3 posts tagged “colony collapse disorder”
Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science has a highly informative post about a study showing the advantages of genetic diversity within a bee colony.
As you know, a virgin queen may mate with several males on her nuptial flight, including males from other hives. When researchers compared hives where the queen was artificially inseminated (!!) with a single drone's semen to those where the queen received semen from multiple males, the latter did much better.
A couple things in the article that were peripheral to the main story struck me:
Young says that 80 percent of colonies starve over the winter. I assume he means wild colonies; he goes on to say of the experimental hives,
In late August, a cold period killed about half of the single-father colonies and by December, they were all dead. But the multi-father ones all pulled through the autumn cold and 25% made it past the winter freeze.
In other words, this seems like a really low survival rate.
Regarding the continuing questions about Colony Collapse Disorder, I wonder if commercial beekeepers -- as well as us backyard beekeepers -- are simply expecting a higher survival rate than is possible.
Several club members and other local beekeepers are mentioned in an article published today in the East Bay Express. Alameda County Beekeepers Association member (and contributor to this blog) Susan Kuchinskas wrote the story.
Read it here: Are Bees Too Busy?
On the Redice Creations blog, Lancifer posted a note from an organic beekeeper in Canada. No one on her email community of 1,000 apiarists has experienced a case of colony collapse disorder, the mysterious syndrome that -- according to news reports -- is wiping out bees.
But this beekeeper thinks that, when colonies suddenly die or disappear, it's because they've been over-medicated, fumigated, and trucked all over the country. This reflects what Alameda County Beekeepers' own organic guru, Randy Oliver, thinks. He told us at a recent workshop that he believes these bees are being worked to death.
This post includes comments from Michael Bush that he's had little trouble with varroa mites since he switched to foundation with smaller-sized comb. Using 4.6 mm diameter comb instead of the standard 5.4 mm produces smaller bees that spend less time developing so they have less time to become infected. (His site, Bush Bees, looks like an interesting place to buy equipment.)
It's more surprising to me that a bee colony could survive being moved around on trucks for several months than that such stress would kill it.
And here's a great article from BeeCulture.com about the recent Colony Collapse Disorder Working Group meeting.
