There are two bacterial infections that can devastate a honey bee colony: one is called European Foul Brood (EFB) and the other is American Foul Brood (AFB). AFB is very deadly, infecting larvae that are less than three days old and causing them to die in their cells. Each infected larva contains millions of spores, and in the United Kingdom and in the United States all infected colonies are compulsorily destroyed, and movement of bees or equipment from the infected apiary is prohibited, including all of a beekeeper's hives, even if only one is infected. Once this infection takes hold, the bees cannot clear their colony of the stringy bacteria. There may be some variations in state and regional laws that apply.
EFB is less deadly to a colony because its bacteria does not form spores, though it can survive cold weather and continue to infect a colony the next season if it has not been eradicated. It is particularly dangerous if the colony is already under stress, but a healthy colony can be treated with an antibiotic if the infection is not too severe. To prevent infections, beekeepers will sometimes treat their colony with a powdered antibiotic called terramyacin, mixing it with sugar and shaking the powder on the inside of the colony. The risk of prophylactic treatments is that they may lead to resistant bacteria.
In the case of both infections, the larvae ingest the bacteria along with the brood food, and the bacteria then multiply rapidly in the gut of the larvae, causing death in a few days. Hive bees that clean the nest spread the infection, and even the honey becomes contaminated and spreads the disease.
Honey bees are very clean animals and usually only eliminate wastes when they fly outside of the colony. During the winter months, cold temperatures might prevent them from flying, which can create some gastrointestinal distress for them - and a protozoan infection can begin. Evidence of these gut parasites, called Nosema, can be seen in the form of brown spots that appear inside and outside of the colony as the bees fly out during warm winter days and the springtime on cleansing flights to void stored wastes. The infection is usually short lasting and can be prevented through the application of a medication fed to the bees in a simple sugar syrup. There are new, more virulent strains that result in the death of colonies.
Colony collapse disorder (CCD) is characterized by almost all of the adult worker bees flying away from their hive, abandoning the stored honey and pollen as well as their larvae and pupae. Usually all the bees leave in less than a week, and in a few cases, whole colonies have been found dead in their hives. Beekeepers expect approximately a 20 percent loss in a normal season, but when losses are from 30 to 60 percent, as has been reported recently, there is concern that the problem can have drastic consequences for human food supplies because of the absence of pollinators to fertilize the crops.
These losses have occurred as demand for pollination services has soared due to the prevalence of highly mechanized commercial farms that grow huge quantities of only one crop (monoculture). Between 1947 and 2005, colony numbers nationwide declined by over 40 percent, from 5.9 million to 2.4 million, primarily due to the accidental introduction in the 1980s of two bloodsucking parasitic mites.
Regular surveys conducted by the National Agricultural Statistics Service focus on honey production and other farming operations, but not on pollination services or colony health, so the information that has been available about these losses has not been particularly precise. The problem has been publicized as "mysterious," but, in fact, similar massive bee die-offs have been observed at least since 1869, when the first one was recorded. In 1915 when this phenomenon occurred it was called Disappearing Disease. It occurred in 1963, 1964, and 1965, and then it was called Spring Dwindling, Fall Collapse, and Autumn Collapse, respectively. The early outbreaks were localized and the causes were never determined.
There were massive bee die-offs again in 1975, 1995, 2004, and 2005, but they were overcome relatively quickly. But starting in the fall of 2006, beekeepers along the East Coast of the United States began reporting large bee losses. By February 2007 the losses had spread to some Western states until the tally reached twenty-two states in which die-offs of up to 80 percent of the colony population were reported. Recent outbreaks are being reported throughout parts of Canada and Europe.
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Note: This article was sent to us by: Bernard C. Monoud at 08192010
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