Unsecure chicken perches

[chickenanne]

OK, I didn't want to clutter the thread on "vanishing of the bees" with this so thought would start a new one. Bear in mind that no-one knows the real cause of CCD, though there are lots of ideas: however despite this I'm intrigued to know what everyone's thoughts are.

 

My understanding is that where CCD occurs, the hive may still have some brood, and some immature bees, but no flying bees who have disappeared for reasons (currently) unknown. There is also some observations that these abandoned hives are not robbed out as quickly as a "normal" badly defended hive would be.

 

So, the adults are affected whilst out foraging and die in the field before they can make it back to the hive, but bees manage to survive from egg -> worker bee. Why don't the workers return to the hive, (and these non-returns appear to happen over the space of days or weeks not months)?

 

Either, (a) they are dying on the wing mid-forage, within a couple weeks of each other, or (b) their is some issue with their ability /desire to find their way home.

They aren't swarming in CCD, but - when bees do swarm those foragers which are part of the swarm seldom fly back to join the old colony - it's like their memory circuits of location are wiped by the process of swarming. No-one knows (well, I've never heard anyone suggesting this) how this works, the best theory is that its pheremone-based. That little part of it seems to match up with the symtoms of CCD.

 

Given the symptoms of CCD, who would like to be first to tell me that it's definitely bees dying mid-forage and not bees staying away from home (and then dying as they need a hive for shelter /food/warmth/security/etc)?

 

I appreiciate that even if (b) is a possibility, the mechanism behind what goes wrong to make (b) happen is still a mystery. But colonies dead through CCD appear only to have general poor health /health risks in common: but lacking a single common feature (virus, specific mix of agri-chem or specific cocktail of chemicals, specific antibiotic or medication used, some are vastly migratory and forage on a single flower for weeks at a time, but not all....etc).

 

Right, I'm a "floating voter" on my (a) /(b) choices above, so is time to convince me that (b) is rubbish.

[beesontoast]

I don't speculate on CCD, beyond suggesting that it probably has multiple causes, some of which are likely to include insecticides.

 

This site is a reliable source of information.

[tehnellie]

Can I go for option C?

 

This is my opinion only. I've done no research or anything useful, I'm a radio phone-in punter at this point and normally I'd turn me off.

 

The bees aren't dying. They might be suffering but am I the only person to see just how many Bumblebees there were bimbling around last summer?

 

CCD is, currently, a US condition. Is it related to what was seen in France in the late 90s? Maybe. Mad cow disease aside and despite my attempts to be pretty impartial when I can, I do think that if you want to see warning signs over agriculture generally, look at the US. Beekeeping is no exception.

 

Organisations like the co-op not using certain pesticides absolutely cannot hurt, their campaign to get people to put shelters for solitary and bumble bees wont hurt, promoting what bees, and not just honey bees, do for us can only do good things.

 

I don't buy "the bees are dying!!!" story, they're not. 30% losses sounds rough, in my apiary it might be as high as 60% but we knew that out of 3 colonies, 1 was probably not going to make it anyway. We've got one very strong colony, that's the one we're going to breed off this year and we might get 3-4 new colonies off that one. That's a net gain in my book. But we'll still have to report a 60% loss. That is an important point to make. In the UK there are a lot of small scale, hobbyist beekeepers. We've got 3 hives,we lose one of those, we lost 30% of our stock and that might not be an atypical pattern. No-one's reporting the replacement figures.

 

The mobile phone brigade are desperate to hang anything on phone masts and bees are their current target because nothing else has stood up to scrutiny and here's a cause celebre they can latch onto.

 

Another important point when considering CCD is the difference between how bees are kept in the UK and how US, commercial, beekeepers keep them. Watch the documentary and you're then welcome to come with me and inspect my hives, see if you can see any overt differences.

[beesontoast]

Bumbles and honeybees are different species with quite different habits and lifestyles, and while they both forage on a broadly similar range of crops, and therefore suffer from insecticide damage in a similar way, there are some very important differences to consider when talking about their survival or otherwise.

