Colony Collapse Disorder is a mysterious disorder that no one seems to be able to solve or pinpoint what is causing it.
Beekeepers first sounded the alarm about disappearing bees in 2006. Seemingly healthy bees were simply abandoning their hives en masse, never to return while some beekeepers reported the normally busy insects wandering in drunken circles at the base of the hive doors, wingless, desiccated, and sluggish.
Without bees to pollinate many of our favorite fruits and vegetables, the United States could lose $15 billion worth of crops. The list of crops that simply won’t grow without honey bees is a long one: Apples, cucumbers, broccoli, onions, pumpkins, carrots, avocados, almonds … and it goes on and on. The bee is the smallest visible link in what keeps the food on our tables and its illness is illustrative
Why are the bees leaving? Theories abound. Scientists studying the disorder believe a combination of factors could be making bees sick, including pesticide exposure, invasive parasitic mites, an inadequate food supply and a new virus that targets bees’ immune systems. More potential culprits have been suggested — from bad corn syrup to genetically modified corn to pesticides to miticides Recent research is also bringing electric fields and cellphone signals into question.
I believe we need to study more of HOW the bees are kept and why it’s not sustainable at all. Beekeeping practices have changed drastically over the decades. Modern apriests now transport their bees in semi-truck throughout the United States, bringing their hives from crop to crop. Twenty years ago, when a beeyard failed, bad beekeeping practices could most likely be blamed for the collapse. Keeping bees is a precarious dance with nature anyway: infections rage, queens die, drought withers flowering plants, equipment rots, vandals and bears and skunks raid . But today, the problem lies with the precarious, single-cropped, single-minded state of modern agriculture. It is too unvaried, too big, and too much is being asked of the bees that service it. It’s time to re-think local agriculture — including localizing the bees that pollinate our crops.