Has science really solved the mysteries of Colony Collapse Disorder?

(Mark's Note: While this is promising news that there may be a breakthrough in Colony Collapse Disorder research, the news comes with a bit of controversy. Since the news broke in the last few days, there has been finger-pointing and eye-rolling in the scientific community already. I present this to you as what is being reported by the American media outlets. Whether the findings are accurate or not, I believe that the media focus on the endangered honey bee and the plight of beekeepers is extremely important to this cause.)

Scientists and Soldiers Solve a Bee Mystery
Kirk Johnson
The New York Times
October 6, 2010

It has been one of the great murder mysteries of the garden: what is killing off the honeybees?

Since 2006, 20 to 40 percent of the bee colonies in the United States alone have suffered “colony collapse.” Suspected culprits ranged from pesticides to genetically modified food.

Now, a unique partnership — of military scientists and entomologists — appears to have achieved a major breakthrough: identifying a new suspect, or two.

A fungus tag-teaming with a virus have apparently interacted to cause the problem, according to a paper by Army scientists in Maryland and bee experts in Montana in the online science journal PLoS One.

Exactly how that combination kills bees remains uncertain, the scientists said — a subject for the next round of research. But there are solid clues: both the virus and the fungus proliferate in cool, damp weather, and both do their dirty work in the bee gut, suggesting that insect nutrition is somehow compromised.

Liaisons between the military and academia are nothing new, of course. World War II, perhaps the most profound example, ended in an atomic strike on Japan in 1945 largely on the shoulders of scientist-soldiers in the Manhattan Project. And a group of scientists led by Jerry Bromenshenk of the University of Montana in Missoula has researched bee-related applications for the military in the past — developing, for example, a way to use honeybees in detecting land mines.

But researchers on both sides say that colony collapse may be the first time that the defense machinery of the post-Sept. 11 Homeland Security Department and academia have teamed up to address a problem that both sides say they might never have solved on their own.

“Together we could look at things nobody else was looking at,” said Colin Henderson, an associate professor at the University of Montana’s College of Technology and a member of Dr. Bromenshenk’s “Bee Alert” team.

Human nature and bee nature were interconnected in how the puzzle pieces came together. Two brothers helped foster communication across disciplines. A chance meeting and a saved business card proved pivotal. Even learning how to mash dead bees for analysis — a skill not taught at West Point — became a factor.

One perverse twist of colony collapse that has compounded the difficulty of solving it is that the bees do not just die — they fly off in every direction from the hive, then die alone and dispersed. That makes large numbers of bee autopsies — and yes, entomologists actually do those — problematic.

Dr. Bromenshenk’s team at the University of Montana and Montana State University in Bozeman, working with the Army’s Edgewood Chemical Biological Center northeast of Baltimore, said in their jointly written paper that the virus-fungus one-two punch was found in every killed colony the group studied. Neither agent alone seems able to devastate; together, the research suggests, they are 100 percent fatal.

“It’s chicken and egg in a sense — we don’t know which came first,” Dr. Bromenshenk said of the virus-fungus combo — nor is it clear, he added, whether one malady weakens the bees enough to be finished off by the second, or whether they somehow compound the other’s destructive power. “They’re co-factors, that’s all we can say at the moment,” he said. “They’re both present in all these collapsed colonies.”

Research at the University of California, San Francisco, had already identified the fungus as part of the problem. And several RNA-based viruses had been detected as well. But the Army/Montana team, using a new software system developed by the military for analyzing proteins, uncovered a new DNA-based virus, and established a linkage to the fungus, called N. ceranae.

“Our mission is to have detection capability to protect the people in the field from anything biological,” said Charles H. Wick, a microbiologist at Edgewood. Bees, Dr. Wick said, proved to be a perfect opportunity to see what the Army’s analytic software tool could do. “We brought it to bear on this bee question, which is how we field-tested it,” he said.

The Army software system — an advance itself in the growing field of protein research, or proteomics — is designed to test and identify biological agents in circumstances where commanders might have no idea what sort of threat they face. The system searches out the unique proteins in a sample, then identifies a virus or other microscopic life form based on the proteins it is known to contain. The power of that idea in military or bee defense is immense, researchers say, in that it allows them to use what they already know to find something they did not even know they were looking for.

But it took a family connection — through David Wick, Charles’s brother — to really connect the dots. When colony collapse became news a few years ago, Mr. Wick, a tech entrepreneur who moved to Montana in the 1990s for the outdoor lifestyle, saw a television interview with Dr. Bromenshenk about bees.

Mr. Wick knew of his brother’s work in Maryland, and remembered meeting Dr. Bromenshenk at a business conference. A retained business card and a telephone call put the Army and the Bee Alert team buzzing around the same blossom.

