References

A Review of Treatment Options For Control of Varroa Mite in New Zealand. (2014). [online] Available at: http://www.biosecurity.govt.nz/files/pests/varroa/papers/varroa-treatment-options.pdf [Accessed 3 Oct. 2014].

Biosecurity.govt.nz, (2014). Varroa Mite | MPI Biosecurity New Zealand. [online] Available at: http://www.biosecurity.govt.nz/pests/varroa [Accessed 3 Oct. 2014].

Deccan Herald, (2014). Food chain in danger as pesticides kill billions of bees. [online] Available at: http://www.deccanherald.com/content/128675/food-chain-danger-pesticides-kill.html [Accessed 3 Oct. 2014].

Depi.vic.gov.au, (2014). DEPI - Reducing the risk of American foulbrood disease in honey bee hives. [online] Available at: http://www.depi.vic.gov.au/agriculture-and-food/pests-diseases-and-weeds/animal-diseases/bees/reducing-the-risk-of-american-foulbrood-disease-in-honey-bee-hives [Accessed 3 Oct. 2014].

Fedfarm.org.nz, (2014). Federated Farmers of New Zealand. [online] Available at: http://www.fedfarm.org.nz/advocacy/National-Policy/Bees-Issues.asp [Accessed 3 Oct. 2014].

Gentry, C. (2014). Small Scale Beekeeping. [online] Beekeeping.com. Available at: http://www.beekeeping.com/articles/us/small_beekeeping/deseases_pests.htm [Accessed 3 Oct. 2014].

Kislev, M., Hartmann, A. and Bar-Yosef, O. (2006). Early Domesticated Fig in the Jordan Valley. Science, [online] 312(5778), pp.1372-1374. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1125910 [Accessed 3 Oct. 2014].

vanEngelsdorp, D., Hayes, J., Underwood, R. and Pettis, J. (2008). A Survey of Honey Bee Colony Losses in the U.S., Fall 2007 to Spring 2008. PLoS ONE, [online] 3(12), p.e4071. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0004071 [Accessed 3 Oct. 2014].

(

         Kaplan, J. (2012). Colony Collapse Disorder. Agricultural Research, 60(6), 4.

(      Chug, K. (2011, July 5). FEARS BEE COLONY COLLAPSE HAS ARRIVED. Dominion Post, p. 3

How do the bees affect us? (Anthrosphere)

If the honey bees were to be taken out there would not just be a loss of honey on your toast, supermarket shelves would start to thin out fast and food prices would rocket adding to the problem that already exists of famine and poverty. One third of commercial agriculture and farming relies on the pollination of bees, an alarming statistic when you think about the 30-90% losses in beehives. Things we rely on, on a daily basis that make up our meals and our economy. The value in New Zealand of the bees pollinating is estimated at four billion per annum. Daniel Paul part of National Beekeepers Association says “If bees are responsible for $4 billion of New Zealand's economy, and we allow bee death rates to reach levels found in other parts of the world, we're essentially playing Russian roulette with some of the biggest industries on which this country relies”.  

Figure 1: Crop values and pollination statistics
Source: http://burningbushnell.wordpress.com/

Losing the bees would mean a loss of a variety of foods, these shown in the figure above. Although some not completely dependent on honey bee pollination, we would see massive losses in a lot of these crops.  Not only does this mean less food for the human population but also habitats that live and rely on these crops will be badly affected.

The loss of food produced in crops will affect the world and the economy greatly. In poorer developing countries where a lot of the agriculture is produced as part of their main economic source, the loss of crops will not only lose this income but also create a food stricken environment. This occurring as the price of food will increase due to the lack of pollination. Famine, starvation will increase in poorer areas adding to an already existing problem. Jobs will be lost in the agricultural sections.

This is an issue that needs to be resolved the CCD has the potential to cripple the economy and create a famine. Einstein’s quote “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man” starts to ring a very important issue around the cause of the CCD, the world needs to see and hear the potential outcomes of this shortage of bees and start to raise awareness of the problem. Money hungry farmers and pesticide producers need to stop thinking about the present and start to think about a more sustainable future.

