Why Are Honey Bees Dying?

Since 2006, 35% or more of the Western honey bees living in the United States have mysteriously disappeared. Billions of honey bees took off from hives and simply disappeared.

Honey Bees Dying - Some Details About Honey Bees

Honey bees are a subset of bees, primarily distinguished by the production and storage of honey and the construction of colonial nests of wax. Honey bees represent only a small fraction of the approximately 20,000 known species of bees.

Dwarf honey bees are small honey bees from Asia. They make very small, exposed nests in trees and shrubs. Their sting usually cannot penetrate the human skin, so the hive and swarms can be handled with minimum protection.

Giant honey bees usually build single or a few exposed combs on high tree limbs, on cliffs, and sometimes on buildings. Periodically robbed of their honey by human "honey hunters," colonies are easily capable of stinging a human being to death when provoked.

Honey Bees Dying - Crop Pollinator

Honey bees are one of the most important crop pollinators on Earth. Many of the crops that depend on honey bees for pollination have been imported since colonial times. Escaped swarms spread rapidly as far as the Great Plains, usually preceding the colonists. The Native Americans called the honey bee "the white man's fly." Honey bees were not successful trying to cross the Rocky Mountains, but were carried to California by ship.

Honey Bees Dying - Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)

The honey bee scientists can't figure out this carnage, but they have come up with a new name for the phenomenon, Colony Collapse Disorder.

In hives hit by CCD, adult workers simply fly away and disappear, leaving a small cluster of workers and the hive's young to fend for themselves. Adding to the mystery, nearby predators, such as the wax moth, are refraining from moving in to pilfer honey and other hive contents from the abandoned hives; in CCD-affected hives the honey remains untouched.

The symptoms are baffling, but one of the emerging hypotheses is that the scourge is underpinned by a collapse of the bee's immune systems. Stressed out by cross-country truck journeys and drought, attacked by viruses and introduced parasites, or whacked out by harmful new pesticides, some researchers believe the bee's natural defenses may have simply given way. This opens the door to a host of problems that the bees can normally suppress.

Honey Bees Dying - Other Threats

Even without CCD, the number of managed hives in the U. S. has dwindled by nearly 50% since the industry's peak in the 1970's. The main culprit for the die-offs is a tiny Asian mite. Sometime in the early 1980's the Asian mite spread like wildfire throughout the defenseless Western honey bee population with the help of migratory beekeepers who obligingly trucked them around the country. The mites suck the vital juices out of both developing and adult honey bees, who then die. Left unchecked, the mite can kill a hive within 12 months.