The first steps were awkward, partly because the Army lab was not used to testing bees, or more specifically, to extracting bee proteins. “I’m guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk,” Charles Wick said. “It was very complicated.”

The process eventually was refined. A mortar and pestle worked better than the desktop, and a coffee grinder worked best of all for making good bee paste.

Scientists in the project emphasize that their conclusions are not the final word. The pattern, they say, seems clear, but more research is needed to determine, for example, how further outbreaks might be prevented, and how much environmental factors like heat, cold or drought might play a role.

They said that combination attacks in nature, like the virus and fungus involved in bee deaths, are quite common, and that one answer in protecting bee colonies might be to focus on the fungus — controllable with antifungal agents — especially when the virus is detected.

Still unsolved is what makes the bees fly off into the wild yonder at the point of death. One theory, Dr. Bromenshenk said, is that the viral-fungal combination disrupts memory or navigating skills and the bees simply get lost. Another possibility, he said, is a kind of insect insanity.

In any event, the university’s bee operation itself proved vulnerable just last year, when nearly every bee disappeared over the course of the winter.

Fall feeding frenzy! My bees are definitely preparing for winter!

Fall is here again and the girls are busy trying to get their houses in order before winter sets in. Spring and early summer was really nice with lots of flowers and rain and so the bees kept busy. But the latter part of the summer turned hot and dry and there was a definite lack of supplies for the girls to work with. One day I found at least twenty of my honey bees trying to get the food out of the hummingbird feeder And later during an inspection, I found the bright red fluid in the cells of my hives.

While fall is here by the calendar, the daytime temperatures are still in the 80s while a few nights the temperatures dipped into the upper 40s. But I know that it won't be long before the weather will turn cold and my colonies will cluster to survive the winter. But in order to survive, they need enough food to get them through the frigid season, so now the frenzy begins to make enough honey to store. 

This is the frenzy time for more than the honey bees. I noticed a dead bumblebee at the entrance to the orange hive. I'm guessing it tried to sneak in the hive to get some honey but it was met with guards that went on the attack to protect their home. The end result wasn't good..at least for the bumblebee. So to stop future events, I placed the entrance guards on to keep intruders out. Same thing with the lime green hive, and once I take the Boardman feeder off the yellow hive, I'll reduce the entrance there too. I've noticed some daring yellow jackets trying to get in the hives, but the bees usually chase them away.

While I'm using hive-top feeders on two of the hives, I'm also experimenting with open feeding. Here you can see a bowl of sugar syrup placed near the hives and the bees taking it. While I did notice some fighting near the bowl, I didn't notice any bees fighting in the bowl. They just simply rested on the rim or the floating pine bark nuggets and drank the syrup. The next day I used a two gallon pail with wine corks floating in it for the bees to sit on. I have to admit that while it may be an effective way of feeding the bees, it causes quite a stir and looks rather ominous for all those bees to be flying around. 

I've always heard that even the worst of enemies can sit down and have a good meal together. It may be true. Take a look at the picture to the left. At the four o'clock and six o'clock positions, check out the yellow jackets having a meal with my honey bees. They all seemed to get along fine while at the dinner bowl. But let a yellow jacket land near the entrance to the hives...and the story changed dramatically. 

Based on what I observed, the open feeding doesn't seem to cause any real problems, but I can see where the stronger colonies would benefit from it while the weaker ones would get shoved out. But it may have to suffice for now since anytime I open the tops to my hives, the girls get defensive and hard to manage. But that's fall behavior and nothing new to me, but I'd rather not disturb them anymore than I have to so they can get their stores made for winter.

I'm asked to speak on beekeeping! And no, my audience didn't go to sleep!

Anytime that I'm asked to talk to a group on the importance of helping the honey bees, I'll do it. I guess I consider myself as a town crier of sorts to tout the need to help our insect friends to survive and thrive. I have to admit that when I decided to become a beekeeper, I never imagined that I would end up speaking to groups about my hobby or saving the honey bees. But its amazing how things evolve from one activity into something else completely.

My friend, Bruce Citty, asked me a month ago if I would be his guest at the Reidsville Kiwanis Club meeting to talk about beekeeping. Without hesitation, I said yes. So we set the date for September 23rd and I got myself prepared with some facts and figures...and I peppered them with a few personal experiences too. When I arrived, the Kiwanis fed me a really nice buffet lunch, then I spoke for about 15 minutes on why we need to help the hard working honey bee. Of course, I could have gone on for hours, but the Kiwanis Club is made up of busy business leaders, so I had to keep it short. 