Thanks to Lou Vollebregt my research partner and friend. 

Management Stress of Beehives and Fiathogens

Figure 1: Transportation of beehives
Source: http://globale-allmende.de/umwelt/biosphare
/apis-mellifera/wanderimkerei_usa

With beekeeping growing steadily and smarter beekeepers, there is more traveling done by hives now than there ever has been. This is bad for the hives themselves as well as for the bees all over the country. With pollinating of crops a big money-maker with beekeeping beekeepers in are starting to move their hives hundreds of miles from site to site pollinating crops. This is not only bad for the bees that have to get moved but its bad for the species as a whole in that country and those areas. Moving lots of bees on a large scale holds the best way to spread diseases, parasites and sickness through the populations. One hive infected with a sickness could spread that to hundreds of hives in the area in a short amount of time. This has been an integral part of the recent increase of CCD. These hives bring diseases from across the country and leave it where they have been pollinating spreading disease like wildfire. Then thousands of hives will be put into a paddock near an almond orchard or the like and one sick hive could affect them all. As well as this bees are less healthy if they only have limited diversity in their diets just like humans would be, if they only have almonds or apples to pollinate then their health and immune systems will drop making them more susceptible to these diseases. They need a variety of plants and flowers to collect  from to keep strong.This massive overcrowding and huge transport is bad management of hives and a large driver in CCD.

Figure 2: A field a beehives
Source: http://globale-allmende.de/umwelt/
biosphaere/apis-mellifera/wanderimkeri_usa

Foulbrood is a major cause for stress in beehives. It is a bacterial disease that can weaken then kill hives, being very contagious and spread from microscopic spores. A common treatment for infected hives it to burn them as it is hard to get rid of the spores and they can survive up to 50 years. Foulbrood can come in two types American and European. These are similar but have very different components too. The American foulbrood kills the brood but when checked is gooey and sticky like chewing gum whereas the European foulbrood is runny. These are very important things to control and if it’s found the hive should be immediately closed up and removed from the area and other hives. If it’s found it can stay at the site it occurred for many years so it’s dangerous to keep moving hives in and out of infected areas. This increases the danger of these already killer bacteria. Other pathogens that can affect bees but not as badly as foulbrood are chalkbrood, a fungus affecting the young brood which kills and mummifies the larvae, and sacbrood, a virus that kills the larvae before it hatches leaving the skin of the brood holding together its liquid insides. These other pathogens are less deadly for the hive as a whole than foulbrood is, as they often just affect small parts of the brood and not all of the cells. Still it is essential to keep on top of these pathogens so that it helps keep CCD at bay.

Neonicotinoids Pesticides

Neonicotinoids Pesticides 

One of the major concerns is the use of pesticides to protect crops from harmful vegetation, fungal diseases and bacteria growth. One of the major pesticides used is neonicotinoids a very popular pesticide used in the United States to promote growth in crops. However this pesticide is a toxin for the bees and has a direct correlation between the use of this pesticide and the resulting death of the honey bees.

Figure: Honey Production in United States                                                                               Source: http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/jsass/more_research_shows_neonic_pes.html

                                                                                                                                                

There is a direct correlation between the introduction of the neonicotinoids pesticides in the United States and the start to a loss of approximately 50 million pounds of honey produced in the next fourteen years.

The neonicotinoids pesticides do not have an immediate acute death on the honey bees. The way it effects the bees is that it effects the immune system leaving bees and hives more vulnerable to the infestation of deadly diseases such as nosema. The pesticides impairs a lot of the bees key function navigation, food collecting, queen bees production etc. This all leading to the vulnerability of winter to the hives and hence the massive losses that have been seen since winter 2006.

