from  
stored nectar (by vibrating their wings over the nectar storage  
cells), clean up generally and otherwise maintain the hive.
                          As workers grow older they become field  
bees or foragers. Their function then is to range outside of the  
hive, foraging for nectar, pollen, water and particular plant resins  
necessary for hive construction. The average life span of a  
summertime honeybee is about six weeks. As the number of foraging  
bees diminishes, the oldest of the younger bees replace them in their  
duties; So job function cycles through the population according to age.
                           Yes large forager losses, that outstrip  
the ability of the queen and the brood stock to replace the necessary  
workforce, can indeed cause hive collapse, but through starvation,  
not through inharmonious social imbalance.
                           A single beehive may contain between  
50,000 and 80,000 bees. In areas where large scale agriculture is  
prevalent, it is not uncommon for thousands of hectares under  
cultivation to contain thousands of hives, within foraging distance  
of highways. While excessive "bee-napping" can be a serious problem  
for vehicles, it has little effect on the operation of the hives.  
Just a few bees from each hive can create mayhem for an awful lot of  
vehicles.
                           The reason for the public to be concerned  
about CCD:  Agricultural practices over the latter half of the  
Twentieth Century have reduced the population of indigenous  
pollinators in North America through the use of pesticides and the  
commercial use of honeybees as crop pollinators. The use of honeybees  
brought increased competition for resources to the native  
pollinators, thus further reducing the already depressed population.  
With reliance now so heavy on honeybees as pollinators, any serious  
reduction in their numbers would have devastating effects on North  
American Agriculture, and therefore have serious implications for the  
North American population at large.
                            Further to the CCD article:   Paragraph  
one indicates that there has been no confirmation of CCD in Canada as  
of June 2007, yet there are reports from New Brunswick (Apr. 10th
2007) of major losses in that province, with the president of the NB  
Beekeepers Assoc. losing 80% of his hives. Each of the affected hives  
had only a small number of dead bees with the majority of the hive  
population absent. Sounds like CCD to me.
                            If I were to offer a guess, I would  
recommend looking at GM crops, particularly those
containing genes to protect against insect attack. But that's only a  
guess from here and I'm miles away from the problem.
                            Further to paragraph three of my initial  
comment:   One note of interest is that when nectar is reduced into  
honey, all of the constituents that were dilute, including any  
contaminants, are then concentrated. Therefore an inhibitor that  
might not be noticed by the foragers at the nectar gathering stage  
might well be repulsive in the hive at the honey stage.

Kent

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Dave Webster wrote:
	
Hi Kent & All,            June 20, 2007
I know practically nothing about Honey Bees but understand that a  
hive population is a highly organized social structure with skills  
for the various specialized functions being imprinted early in  
development.

    If it is true that bees can not readily adapt to changes in hive  
composition, then could not sufficient loss of forager bees cause the  
hive system to go into a tailspin ?

    In 1962, when we drove across the U.S. in August, we were  
cautioned in some western states (Utah, Montana and Idaho ?) to clean  
our radiator of bees before going up mountains. Apparently a lot of  
vehicles in that area were getting bees on their radiators, leading  
to overheated cooling systems and unscheduled stops. Bees then, were  
a local problem to motor vehicles.

    With many more motor vehicles now on more roads, could motor  
vehicles now be a widespread problem to bees ?

Yt, Dave Webster, Kentville

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