What a great group! After I made my presentation, they asked some really great questions about hive management and honey production. And I think they took great delight (especially the ladies) when they discovered that colonies are dominated by females and they kick the drones out in the fall. It seems that when people learn that the ladies work themselves to death, all while they attend to the drone's every need...they think it mimicks human life. It always gets a few chuckles. 

I really appreciate Bruce for inviting me to speak to the Reidsville Kiwanis Club to spread the good word about beekeeping! It was fun and I hope to go back sometime in the future and talk about it even more. And thanks to Bob Mullings for the great photographs.

Fears of a Decline in Bee Pollination Confirmed (from the American Bee Journal)

TORONTO, ON - Widespread reports of a decline in the population of bees and other flower-visiting animals have aroused fear and speculation that pollination is also likely on the decline. A recent University of Toronto study provides the first long-term evidence of a downward trend in pollination, while also pointing to climate change as a possible contributor.

"Bee numbers may have declined at our research site, but we suspect that a climate-driven mismatch between the times when flowers open and when bees emerge from hibernation is a more important factor," says James Thomson, a scientist with U of T's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

Thomson's 17-year examination of the wild lily in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado is one of the longest-term studies of pollination ever done. It reveals a progressive decline in pollination over the years, with particularly noteworthy pollination deficits early in the season. The study will be published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences on September 6.

Three times each year, Thomson compared the fruiting rate of unmanipulated flowers to that of flowers that are supplementally pollinated by hand. "Early in the year, when bumble bee queens are still hibernating, the fruiting rates are especially low," he says. "This is sobering because it suggests that pollination is vulnerable even in a relatively pristine environment that is free of pesticides and human disturbance but still subject to climate change."

Thomson began his long-term studies in the late 1980s after purchasing a remote plot of land and building a log cabin in the middle of a meadow full of glacier lilies. His work has been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. (University of Toronto)

A "sting" operation with a colony of bees and a North Carolina deputy sheriff!

(Wake County, North Carolina): A sheriff's deputy was trapped in his car for three hours as tens of thousands of honeybees swarmed his vehicle.

Wake County deputy sheriff, Brandon Jenkins, answered a distress call of a disabled truck in the middle of the night. The vehicle was pulling a trailer of honeybee hives. As he helped load some of the broken boxes of bees back on the truck, they began to get irritable.

Jenkins, who took refuge in his squad car, could only watch as about 50,000 of the stingers swarmed over it. Wake County sheriff's spokeswoman Phyllis Stevens said: "They were confused, without their queen, they swarmed the police car probably because that was the biggest thing around that they could find."

The deputy even had to resort to deadly force when a few of the intruders got inside. "It was more or less self-defense," he said. " There were a couple of bees in my personal space, my comfort zone, and I just wanted to get them out."

Jennifer Keller, a beekeeping expert from North Carolina State University, was called to help and sprayed sugar water on the insects so they would lick each other and regroup, making it easier for the insects to be returned to their hives.

"I had never seen anything quite like that," Keller said. "The bees had nowhere to go. I guess they used the car as a resting spot ... I got one sting. I struck a bee, so it was my own fault."

Wake County surrounds Raleigh, the state capital of North Carolina.

Telling the bees: My brother, a former beekeeper, died...

We buried my brother, Wayne, on Monday. He was 64 and my oldest brother. After a lifetime of being plagued with health problems; from a car weck that left him pieced together with metal and screws, and multiple back surgeries that left him practically crippled...he had a devastating stroke months ago. That was the beginning of the end for Wayne. From one setback after another, my family and I knew that he wouldn't rebound when they placed him in Hospice care two weeks ago. That's when the watch began. After two long weeks of struggling to live, in the most pitiful sight my eyes have ever beheld, he drew his last breath at 4 o'clock on Friday morning, August 6th, and left this life forever. His long and difficult journey is now over.

A myriad of emotions have flooded me in the last few weeks...but especially since he died days ago. Needless to say, I miss him. I know I'll never hear him call my name or make me laugh by some silliness we've cooked up together. Even though he was almost 17 years older than me and grown when I came along, he influenced me in so many ways while I was growing up. Because of him I became a CB radio operator many, many years ago. And I would be glued to his every word when he would talk about beekeeping. At one point, Wayne and his father-in-law, Horace, kept over 20 hives of bees...and I loved to hear him talk about catching swarms and queen bees and robbing bees and getting stung. I think he's responsible for my fascination with bees and why I'm a beekeeper now.

Maybe it was just fate or maybe it was some divine guidance that caused me to harvest my first honey just weeks before Wayne fell ill. While he lay dying in the Hospice unit, I took a jar of my honey so he could see it and because I knew he would be proud of me. Even though he was weak and sick, he bragged that it was beautiful honey and that I did a good job. And while I was there, in addition to the many other things we talked about, he told me over and over to take care of my bees...and I promised him I would.

