Commercial Apiaries Reporting 30 - 50% Colony Loss From CCD This Winter - WP

[hatrack]

EDIT

More than three years after beekeepers starting seeing the sudden disappearance of hive populations, scientists have yet to find the cause -- let alone the fix -- for a condition called colony collapse disorder (CCD). Meanwhile, the commercial beekeeping industry is struggling to provide pollination services to the nations' farmers. One-third of food crops rely on insect pollination. A recently published survey suggests that hive losses have stabilized at around 30 percent a year, but that high figure is based on last winter's data. Anecdotally, the losses have climbed this winter, although a formal tally won't occur until the spring.

"I am very concerned about this year based on what we have seen in California and other parts" of the United States, said Jeffery S. Pettis, research leader for the Agricultural Research Service's honey bee laboratory in Beltsville. He has visited the almond farms of California three times this winter to assess losses. The state's growers produce 80 percent of the world's almond crop and require 1.5 million of the nation's estimated annual peak of 2.5 million managed hives. In the halcyon days after World War II, there were more than 5 million managed hives in the United States, and countless feral honeybee colonies that are now gone.

Hackenberg said he and other major commercial beekeepers have seen "50 percent or better" losses since late fall and in the winter, when bees typically are clustered in a warm and fuzzy ball within the hive. "We started seeing losses in late October, early November -- and they just kept going through the middle of January," he said. Some of the losses will be made up by beekeepers splitting one strong hive into two weaker ones.

Eighty percent of his afflicted hives showed signs of CCD, Hackenberg said. With the condition, foraging worker bees don't return to a hive even if a full brood is waiting to hatch. One theory is that the foragers, knowing they are sick, fly off to die rather than compromise the hive. Scientists at first figured that they would identify a single virus or pest responsible for the collapse after the phenomenon surfaced in fall 2006, and an early suspect was a bloodsucking parasite called the Varroa mite. If bees were the size of humans, said Jerry Hayes, of the Florida Department of Agriculture, the mite would be as large as a rat. Another was a pathogen named Israeli acute paralysis virus, which showed up in collapsed colonies.

EDIT

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/14/AR2010031402600.html

[zbiker]

1. i guess i am confused

as to part of the content.
"Eighty percent of his afflicted hives showed signs of CCD, Hackenberg said. With the condition, foraging worker bees don't return to a hive even if a full brood is waiting to hatch"

foraging bees have little to nothing to do with the brood as that job is regulated to the nurse bees within the hive. the nurse bees are freshly hatched brood and they immediately begin their nursing assignments, when the next round of brood hatch the present nurse bees are "promoted to foragers and the cycle continues.
the majority of foragers do not die in the hive, the meet their end generally while out doing their job of foraging, where they essentially simply work themselves to death. simply stated they fly off and die not from ccd, but from exhaustion.
wish the article cited would let us know what the nurse bees were doing all the while. and if whether or not the suspected respiratory ailments that are now being considered the villain are being passed on by mites or another source.

[NickB79]

2. If the foragers aren't returning to the hive, no pollen is coming in

And the hive starves.

[zbiker]

3. agreed, but

what i was wondering why they were referencing the brood being a factor for the foragers to return, when packaging a new hive you have neither brood or comb, the foragers as well as the scouts and drones leave and return so brood is not a factor at all.
i am guessing that the OP hasn't seen this article
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090414084627.htm

to really get the skinny do some searching here
http://www.beesource.com/forums/index.php