jebbypal

An excellent summary of all the possible culprits behind Bee Colony Collapse Disorder

After reading an article in last month's Science, I meant to do one of these summary posts myself. Alas, Devilstower beat me to it. But they probably did it 10x better than I would have.

It's not just the honeybees that are dying

Honeybees are not the only pollinators whose numbers are dropping.Other animals that do this essential job -- non-honeybees, wasps,flies, beetles, birds and bats -- have decreasing populations as well.

This is the first article that indicates that fungal and bacterial loads may be to blame for the colony collapses (the huge mite infection had been blamed in past years). One thing I haven't seen addressed is how long this disorder has been occuring (it only really peaked into the national media a couple of years ago) and whether that can be traced to temperature fluctuations, new technology, or some such. Although, perhaps it has been occuring much longer than anyone realizes on a lower level as I'm not sure exactly what prompted the great africanized bee craze of the 80s off the top of my head. This is very reminiscent of the great DDT disaster of the 60s and 70s for eagles and other predatory birds. However, the agricultural implications for pollinated crops -- including fruits, corn, and nuts -- is much larger. Not to mention the effects up the food chain of things that depend on flies and other insects for food.

One of the keys here is that for insects, we only understand the biology of parasites and infections in one: the drosophila fly. Honeybees and their like are much longer lived that the fruit fly and so one would hope they have a more robust immune system. ( Fruit flies depend mostly on antimicrobial peptides to combat infection long enough for them to reproduce, rather than actually eradicating the infection. )