 

It has become clear in the last couple of years, largely thanks to Marianne Frazier's research at Penn State, that one of the biggest dangers to honeybees is beekeepers. Not entirely the beekeepers' fault, but they have been following so-called 'expert advice' in putting all kinds of chemicals into their hives to treat for varroa mites and various diseases, and it turns out that beehives have accumulated an enormous (relatively speaking) burden of toxic waste as a result.

 

As this recent study - http://tinyurl.com/yhuv24m - shows, the pyrethroids that we have been told to use to kill varroa, turn out to be damaging to queen bees.

 

I won't repeat all my other rants about pesticides here, but - while bees may not be 'disappearing' here in the UK, they are certainly under threat from our toxic agricultural system, and from the profiteering agri-chem corporations who increasingly own it.

[chickenanne]

Tehnellie, I totally agree re: statistics on UK losses: OK, winter losses are higher than appears "normal" but summer increase ought to help balance things out. However, I do think abnormally high winter losses should still concern beeks. A lot of UK ones seem to be be due to poor summer weather (leading to poor queens, poor winter stores, inadequate number of bees going into the winter, etc), inappropriate type of bee, winter starvation, inappropraite treatments (chemical or those which limit drone numbers), declining wild flower populations, and quite possibly exposure to chemicals. CCD is defintiely a big US issue, and bees are not kept the same way here; I don't think there are any 100% certain CCD losses reported in the UK (maybe a matter of time, maybe not).

 

I do agree that pesticides and herbicides must damage bees - either directly or by helping reduce wild flower (flowering weed) populations, and allowing a greater reliance on mono-crop agriculture. I am in no way pro-chemical.

However as regards CCD causing deaths of bees (and only CCD) ... my understanding is that pollen contains the highest residues of most pesticides, including neonics, by startling, several-times-over amounts. Yet CCD doesn't effect brood, it effects adult bees and what's more they seem to be affected pretty much at the same time - within a few days/weeks of each other, depending on who you listen to.

I don't understand how adult bees of varying ages will die within a couple weeks of each other if it happens due to build up of toxins from chemicals - surely they would die when they reach a smiliar age (if it's due to chemicals in stored hive products like honey) and not all at once across a variety of ages?

[beesontoast]

I don't understand how adult bees of varying ages will die within a couple weeks of each other if it happens due to build up of toxins from chemicals - surely they would die when they reach a smiliar age (if it's due to chemicals in stored hive products like honey) and not all at once across a variety of ages?

 

Worker bees live inside the hive, performing various tasks, for 3 weeks before they emerge as flying bees, after which they live for another 3-6 weeks as foragers.

 

If a colony is bringing toxins into the hive, they will be constantly accumulating in the stored nectar and pollen, and adding to the load of lipophilic chemicals already in the foundation wax, which has been recycled from other beekeepers and contains residues of the treatments they have used. MF found serious quantities of coumaphos and pyrethroids when she tested wax samples, together with a staggering number of other pesticides.

 

One CCD explanation is that the level of toxins in the hive as detected by the bees (remember that their sense of smell is around 40x ours) reaches a critical point, and those who have not already died from toxic overload while flying simply abandon their hive.

[Old Speckled Hen]

 

It has become clear in the last couple of years, largely thanks to Marianne Frazier's research at Penn State, that one of the biggest dangers to honeybees is beekeepers. Not entirely the beekeepers' fault, but they have been following so-called 'expert advice' in putting all kinds of chemicals into their hives to treat for varroa mites and various diseases, and it turns out that beehives have accumulated an enormous (relatively speaking) burden of toxic waste as a result.

 

 

At a recent beekeeping club we had a talk from our bee inspector about bee diseases and he did say that in retrospect what we probably should have done when varroa arrived was to let the bees fight it, even though the losses might have been phenomenal, with the survivors becoming resistant.

[chickenanne]

One CCD explanation is that the level of toxins in the hive as detected by the bees (remember that their sense of smell is around 40x ours) reaches a critical point, and those who have not already died from toxic overload while flying simply abandon their hive.

 

This makes sense to me: the suggestion is that basically the toxins reach a critical load at which point (a) death of foraging bees, and (b) abandonment of hive.

 

I particularly like the explantion re: abandoning the hive as it seems to fit well with the CCD picture - robbers slow to move in, immature bees and brood left behind, etc.