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Survey shows US honey bee deaths increased over last year
(AP) -- A survey of bee health released Tuesday revealed a grim picture, with 36.1 percent of the nation's commercially managed hives lost since last year.
Last year's survey commissioned by the Apiary Inspectors of America found losses of about 32 percent.
As beekeepers travel with their hives this spring to pollinate crops around the country, it's clear the insects are buckling under the weight of new diseases, pesticide drift and old enemies like the parasitic varroa mite, said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, president of the group.
This is the second year the association has measured colony deaths across the country. This means there aren't enough numbers to show a trend, but clearly bees are dying at unsustainable levels and the situation is not improving, said vanEngelsdorp, also a bee expert with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.
"For two years in a row, we've sustained a substantial loss," he said. "That's an astonishing number. Imagine if one out of every three cows, or one out of every three chickens, were dying. That would raise a lot of alarm."
The survey included 327 operators who account for 19 percent of the country's approximately 2.44 million commercially managed bee hives. The data is being prepared for submission to a journal.
About 29 percent of the deaths were due to Colony Collapse Disorder, a mysterious disease that causes adult bees to abandon their hives. Beekeepers who saw CCD in their hives were much more likely to have major losses than those who didn't.
"What's frightening about CCD is that it's not predictable or understood," vanEngelsdorp said.
On Tuesday, Pennsylvania's Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff announced that the state would pour an additional $20,400 into research at Pennsylvania State University looking for the causes of CCD. This raises emergency funds dedicated to investigating the disease to $86,000.
The issue also has attracted federal grants and funding from companies that depend on honey bees, including ice-cream maker Haagen-Dazs.
Because the berries, fruits and nuts that give about 28 of Haagen-Daazs' varieties flavor depend on honey bees for pollination, the company is donating up to $250,000 to CCD and sustainable pollination research at Penn State and the University of California, Davis.
© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
As beekeepers travel with their hives this spring to pollinate crops around the country, it's clear the insects are buckling under the weight of new diseases, pesticide drift and old enemies like the parasitic varroa mite, said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, president of the group.
This is the second year the association has measured colony deaths across the country. This means there aren't enough numbers to show a trend, but clearly bees are dying at unsustainable levels and the situation is not improving, said vanEngelsdorp, also a bee expert with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.
"For two years in a row, we've sustained a substantial loss," he said. "That's an astonishing number. Imagine if one out of every three cows, or one out of every three chickens, were dying. That would raise a lot of alarm."
The survey included 327 operators who account for 19 percent of the country's approximately 2.44 million commercially managed bee hives. The data is being prepared for submission to a journal.
About 29 percent of the deaths were due to Colony Collapse Disorder, a mysterious disease that causes adult bees to abandon their hives. Beekeepers who saw CCD in their hives were much more likely to have major losses than those who didn't.
On Tuesday, Pennsylvania's Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff announced that the state would pour an additional $20,400 into research at Pennsylvania State University looking for the causes of CCD. This raises emergency funds dedicated to investigating the disease to $86,000.
The issue also has attracted federal grants and funding from companies that depend on honey bees, including ice-cream maker Haagen-Dazs.
Because the berries, fruits and nuts that give about 28 of Haagen-Daazs' varieties flavor depend on honey bees for pollination, the company is donating up to $250,000 to CCD and sustainable pollination research at Penn State and the University of California, Davis.
© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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All H viruses are sprayed on us from those lifters.
Those Tigers come out of certain programs in the US and they number approximately 500.
They spray all over the world from down low,(# to 5 hundred feet and normally you can not see them. The amount of frequency coming out of the transducers on those 5 man or 2 man plus spray canisters creates heating that,just as grid nodes create all of the cumulus clouds with the moisture available,the lifters have spray jets to make a cloud around themselves.
The mistake they make,especially with a guy like me is that they run in formations and go against the cloud flow and stick out like sore thumbs.
You folks put up with this destruction. I dont, I snitch,and there is alot more and they have not arrested me yet......
Those boys inside those lifters are also not US citizens,they come in a lifter to this planet through Israel.
Change that spray program to zero and flus ,bird and human will go away, bird flu is found after incubatin period after people sight those teams of five all over this planet,except for certain places.