Tarun Gunampalli: Colony Collapse Disorder
Tarun Gunampalli: Colony Collapse Disorder
You walk through the doors of Flower Mound High School as the clock hits 8:17. You pay no heed to your surroundings as you race the bell to class. 8:18. 8:19. You reach your class and find your seat with seconds to spare. As you begin to relax, you finally look around and notice the lack of students. Maybe they were also late. Maybe they’re on a field trip. Panic rises as you notice no teacher and think back to your frantic sprint through the hallways. Even at those speeds, you tripped over no feet, bumped into no students. They were gone. All gone. You explore the school, trying to find anything, anyone, until finally, you stumble into the front office and see a single lost soul. The lone principal remains, and you wonder what could have happened. This story may seem like the beginning of a horror movie, but this event has been occurring all over the earth in a world much smaller than our own. Colony collapse disorder is the terrifying phenomenon in which an entire hive of bees simply abandon their home, leaving a plethora of food and new brood in the hands of only a few nurses and the queen bee.
Colony collapse disorder, or CCD, while having grown substantially in the last few decades, has seen similar cases dating as far back as the late 1800’s. The first reported case was in fall 2006 by a beekeeper in Pennsylvania. Within months, multiple large commercial beekeepers reported losses ranging from 50% to 90% of their bee populations. CCD has been seen to affect only the European honeybee, also called the western honeybee or Apis mellifera, which naturally inhabits Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Due to its widespread use for commercial pollination and honey production, though, this species is now quite concentrated in the US and can be found on every continent except Antarctica. While the cause of CCD remains unknown, scientists are working to discover what we can do to reduce the rate of CCD and the death of bees around the world.
European honeybees are considered by some to be one of the most important pollinators with respect to commercial cultivation of crops. Bees are estimated to pollinate over 30% of the food we eat, equating to about $15 billion of crops every year. In addition to pollination, beehives also produce honey, pollen, wax, royal jelly, and propolis, otherwise known as bee glue. A decline of beehives used for these essential activities leads to a decline in the production of the products they make and the crops they pollinate, including kiwifruit, watermelon, cantaloupe, cashews, and almonds. One specific almond that is heavily reliant on bee populations for pollination is the California almond, which was valued at $1.9 billion in 2006 and used over 1 million out of 2.6 million bee colonies in the US. Crops like these cannot be grown without enough bee colonies, and a decline of these colonies spells the end of a significant proportion of grown crops in the US and the rest of the world.
As you can see, there are many incentives to try and prevent CCD from destroying the agriculture of the modern world. Unfortunately, the cause of CCD is still unknown, so current strategies to try and avoid and slow CCD in beehives are avoiding the usage of pesticides, monoculture that leads to a poor diet for bees, and diseases that can impact bee colonies. Some parasites, like the invasive varroa mite, as well as the diseases they harbor, can also cause CCD and the decline of bee populations. While these causes are all plausible, the US Department of Agriculture, or USDA, is conducting research to determine a preventable cause of CCD to help slow its diffusion and end the death of bee populations around the world.
Questions:
What do you think is the most likely cause of CCD?
What are some aspects of your everyday like that might be affected by the decline of bee populations?
What is something we, as average citizens, could do to help the cause of ending the decline of bee populations?
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