Tiers bees avoid deadly disease
But many owners elsewhere report big losses in honeybee colonies.
April 3, 2007
By Salle E. Richards
Star-Gazette [Elmira]
A mystery ailment affecting honeybees seems to not be prevalent in Twin Tiers apiaries.
Although the 2006-07 winter was a tough one for bee colonies, many bees are emerging from their winter clusters looking vigorously for early blooms of nectar.
Bill Draper, owner of Draper's Super Bee Apiaries of Millerton, said he lost many of his hives over the winter, 148 out of 240 hives, but he doesn't attribute it to the mystery disease. And it isn't his worst year for bee losses.
"In the 1980s, I lost 75 percent of the colonies one year," he said.
Draper said the disease, called Colony Collapse Disorder, has probably occurred because of a mix of factors from climate change to bee breeding practices that put more emphasis on some qualities, like resistance to mites, at the expense of other qualities, like hardiness.
The disease has already killed tens of thousands of honeybee colonies in at least 21 states, including New York. The reasons for it are unknown. Possible causes might include everything from an unknown disease-causing agent to parasitic mites to a class of insecticides called neonicotinyls used on turf grass, fruit and vegetables, said Nicholas Calderone, an assistant professor of entomology at Cornell University who is researching the problem.
"It's a big problem here for western New York," said Bob King, director of the Agriculture and Life Sciences Institute at Monroe Community College in Rochester. "The more west you go, the worse it is."
That area, he said, has already lost about half its bees. That's about 20,000 to 25,000 colonies gone, according to New York state hive estimates from Calderone.
The disappearing honeybee colonies are more likely to belong to large commercial bee operations, especially those that move their bees around the country to pollinate crops.
"I don't think any hobby beekeepers are affected," said Carl Hausknecht, manager of the Dadant Bee Supply store in Waverly.
Hausknecht agreed that although the first part of winter was very mild, the frigid weather in February was very tough on the bees.
"It was a harsh winter," he said, noting Dadant is already sold out of packaged bees it will deliver to customers in early May. Hobbyists and commercial beekeepers use packages of bees measured in pounds to repopulate their apiaries.
Hausknecht said the reports he has been receiving from customers is that their bees starved in late winter because they either had eaten their stored honey or couldn't reach it because of the cold.
Joel Klose, of Nature's Way Farm in Lowman, who sells honey commercially and keeps more than 100 hives, said the ailment does seem to be affecting bees under more stress, such as those used for pollination.
Because there has been a shortage of bees for several years, bee breeders are under pressure to produce more queens. That might affect the quality of the queens, he said.
Clint Fudge, a beekeeper in Erin, said his bees came through the winter quite well.
"The disorder is way down South," he said.
Mike Griggs of Newfield, president of the Finger Lakes Beekeepers Club, who is also an entomologist by profession at a U.S. Department of Agriculture lab at Cornell University, said no one really knows exactly what is causing the deaths, but it doesn't seem to be hitting the colonies that stay in one place all year, like those of hobby beekeepers.
"I don't think it's a new organism causing it," he said. "It's more likely to be chemical combined with stress."
Although honey lovers are worried about losing their treat, agriculture experts are more worried about the effect the loss of bees has on crops.
"If this Colony Collapse Disorder is allowed to continue, we could be looking at a 100 percent dependency on foreign countries for feeding the American public," said Jim Doan, a beekeeper from Hamlin, N.Y., who has lost 2,400 of his 4,300 hives to the disease. "In my opinion, this real possibility is unacceptable."
Honeybees were already in trouble before the disease came along. Mites and other parasites have killed off most of the wild populations and are becoming increasingly resistant to treatments that are used to protect commercial hives. Throughout the year, migrant beekeepers haul their hives around the country to pollinate crops.
Between 1947 and 2005, bee colonies nationwide declined from 5.9 million to 2.4 million, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign entomology professor May Berenbaum recently told a U.S. House of Representative agricultural subcommittee.
"Even before CCD, we estimated that if honeybee numbers continued to decline at the rates documented from 1989 to 1996, honeybees in the U.S. will cease to exist by 2035," Berenbaum said.
Experts don't know why the bees are disappearing. Theories include stress factors that compromise the bees' immune systems, mites, viruses and pesticides.
Faith Bremner and Lisa Hutchurson of Gannett New Service contributed to this report.
Dianne E McConkey
Public Affairs
04/04/2007 |