"(CBS News) Honey bees have been dying in large numbers in recent years, and there's new evidence of a drastic increase in the death rate. Some experts say the latest population drop poses a threat to our nation's food supply.

According to commercial beekeeper James Doan, 'A third of all our food is pollinated by honey bees.'

Doan makes a living renting out thousands of hives to farmers up and down the East Coast. His bees are part of a crucial lifeblood to U.S. agriculture. Doan said, 'I think people just need to really be aware that bees are so important, not just for honey production, but for pollination in the United States.'

Bees pollinate the majority of our fruit and vegetable supply: from apples and pears to green beans, pumpkins, and squash. And the list goes on.

But something is killing the bees at an increasingly alarming rate. Doan said, 'Every day and you'll look and you'll see 100 to 200 bees dead in front of the hive. Maybe even to the point of 40 to 50,000 bees laying out in the front of the hive, which is not normal.'

U.S. Department of Agriculture researchers say early indications suggest this winter will mark the highest death rate they've ever documented, and consumers could eventually feel the effects.

Doan said, 'Without them you're gonna have higher prices that you're going to pay for fruits and vegetables. And those higher prices are not going to mean better products.'

Bees used to die at a rate of 5 to 10 percent a year. Then, around 2006, that rate more than tripled in a phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder. Now, some beekeepers say they're losing up to 50 percent of their hives.

Many blame a class of pesticide called neonicotinoids, or 'neonics.' Doan said, 'They block the nerve endings of the bee, and so the bee is paralyzed and then what happens is they starve to death, so you see the bee shaking, and it's a very horrific way of dying for a bee.'

Doan joined a coalition of beekeepers, environmentalists and consumer groups that recently sued the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to ban these chemicals. The lawsuit claims the 'EPA is well aware of recent studies and reports illustrating the risks to honey bees...but has refused to take any regulatory action.'

'We're finding these chemicals in the beehives,' Doan said. 'We know they're there. We're finding them in the bees. So we know they're killing bees.'"


Deepening honey bee crisis creates worry over food supply
CBS News

"Scientists say that mass bee deaths may be caused by viruses that disrupt gene expression.

Lead scientist May Berenbaum from the University of Illinois told BBC News that the research was made possible by publication of the bee genome in 2006.

The team concentrated on analysing gene expression from cells in the bees' guts because this is the primary site of pesticide detoxification and immune defence.

Previous theories for CCD have included pesticide poisoning as well as infection and mite infestation.

But the team's genetic analysis of the bees' guts failed to reveal elevated expression of pesticide response genes.

In addition, genes involved in immune response showed no clear expression pattern despite the increased prevalence of viruses and other pathogens in CCD colonies.

What did show up in the guts of the CCD bees was an abundance of fragments from the ribosome, a structure which is the cell's protein making factory.

According to the researchers, this finding suggests that protein production is likely to be compromised in bees from CCD hives.

Previous research shows that the viruses that bees carry all attack the ribosome.

The microbes in question are known as 'picorna-like' viruses. The word derives from pico, which means little, and RNA (ribonucleic acid).

'These picorna-like viruses all attack at the same spot,' said Professor Berenbaum.

'What they do is to work their way into the ribosome and instead of making honey bee protein they make virus proteins.

'So maybe what's happening is basically the ribosome wears out. So we looked to see if the CCD bees have more of these viruses than healthy bees. And they do.'

The viruses in question include 'deformed wing virus' and 'Israeli acute paralysis virus'.

The scientists believe that if a number of similar picorna-like viruses attack simultaneously, they may be able to overwhelm the ribosome.

'We talk about a smoking gun. We have the bullet hole!' said May Berenbaum.

'We now need to look for how multiple viruses might interact on the ribosome.'"


DNA clue to honey bee deaths
By Judith Burns

"Fruits and vegetables are always there when you go to grocery store, but in coming years their availability could get stung.

The bees that pollinate your food are dying at an increasing rate causing a nationwide bee shortage. Without those bees prices will rise.

A National Agriculture Statistics Service report says honey producing hives in the United States shrunk from 4.5 million in 1980 to 2.4 million in 2008. That number is even lower four years later.

So one local beekeeper is trying a newer method, hoping he can stay in the business.

