Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.
The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.
. . . The disease showed a completely new set of symptoms, "which does not seem to match anything in the literature", said the entomologist.
One was that the bees left the hive and flew away to die elsewhere, over about a week. Another was that the few bees left inside the hive were carrying "a tremendous number of pathogens" - virtually every known bee virus could be detected in the insects, she said, and some bees were carrying five or six viruses at a time, as well as fungal infections. Because of this it was assumed that the bees' immune systems were being suppressed in some way.
Professor Cox-Foster went on: "And another unusual symptom that we're are seeing, which makes this very different, is that normally when a bee colony gets weak and its numbers are decreasing, other neighboring bees will come and steal the resources - they will take away the honey and the pollen.
"Other insects like to take advantage too, such as the wax moth or the hive beetle. But none of this is happening. These insects are not coming in.
"This suggests that there is something toxic in the colony itself which is repelling them." . . .
I can't see it accounting for the sudden collapse of the colonies. A gradual one, yes, but not a sudden one. The study that this was based on is in question now as well. One site I read couldn't find the study (or a recent version) from the source. They're wondering now if it was misquoted (much like Albert Einstein's supposed quote that "if the bees disappeared, man would follow in four years" or words to that affect).
As well, if it were cell phones, you'd expect Britain to be more affected than the US or Europe, but the US is more affected than either where cell phone use is simply not as "dense" as it is in Britain. Also, cell phones have been in use longer in Europe than the US, so you'd expect it to have occurred there first, but it didn't.
Also, everything points to a pathogen affecting individual colonies while a colony sitting next to it is fine. What's strange is that the affected colony is not being raided by the healthy ones, which usually happens when a colony gets sick. They believe something in the colony itself is repelling the invaders...including other insect invaders like moths.
A telecom specialist on one site could find no correlation between the location of the bee's deaths and the pattern of increased use of cell phone frequencies globally.
He did, however, note that bees are affected by the Earth's magnetic field which has moved more in the last 300 years than in the previous
5000. We know the magnetic field has flipped completely in the past and this increased movement could be an indication that another flip is imminent. One wonders now if the bees are the canary in coalmine...
Actually (conspiracy theory), corporate farming groups have conspired to kill all pollenating insects. The honeybee is just the tip of the iceberg. Kinda makes sense now don't it?
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