http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/02/food-fear-mystery...

The world may be on the brink of biological disaster after news that a third of US bee colonies did not survive the winter

Disturbing evidence that honeybees are in terminal decline has emerged from the United States where, for the fourth year in a row, more than a third of colonies have failed to survive the winter.

The decline of the country's estimated 2.4 million beehives began in 2006, when a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD) led to the
disappearance of hundreds of thousands of colonies. Since then more
than three million colonies in the US and billions of honeybees
worldwide have died and scientists are no nearer to knowing what is
causing the catastrophic fall in numbers.

The number of managed honeybee colonies in the US fell by 33.8% last winter, according to the annual survey by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the US
government's Agricultural Research Service (ARS).

The collapse in the global honeybee population is a major threat to crops. It is estimated that a third of everything we eat depends upon honeybee
pollination, which means that bees contribute some £26bn to the global
economy.

Potential causes range from parasites, such as the bloodsucking varroa mite, to viral and bacterial infections, pesticides and poor nutrition stemming from intensive farming methods. The disappearance of so many colonies has also been dubbed "Mary Celeste
syndrome" due to the absence of dead bees in many of the empty hives.

US scientists have found 121 different pesticides in samples of bees, wax and pollen, lending credence to the notion that pesticides are a key
problem. "We believe that some subtle interactions between nutrition,
pesticide exposure and other stressors are converging to kill
colonies," said Jeffery Pettis, of the ARS's bee research laboratory.

A global review of honeybee deaths by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) reported last week that there was no one single cause, but
pointed the finger at the "irresponsible use" of pesticides that may
damage bee health and make them more susceptible to diseases. Bernard
Vallat, the OIE's director-general, warned: "Bees contribute to global food security, and their extinction would represent a terrible biological disaster."

Dave Hackenberg of Hackenberg Apiaries, the Pennsylvania-based commercial beekeeper who first raised the alarm about CCD, said that last year had
been the worst yet for bee losses, with 62% of his 2,600 hives dying
between May 2009 and April 2010. "It's getting worse," he said. "The
AIA survey doesn't give you the full picture because it is only
measuring losses through the winter. In the summer the bees are exposed
to lots of pesticides. Farmers mix them together and no one has any
idea what the effects might be."

Pettis agreed that losses in some commercial operations are running at 50% or greater. "Continued losses of this magnitude are not economically sustainable for
commercial beekeepers," he said, adding that a solution may be years
away. "Look at Aids, they have billions in research dollars and a
causative agent and still no cure. Research takes time and beehives are
complex organisms."

In the UK it is still too early to judge how Britain's estimated 250,000 honeybee colonies have fared during the long winter. Tim Lovett, president of the British Beekeepers'
Association, said: "Anecdotally, it is hugely variable. There are
reports of some beekeepers losing almost a third of their hives and
others losing none." Results from a survey of the association's 15,000
members are expected this month.

John Chapple, chairman of the London Beekeepers' Association, put losses among his 150 members at between a fifth and a quarter. Eight of his 36 hives across the capital
did not survive. "There are still a lot of mysterious disappearances,"
he said. "We are no nearer to knowing what is causing them."

Bee farmers in Scotland have reported losses on the American scale for the past three years. Andrew Scarlett, a Perthshire-based bee farmer and
honey packer, lost 80% of his 1,200 hives this winter. But he
attributed the massive decline to a virulent bacterial infection that
quickly spread because of a lack of bee inspectors, coupled with
sustained poor weather that prevented honeybees from building up
sufficient pollen and nectar stores.

The government's National Bee Unit has always denied the existence of CCD in Britain, despite honeybee losses of 20% during the winter of 2008-09 and close to a
third the previous year. It attributes the demise to the varroa mite –
which is found in almost every UK hive – and rainy summers that stop
bees foraging for food.

In a hard-hitting report last year, the National Audit Office suggested that amateur beekeepers who failed to spot diseases in bees were a threat to honeybees' survival and called
for the National Bee Unit to carry out more inspections and train more
beekeepers. Last summer MPs on the influential cross-party public
accounts committee called on the government to fund more research into
what it called the "alarming" decline of honeybees.

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has contributed £2.5m towards a £10m fund for research on pollinators. The public
accounts committee has called for a significant proportion of this
funding to be "ring-fenced" for honeybees. Decisions on which research
projects to back are expected this month.

WHY BEES MATTER

Flowering plants require insects for pollination. The most effective is the honeybee, which pollinates 90 commercial crops worldwide. As well as most fruits and vegetables –
including apples, oranges, strawberries, onions and carrots – they
pollinate nuts, sunflowers and oil-seed rape. Coffee, soya beans,
clovers – like alfafa, which is used for cattle feed – and even cotton
are all dependent on honeybee pollination to increase yields.

In the UK alone, honeybee pollination is valued at £200m. Mankind has been managing and transporting bees for centuries to pollinate food and
produce honey, nature's natural sweetener and antiseptic. Their
extinction would mean not only a colourless, meatless diet of cereals
and rice, and cottonless clothes, but a landscape without orchards,
allotments and meadows of wildflowers – and the collapse of the food
chain that sustains wild birds and animals.