Dan Bauer's bees are no longer sitting out in the cold. He says, 'I don't know anybody else that does it in this area. A lot of it's being done in Idaho and Canada.'

What Bauer is referring to is wintering his bees inside. Once the weather gets cold, they are put into storage where they can hibernate.

'I think this is gonna be the way that a lot of beekeepers might have to go,' says Bauer adding, 'We've already had people interested in what we are doing here.'

This is all because Bauer, like other beekeepers nationwide, fears the bee death rate is only going to get worse.

Entomologists like Janet Knodel with the NDSU Extension Service are puzzled. Knodel says, 'What they're seeing now is the bees are just disappearing, and the worker bees don't come back to the hive.'

They have narrowed down some potential factors to the die out rate. They include parasites that attack the bees, increased stress from transporting them long distances and pesticide use.

Still, there is much research to be done."


Beekeepers Getting Stung by Increasing Bee Deaths
from: www.valleynewslive.com

"AT THIS time of year Gordon Wardell loves to stand amid the almond blossoms in California's San Joaquin valley, listening to the “low-pitch, warm, happy hum” of millions of bees. But the bees are not as happy as they sound, which is why Mr Wardell, who has a PhD in entomology and is a de facto bee doctor, is here.

More than 80% of the world's almonds are grown in California and, to pollinate them, the 7,000 or so growers hire about 1.4m of America's 2.3m commercial hives. Thousands of trucks deliver the hives in February—from Maine, Florida, the Carolinas and elsewhere—and will soon pick them up again. The bees' job is to flit from one blossom to the next, gorging themselves and in the process spreading the trees' sexual dust.

Since 2006, however, bees have been suffering from 'colony collapse disorder' (CCD), a mysterious affliction that has drastically reduced their numbers. As a result, says Joe MacIlvaine, the president of Paramount Farming and the largest almond-grower in the world, the rental cost of a hive has tripled in the past five years to about $150. Bee rental now accounts for 15% of Paramount's costs.

So Paramount has hired Mr Wardell, who has been studying bees for 30 years and CCD since it broke out. Its cause may be mobile-telephony radiation, viruses, fungi, mites and pesticides—or none of the above. In the absence of a clear explanation, Mr Wardell is concentrating on something different: nutrition.

A healthy worker bee spends about four weeks in its hive, feeding on protein-rich pollen and nursing larvae, and then another two weeks in the field eating sugary honey until its proteins are depleted and it dies. For some reason bees are getting too little protein in the hive, thus dying after only about four weeks, almost as soon as they venture outside. So Mr Wardell is force-feeding them protein. He owns a patent for MegaBee, which he says 'looks like cookie dough'. He puts a bit of this into the hives, blocking the bees' entrance so that they have to chomp their way through it. As part of his new job, Mr Wardell is working with beekeepers across the country to supplement bee diets everywhere."


Almond pollination in California
Vitamin Bee A new attempt to save the most vital workers in the orchards
from: www.economist.com

"Researchers say they have unlocked the genetic secrets of honey bees' high sensitivity to environmental change.

Scientists from the UK and Australia think their findings could help show links between nutrition, environment and the insects' development.

It could, they suggest, offer an insight into problems like Colony Collapse Disorder, a mysterious cause of mass bee deaths globally.

The findings appear in Insect Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

'Honey bees live in complex societies comprising tens of thousands of individuals,' explained study co-author Paul Hurd from Queen Mary, University of London.

'Most of these are female 'worker' honeybees that are unable to reproduce and instead devote their short lives to finding food in flowers... and other tasks such as nursing larvae inside the hive.'

But the hive has a queen as well - the much longer-lived, reproductive head of the hive,

'When the queen bee lays her eggs, worker bees can determine whether the resulting larvae are to become an adult worker bee or an adult queen bee,' Dr Hurd said.

The type of food the larvae is fed dictates the developmental outcome - larvae destined to become workers are fed a pollen and nectar diet, and those destined to become queens are fed royal jelly.

'This difference in feeding is maintained over the entire lifetime of the worker or queen bee.'

The change is suggested to be the result of a 'histone code' - a process that sees genetic changes made to proteins called histones within cells' nuclei. Rather than 'genetic' changes that are locked into DNA, these are known as 'epigenetic' changes.

The report marks the first time such effects had been recorded in honey bees."


