Colony Collapse Disorder

The other night I overheard the latest Richard C. Hoagland flight of fantasy on the Coast to Coast AM radio show. The section of his always-entertaining rant I overheard was about the Honeybee Problem. Richard insisted that modern commercial beekeepers use a bigger form of hive, and the bigger hive cells form "torsion antennae" which the bees use to orient themselves (Richard's particular topic of the day seemed to be "torsion fields"), and which are being disrupted by some sort of change in the electromagnetic radiation field we find ourselves in these days. He even mentioned the size in millimeters of the average cells in the different hives. The kicker, the line that stuck in my mind, was that he menioned that this Colony Collapse Disorder only afflicts commercial bees, since organic hives have a smaller cell size, and are not tuned into the damaging frequencies which afflict the commercial hives. All very intriguing, but more than a little bizarre—Hoagland's habit is to take some odd scientific discovery and reframe it into "scientific conspiracy" language. (Richard also mentioned that global warming is due to the same alterations in the "torsion field" which the earth is going through, which relates to hyper-dimensionality and a host of other almost-but-not-quite-real-science things. He used to work for NASA, so of course, everything he says is says is true. Oddly enough, he says much of what NASA says is not true...)

Then I read this morning about a slightly different take on the same story. This is from an actual organic beekeeping Canadian, Sharon Labchuk. Here's the story, from the Guerrilla News Network. You decide.

Colony Collapse and Honeycomb Size

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 00:00:00 -0500

By Sharon Labchuk

"Natural" beehives appear less affected by the strange new plague dubbed colony collapse disorder.

Colony Collapse Disorder in domestic honey bees is all the buzz lately, mostly because honey bees pollinate food crops for humans.

However, we would not be so dependent on commercial non-native factory farmed honey bees if we were not killing off native pollinators. Organic agriculture does not use chemicals or crops toxic to bees and, done properly, preserves wildlife habitat in the vicinity, recognizing the intimate relationship between cultivated fields and natural areas.

While no one is certain why honey bee colonies are collapsing, factory farmed honey bees are more susceptible to stress from environmental sources than organic or feral honey bees. Most people think beekeeping is all natural but in commercial operations the bees are treated much like livestock on factory farms.

I’m on an organic beekeeping email list of about 1,000 people, mostly Americans, and no one in the organic beekeeping world, including commercial beekeepers, is reporting colony collapse on this list. The problem with commercial operations is pesticides used in hives to fumigate for varroa mites and antibiotics are fed to the bees to prevent disease. Hives are hauled long distances by truck, often several times during the growing season, to provide pollination services to industrial agriculture crops, which further stresses the colonies and exposes them to agricultural pesticides and GMOs.

Bees have been bred for the past 100 years to be much larger than they would be if left to their own devices. If you find a feral honeybee colony in a tree, for example, the cells bees use for egg-laying will be about 4.9 mm wide. This is the size they want to build – the natural size.

The foundation wax that beekeepers buy have cells that are 5.4 mm wide so eggs laid in these cells produce much bigger bees. It’s the same factory farm mentality we’ve used to produce other livestock – bigger is better. But the bigger bees do not fare as well as natural-size bees.

Varroa mites, a relatively new problem in North America, will multiply and gradually weaken a colony of large bees so that it dies within a few years. Mites enter a cell containing larvae just before the cell is capped over with wax. While the cell is capped, the bee transforms into an adult and varroa mites breed and multiply while feeding on the larvae.

The larvae of natural bees spend less time in this capped over stage, resulting in a significant decrease in the number of varroa mites produced. In fact, very low levels of mites are tolerated by the bees and do not affect the health of the colony. Natural-size bees, unlike large bees, detect the presence of varroa mites in capped over cells and can be observed chewing off the wax cap and killing the mites. Colonies of natural-size bees are healthier in the absence mites, which are vectors for many diseases.

It’s now possible to buy small cell foundation from US suppliers, but most beekeepers in Canada have either never heard of small cell beekeeping, aren’t willing to put the effort into changing or are skeptical of the benefits. This alternative is not promoted at all by the Canadian Honey Council, an organization representing the beekeeping industry, which even tells its members on their website that, “The limitations to disease control mean that losses can be high for organic beekeepers.” [ref link]

Organic beekeeping, as defined by certification agencies, allows the use of less toxic chemicals. It’s more an IPM approach to beekeeping than organic.

Commercial beekeeping today is just another cog in the wheel of industrial agriculture – necessary because pesticides and habitat loss are killing native pollinators, and vast tracks of monoculture crops aren’t integrated into the natural landscape.

In an organic Canada, native pollinators would flourish and small diversified farms would keep their own natural bees for pollination and local honey sales.

The factory farm aspects of beekeeping, combined with an onslaught of negative environmental factors, puts enough stress on the colonies that they are more susceptible to dying out.

Some small cell beekeeping resources::

Organic Beekeeper list
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/Organicbeekeepers/

Michael Bush’s site:
http://www.bushfarms.com/bees.htm

BeeSource:
http://www.beesource.com/pov/lusby/index.htm

Sharon Labchuk
Earth Action (and organic beekeeper)
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Sharon Labchuk is a longtime environmental activist and part-time organic beekeeper from Prince Edward Island. She has twice run for national Parliament, making a strong showings around 5% for Canada’s fledgling Green Party. She is leader of the provincial wing of the party.

Here's what's on Michael Bush's site (linked above)

Most of us beekeepers are fighting with the Varroa mites. I'm happy to say my biggest problems are things like trying to get nucs through the winter and coming up with hives that won't hurt my back from lifting or better ways to feed the bees.

This change from fighting the mites is mostly because I've gone to natural sized cells. In case you weren't aware, and I wasn't for a long time, the foundation in common usage results in much larger bees than what you would find in a natural hive. I've measured sections of natural worker brood comb that are 4.6mm in diameter. This 4.6mm comb was drawn by a hive of commercial Carniolans and this 4.7mm comb was drawn on the first try by a package of commercial Carniolans. What most people use for worker brood is foundation that is 5.4mm in diameter. If you translate that into three dimensions, instead of one, that produces a bee that is about half again as large as is natural. By letting the bees build natural sized cells, I have virtually eliminated my Varroa and Tracheal mite problems. One cause of this is shorter capping times by one day and shorter post capping times by one day. This means less Varroa get into the cells and less Varroa reproduce in the cells. I have mostly done this either with wax coated PermaComb (fully drawn plastic comb) or self drawn comb on foundationless frames or frames with blank starter strips. 4.9mm foundation is available from Dadant and Sons and from Brushy Mt. This size(4.9mm) has been found sufficient to resolve the mite problems. For more information on small cell:

Dee Lusby's POV on Beesource
Natural Cell Size