Viarious hypotheses have been proposed to explain the major disappearance of bees in 22 states in the US and the steady decline of bees elsewhere. This is a serious threat to crops that rely on bees for pollenation of the flowers that produce the fruit and vegetables.

Click on the titles to see the sources of the theories.

Organic farms do not have bee losses. Are commercial bee farming practices killing bees?

"Most of us beekeepers are fighting with the Varroa mites. I'm happy to say my biggest problems are things like trying to get nucs through the winter and coming up with hives that won't hurt my back from lifting or better ways to feed the bees.

This change from fighting the mites is mostly because I've gone to natural sized cells. In case you weren't aware, and I wasn't for a long time, the foundation in common usage results in much larger bees than what you would find in a natural hive. I've measured sections of natural worker brood comb that are 4.6mm in diameter. What most people use for worker brood is foundation that is 5.4mm in diameter. If you translate that into three dimensions instead of one, it produces a bee that is about half as large again as is natural. By letting the bees build natural sized cells, I have virtually eliminated my Varroa and Tracheal mite problems. One cause of this is shorter capping times by one day, and shorter post-capping times by one day. This means less Varroa get into the cells, and less Varroa reproduce in the cells.

Who should be surprised that the major media reports forget to tell us that the dying bees are actually hyper-bred varieties that we coax into a larger than normal body size? It sounds just like the beef industry. And, have we here a solution to the vanishing bee problem? Is it one that the CCD Working Group, or indeed, the scientific world at large, will support? Will media coverage affect government action in dealing with this issue?"

Asian parasite killing western bees

MADRID -  A parasite common in Asian bees has spread to Europe and the Americas and  is behind the mass disappearance of honeybees in many countries, says a Spanish scientist who has been studying the phenomenon for years.   
 
The culprit  is a microscopic parasite called nosema ceranae said Mariano Higes, who leads a team of researchers at a government-funded apiculture centre in Guadalajara, the province east of Madrid that is the heartland of Spain's honey industry. He and his colleagues have analysed thousands of samples from stricken hives in many countries. "We started in 2000 with the hypothesis that it was pesticides, but soon ruled  it out," he told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday. Pesticide traces were present only in a tiny proportion of samples and bee colonies were also dying in areas many miles from cultivated land, he said. They then ruled out the varroa mite, which is easy to see and which was not present in most of the affected hives. For a  long time Higes and his colleagues thought a parasite called nosema apis, common  in wet weather, was killing the bees. "We saw the spores, but the symptoms were very different and it was happening in dry weather too." Then he decided to sequence the parasite's DNA and discovered it was an Asian  variant, nosema ceranae. Asian honeybees are less vulnerable to it, but it  can kill European bees in a matter of days in laboratory conditions. "Nosema ceranae is far more dangerous and lives in heat and cold. A hive can become  infected in two months and the whole colony can collapse in six to 18 months," said Higes, whose team has published a number of papers on the subject. "We've  no doubt at all it's nosema ceranae and we think 50 percent of Spanish  hives are infected," he said. Spain, with 2.3 million hives, is home to a quarter of the European Union's bees. His team  have also identified this parasite in bees from Austria, Slovenia and other  parts of Eastern Europe and assume it has invaded from Asia over a number of years. Now it seems to have crossed the Atlantic and is present in Canada and Argentina, he said. The Spanish researchers have not tested samples from the United  States, where bees have also gone missing. Treatment for nosema ceranae is effective and cheap -- 1 euro (US$1.4) a hive twice a  year -- but beekeepers first have to be convinced the parasite is the  problem. Another  theory points a finger at mobile phone aerials, but Higes notes bees use  the angle of the sun to navigate and not electromagnetic frequencies. Other elements, such as drought or misapplied treatments, may play a part in lowering bees' resistance, but Higes is convinced the Asian parasite is the chief assassin.  
 
 Story by  Julia Hayley  

Are genetically modified (GM) crops killing bees?

"Well Scandinavian scientists doing research in  universities, the same ones who were in the early GMO research  supporters, now are finding the genes of the GMOs turining up in the  organs of thir research animnals who are fed the GMOs. Ooooooops!  What that says is that  the terminator genes from diverse GMOs are out there spreading around the world being interspersed into a vast market food chain  including livestock & humans. 
 
The sterility genes are also being inserted in  farmed salmon on land farms.  If they were ever to escape into the wild, like the 100,000 or so non-genetically futzed with farmed ocean salmon who escape each year on the west coast, then the terminator gene  would over time enter the food chain as the farmed fish are eaten by  predators & sterilize the ocean... then moving onto the land I would  presume through those who eat fish on land. Then those who eat  fish would get eaten & so on & so on & well you get it I'm  sure. Althought the program which I forget what it was called didn't go into that then why was the last segment on the farmed salmon? I can extrapolate as can you.
 
So I think the bees are getting the terminator gene inserted in their organs in the pollen they harvest just like the research animals fed the GMO food did. It's a massive puzzle that I believe also incudes cell toweers & pesticides & land destruction & global warming & ....well you get  it..."

FAQ on CCD  (.pdf download) 

 
WHEE MD Observations

While it is as yet unclear why there are such major devastations in bee populations, this crisis suggests human causes. We can only hope that vested interests will not obstruct or prevent their discovery in the name of protecting their financial investments in causal factors.