Honey bees' genetic code unlocked
By Mark Kinver

"Europe’s top food safety agency may be closer to nailing three old suspects for a mystery that goes back almost a decade: what’s been killing off honeybees? But there is still work to do.

For now, the European Food Safety Authority (EFDA) has concluded that three neonicotinoid class insecticides pose unacceptable hazards to bees. The three include clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam.

The three insecticides — approved for use in the United States — are said to damage bees by contaminating dust and collecting as residue on nectar and pollen, the new EFSA report says."


Top European Food Safety Agency Names Suspects for Bee Colony Collapse
By Dan Flynn

"Getting stung by a bee can hurt, but losing bees forever can hurt even more. It may be hard to see why bees are so important to us, but did you know that 1 of every 3 bites of food we take comes from a pollinated plant or an animal that depends on bee pollination? And yet, since the mid-2000s, bees have been mysteriously vanishing.

A world without bees would be a different place. A lot of crops currently depend on them, including fruits like almonds and cherries, vegetables like onions and pumpkins, and field crops like soybeans and sunflowers. A loss of bees could mean economic hardships for farms and the food industry and would lead to a rise in food costs.

In 2006, beekeepers started reporting that seemingly healthy bees were simply abandoning their hives in mass numbers, never to return. Researchers call the mass disappearance colony collapse disorder (CCD). Since then, around one third of honey bee colonies in the U.S. have vanished."


How Are Dying Bees Affecting Our Lives?
by Drew Hendricks 

"The controversy over possible links between massive bee die-offs and agricultural pesticides has overshadowed another threat: the use of those same pesticides in backyards and gardens.

Neonicotinoid pesticides are ubiquitous in everday consumer plant treatments, and may expose bees to far higher doses than those found on farms, where neonicotinoids used in seed coatings are already considered a major problem by many scientists.

'It’s amazing how much research is out there on seed treatments, and in a way that’s distracted everyone from what may be a bigger problem,' said Mace Vaughan, pollinator program director at the Xerces society, an invertebrate conservation group.



The vast majority of attention paid to neonicotinoids, the world’s most popular class of pesticides, has focused on their agricultural uses and possible effects. A growing body of research suggests that, even at non-lethal doses, the pesticides can disrupt bee navigation and make them vulnerable to disease and stress.

Neonicotinoids are now a leading suspect in colony collapse disorder, a mysterious condition that’s decimating domestic and wild bee colonies across much of North America and Europe. The emergence of colony collapse disorder coincided with a dramatic increase in agricultural neonicotinoid use."


Backyard Pesticide Use May Fuel Bee Die-Off
By Brandon Keim

"Bees on the west side of the state keep on disappearing, and 'zombees' may be to blame. In this case, 'zombees' are a type of fruit fly that are doing tons of damage to the bee population. The phorid fly injects a honey bee with eggs, killing the bee outright. Fortunately, beekeepers on this side of the state have yet to see it.

'The cause of that is the absence of the primary host the bumble bee so it's a significant concern but not for the reason that have been publicized,' said beekeeper and former apiary inspector, Tom Theobald.

While the fly only affects a single bee, the real concern is collapsing colonies. Dying bees means dying agriculture across our area."


"Zombees" to blame for honeybee disappearance?
By Ashly Custer

"Honeybee populations struggle against a variety of environmental factors. 'In the mid-80s, parasitic mites destroyed the wild honey bee population,' said David Tarpy, an associate professor and apiculturalist, or beekeeper, at N.C. State University. Widespread usage of insecticides continue to threaten the domestic population, he said, and colony collapse disorder kills whole hives.

'CCD is a mysterious problem for beekeepers,' Tarpy adds. 'If you see a honeybee, thank a beekeeper.'

Researchers are investigating how the remaining feral bee populations survived, Tarpy said. It’s important that remaining feral bee populations be protected, so that scientists can investigate why the honeybees aren’t healthy, he adds.

To support honeybees and beekeepers, Tarpy outlines three things anyone can do:

— Be conscientious about which insecticides you use in a home garden, because harsh insecticides often kill or weaken honey bees.

— Plant bee-friendly gardens with abundant pollen and nectar sources to support the bee population.

— Become a beekeeper."

The Herald-Sun - Honeybees an endangered 186M industry
By Kinsey Sullivan