The Food Supply is Under a Mystery Attack Folks!

Okay now we know that this administration’s attack on USDA and FDA regulation has destabilized our food supply’s reliability: E Coli, Salmonella, Mad Cow, not to mention outsourcing to China for gluten filler. However, what is happening to the bees in this agronomist’s nightmare and mystery is very scary for our food supply’s future. Bee Colonies are just simply disappearing and no one knows why. Lot’s of guesses, but no actual answers. The disappearing colonies are having a devastating effect, and will have an even more devastating impact on our food supply’s future. Pollination by bees is essential to our agricultural solvency.

It’s a mystery why U.S honeybees are abandoning hives in alarming numbers. But it’s happening and if answers to the mass exodus — called colony collapse disorder — aren’t found soon, the implications for agriculture will be huge.

Last summer, calls and reports from beekeepers began reaching Gary Hayes.

“Unfortunately, beekeepers have struggled over the last few years from colonies dying from introduced parasitic mites and other things,” says the president of the Apiary Inspectors of America from his Gainesville, Fla., office. “They’re already kind of numb because of all the problems. But last summer, beekeepers began losing colonies for reasons that weren’t quite in line with the other problems.”

Over the course of a few weeks, beekeepers noticed colony bee numbers would dwindle as the insects simply disappeared. Foragers would go out to find flowers and wouldn’t come back.

“With affected hives, there are no dead or dying bees on the ground as we see with pesticide exposures or other diseases. No one can explain this behavior.”

Over time, the gradual abandonment means all that’s left in a colony is a queen, a few attendants, eggs and brood (baby bees). Bees are an extremely social insects and for them to leave a colony in great numbers is very odd.

And often the few bees left behind appear to suffer from an immune system collapse. The bees seem to be susceptible to bacteria and fungi that normally would cause no bother.

“That, too, is highly unusual, and we’ve been trying to find the cause for several months. It seems to indicate some sort of mass immune deficiency. There are some very smart people looking for an answer, but we still haven’t come up with a smoking gun that we can combat through management practices or something else. It’s quite frustrating.”

Beekeeper services are vital for U.S. agriculture because there are no longer many wild honeybees.

The wild honeybee population is repopulating “a bit,” says Ed Levi, of the Arkansas State Plant Board. “But we lost a huge number of wild bees when the tracheal mite and Varroa mite came into the country. In the last 20 years, or so, we’re down to less than 5 percent of the feral colonies we used to have.

I remember hearing vague stories about this a while ago and I have been thinking “this is not good.” Now the only way I was even slightly tuned into this mystery and its possible ramifications is that we used to raise bees. They were an integral part of our pollination plan for apples, raspberries, blueberries, asparagus and rhubarb, not to mention our supply of honey. We didn’t exactly have a full fledged agricultural situation but we knew it was all dependant on our bees.

The mystery of the Colony Collapse Disorder has now gotten the MSM’s attention. On April 4^th, Anne Thompson on NBC’s Evening News had a story about this situation. Even the Congress has figured out that this might be a problem:

For reasons yet unknown, the U.S. honeybee population is experiencing its most serious decline in history. First reported by beekeepers along the East Coast in late 2006, the phenomenon now called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) quickly spread across the nation and has now drawn the attention of the U.S. Congress.

If you think this problem is just about the honey, forget it. Far beyond honey, agricultural crops pollinated by honeybees accounts for about one-third of the U.S. diet. No bees, no crops. The monetary value of honey bees as commercial pollinators in the United States is estimated at about $15 billion annually. Worldwide, three-quarters of all flowering plants require pollination to reproduce.

While honeybee declines have come and gone in the past, Colony Collapse Disorder is unsettlingly different. In it's March 26, 2007 report Recent Honeybee Colony Declines (.pdf), the Congressional Research Service (CRS) found that current bee colony losses differ from past situations in that:

• colony losses are occurring mostly because bees are failing to return to the hive (a behavior uncharacteristic of bees),
• bee colony losses have been rapid,
• colony losses are occurring in large numbers, and
• the reason the losses are occurring remains largely unknown.

Among food crops considered to be from 90-100 percent dependent on bee pollination are almonds, apples, avocados, blueberries, cranberries, cherries, kiwi fruit, macadamia nuts, asparagus, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, celery, cucumbers, onions, legume seeds, pumpkins, squash, and sunflowers. Other important crops, including many fruits and citrus fruits, peanuts, cotton and soybeans are dependent on honeybees to a lesser degree, according to the CRS report.

Possible causes of CCD identified so far by researchers, include pesticides, parasites and diseases, stress, poor nutrition, lack of genetic diversity among bees and "a combination of several factors."

Something is going on here folks and it doesn’t look pretty. Global Warming perhaps?

Who knows, no one so far has a grip on this and it does not portend well for the future of agriculture.