Ontario, Canada has been a case study for the use of pesticides, where movement is starting to occur from beekeepers in the area to ban the pesticides. Beekeepers report that there has been at increase from 15% losses to a large 50% since the increased use of the pesticide.  A beekeeper in Ontario Dave Schuit recorded losses of 600 hives totalling to an approximate amount of 37 million bees dying, “Once the corn started to get planted our bees died by the millions”.

Source: http://www.seattleorganicrestaurants.com/vegan-whole-food/neonicotinoids-pesticides-colony-collapse-of-honeybees-suppressing-immune-system.php

Regulations have been put in place as part of the Plant Protection Product Regulations 2005 a two stage process undergoing two approval stages. EU members in Europe comply with these processes which takes a look at the environmental effects of using particular chemicals in the area of interest. In the case of neonicotinoids the surrounding habitats and how they affect their behaviour and of course mortality rates, Germany have made a conscious effort to protect the bees from these pesticides by banning the substance produced by bayercropscience in 2008. Needless to say there is sufficient evidence that this pesticide has direct links to the mortality rates of bees. Some urgent action needs to be taken to tackle this problem.  

Bees in our Biosphere

Bees are arguably the most important animal in the biosphere, being responsible for 80% of pollination worldwide. Without bees to pollinate plants and trees there would be an atrocious down fall of the world as we know it. Plant and tree species would quickly start dying off, without pollination their reproduction cannot take place. If this was a gradual extinction then the plants and trees might have a chance of evolution or some way to find new pollinators, bit if this extinction were to happen then it would be very sudden and with the massive timescale of evolution there is no hope

Figure 1: Fruits that require pollination from honey bees.
http://southernmusings.weebly.com/3/post/2013/01/bees-
food-chain.html

of that happening. Plants have a shorter life span so these would start to disappear first as they die without reproducing. This would make way for more wind pollinated plants like grasses to dominate the areas where shrubs and flowers used to grow. It would be most notable for us by the lack of flowers. All flowers have evolved to entice in animals in, with their bright large petals and nice smells, and help them stand out to their pollinator (most cases bees). This means plants that are not pollinated by bees are mostly ones with no proper flower, and will be abundant if bees went extinct. Trees would have a mere gradual decline. Because trees live for hundreds of years they will be around for a lot longer if bees went extinct. They couldn't be able to reproduce so there would never be small ones again but the big ones could last a long time. Without pollination fruit trees and nut trees couldn't produce their produce as the fertilized flower is the part of the tree that turns into the fruit, this would mean goodbye to almost all fruits, berries, nuts and a lot of vegetables. Although these plants and trees can often be pollinated by solitary bees also their main pollinator is the honey bee. It’s not all bad for plants however as new niches will be opened up for evolution and expansion of other plants like grasses or other windblown pollinators.

Figure 2: Estimated value of agricultural
crops that require pollination.
 Source:http://beeinformed.org/2013/04/6964/
  

Animals would take a big hit from the extinction of bees too. Although not many animals feed on them and they are not the main part of any animals diet they will still have a massive effect on the eating of thousands of animals. This is through not pollinating trees and plants. With the decrease and extinction of so many bee pollinated plants and trees many herbivores will lose their main sources of food. Fruit trees in rain forests provide food for many animals and animals like bears rely heavily on berries for food. Some animals that are affected worse than others might start affecting animals further up their food chain, for example a species that only ate fruit pollinated by bees would see their numbers plummet and if this animal was the main prey for a carnivore it will then affect the carnivores too. This will create a rippling effect up the food chain. These plants dying off will therefore affect animals across the world high and low in the food chain.

Through this we see that bees play a massive part in the biosphere and its web. With the extinction of bees would come an unraveling of many different parts of the biosphere through extinctions and decline of plants to the repercussions faced by the animals from that, one of the keystones to the biosphere is the declining honey bee.

Varroa Mites

Varroa mite is a main contributing factor to CCD in beehives.