But maybe what touched me most of all is that he asked his brother-in-law, Robbie, to feed him some of my honey. He couldn't eat anything else by that point, he had trouble swallowing, but he wanted to taste that honey which I brought to him. And he really liked too. It was also the last bit of food he ate before he slipped into unconsciousness. And that jar of honey stayed by his bedside until he died. When he died on Friday morning, I took the honey with me when I left the hospital. After all, it was his honey and I wanted him to have it forever.

On Sunday night, when my family arrived at the funeral home, I took that jar of honey and placed it in the casket with Wayne. The funeral director told me that the ancient Egyptians put honey in their tombs, so I guess in some way, I was carrying on some unintentional tradition. All I really knew was that I wanted my brother to have that special honey forever...and he will. My family, especially my sister-in-law, Carol, thought it was a fitting tribute by me to include the honey in his casket. It will be there long past my own departure from this earth.

Did I go tell my bees that my brother, a former beekeeper and my inspiration, had died? No. When I got home from the hospital on the morning of his death, I visited my hives while waiting to go make arrangements at the funeral home. I didn't tell the bees as they say because I was so flooded with emotions and worn out that I couldn't think clearly. But the next time I work my hives, I plan to lean down and whisper "good job" to the girls in the yellow hive which made the honey. I feel they deserve it and my brother would like that too. I'll tell them for Wayne. 

Farewell, my brother. I love you.

Sweet! I harvested my very first honey!

I knew the time had come to reap the rewards of my very first honey harvest. The bees in the big, yellow mother hive had filled a shallow super with honey over a month ago, but with my busy life and some laziness thrown in, I decided to just let it set. But after checking during a routine inspection, and seeing that my bees were filling up the frames in the brood box with honey too, I knew it was time to take it off. So with minimal smoke and a hearty shake method, I got the bees off every single frame in the shallow...and I have to admit they didn't give me a hard time like I thought they would. As many of you know, when you mess around with honey frames, you'll discover the real disposition of your bees. But I have to admit that mine were pretty cool during the process even though I was 'robbing' them as the old timers call it!  

Let me assure you now that my next purchase will be an extractor and bottling kit. But to get me through this first time, I decided to use the "crush and strain" method with goods I have around the house. Fun? Yes, but a mess. I was lucky to have a few things on hand like this Pyrex strainer to keep the comb from mixing in with the honey I scraped using a cappings scratcher. As you can tell, the honey poured through the screen and into a brand new and thoroughly cleaned five gallon bucket. After scraping as much honey off the frames as I could, I sat them aside so they could ooze what honey was left on them into the sink. And later on I'll put the frames back in the shallow super and near the hives so the bees can clean off what honey is left.

Check out this beautiful, liquid gold! After the honey leaked through the Pyrex strainer, it still had tiny bits of wax and comb in it. So I filtered it again through extra fine cloth to get all the small bits, and the finished product is what you're looking at now. The only reason it looked somewhat cloudy here is because of all the fine air bubbles in it. But before bottling it, I let it rest for a little bit to get the bubbles out while I washed and sterilized the jars and lids si I could bottle it.

It still had some bubbles in it, but as the night progressed on, it cleared up a lot. These are just a few jars from the one super I harvested. I had two full quart bottles and a bunch of the smaller bottles to give to the neighbors and friends. I plan to give the smaller, flatter, 4-ounce bottles to all the adjoining neighbors since they've been really good and adapted to my mini backyard apiary. I promised them that I would give them some of my very first crop, and I'm a man of my word. I hate to tell them, but I'm keeping the quart bottles though! I deserve a little reward. Right?

Isn't it beautiful? Here you can see that the amber color really shows through as the air bubbles settle to the top after bottling. And as you can see, the smaller bottles make it seem lighter colored while the quart jars make it appear darker. Speaking of bottling, maybe by the time I harvest my next batch, I'll have my own personalized labels. A friend of mine that works with me at the television station (he's a graphic artist) is designing a "Mark's Bees" logo for me to use on my website and on my honey too. That should really make it look sharp!

In case you can't tell, I'm pretty darn proud. And I admit it has been a long and winding road. The bees in the mother hive were on the brink of dying when they arrived last year, but with a lot of determination, they made it. Then they survived the harshest winter we've had in years and rebounded this spring. Now they're rewarding me for helping them through it all with the sweet product of their own toils. It really isn't necessary...I'm just having a blast being a beekeeper, but what the heck, I'll accept it with pride. And when I give some away and people thank me, I'll tell them, please don't thank me -- thank the bees! 

Happy harvesting!