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.