Other than humans Varroa mite is the only organism that threatens mass collapse of bees and bee hives. The Varroa mite is a small tick like external parasite which attaches its self to bees before they hatch out of their eggs. It then feeds on the bees weakening the adults enough to kill them relatively quickly. This mite evolved with a special bee species that could stand it and knew how to get rid of it meaning it couldn’t kill the hive however when beekeeping became a big industry the mite started infecting other species of bee used in honey collection that couldn’t cope, this is not only bad for the bees but it’s bad for the mites because when the bees and hive die so do they. From their evolution with resistant bees the have now hurt themselves as bad as the bees. This has been killing off hives and the honey sector of economies is paying the price in all countries with the mite. First taking the scene in Japan in the 1960s the mite was making its way round the world, reaching New Zealand’s north island in 2000 and the south island in 2006. Since then it has been causing havoc where ever it resides.

Figure 1: Honey Bee in hive   Source: http://wataugaces.blogspot.co.nz/2011/04/new-formulation-for-varroa-mite-control.html

Treatment for the mite varies in many ways but they can be natural or man-made chemicals. A common treatment for big time beekeepers is chemicals, these were great at controlling the mite however as with a lot of chemicals the mites have started to become resistant to a lot of the chemicals meaning new ones are having to be formulated. The natural options also work but not as well and have to be applied more often and in harder ways which is not always economically viable for big time beekeepers. This then makes the idea of mite resistant bees become more appealing. Biologists have been working with artificial insemination of bees to cross the resistant bees with the common honey bee. These bees open the brood to get the mites out before the bees hatch and even when a mite live on them the bee still can survive. This should be the way ahead but as with a lot of things it is too expensive for most beekeepers to help fund this research and development so they are sticking to the cheaper alternative of chemicals. Bee keepers may be digging their own grave however if resilience to the chemicals carries on and the mite wipe out the non-resistant bee population.

Varroa mite is transferred from hive to hive on the back of bees. This could limit the amount of spreading it could do to a slow pace or only small distances however with bee keeping becoming bigger business beekeepers have been moving their hives large distances on trucks or boats. This has been increasing the spread of Varroa through New Zealand and throughout the world. Varroa was on the list of biosecurity threats for a long time as it’s such a threat to the economy however as it has arrived now and spread throughout the country it is no longer an issue that has to be faced on New Zealand’s boarders.

Figure 2: Varroa mite     Source: http://www.tsusinvasives.org/database/varroa-mite.html

The Varroa mite is a big worry for bees and bee keepers, with extremely low wild bee hives commercial bees are responsible for almost all pollination as well as honey. Varroa is a bigger threat than we think.

The Decline of our Bees

Colony Collapse Disorder

“If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man” Albert Einstein

The Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is the name used for the rapid declination of honey bees all across the world. ‘The issue was first raised in October 2006 where beekeepers in the United states recorded losses somewhere between 30-90% of their hives’. There is no known reason for why the CCD has occurred. Major contributing factors to the decrease of the Honey Bees have been broaden down into four main categories; pathogens, parasites, management stressors, environmental stressors.

-Pathogens: There is no specific pathogens that can be pointed out as the direct reason for CCD but there is a few major pathogens that account for a loss in honey bees. The pathogens are a mix of fungal, bacterial and viral diseases.

-Parasites: One of the main problems in the decline in honey bees and the infestation of bee hives is Varroa Mites the only organism responsible in the CCD.

-Management Stressors: The increase of honey bees in a certain area can bring on overcrowding of a bee hive and the migratory stress of bees being relocated to other bee hives.

-Environmental Stressors: The stress that environmental factors have on bees also can be correlated to the CCD. One of the major issues is pesticides used for protecting agricultural environment that require pollination resulting in large numbers of bees dying. Also the lack of pollen diversity and lack of pollen create environmental stress. Contaminated water also another reason for the decline in bees.

Figure 1: The decline of bee colonies since the last 1930’s

Source:  http://www.digitalbees.info/sources/J%20Ellis%202010.pdf

Here we can see a healthy bee population in figure 1, but as the years go on polloution, disease and the unknown cause of the colony collapse disorder, shows the rapid decline in colonies over time.