WHERE HAVE ALL THE BEES GONE?
BUZZOF F
The great bee die-off is
not such a mystery after all:
Industrial agriculture
has stressed our pollinators
to the breaking point.
BY MORGEN E. PECK
Bees swarm at a
commercial facility
in California.
It was mid-July, and Sam Comfort was teetering at the
top of a 20-foot ladder, desperately trying to extract a
cluster of furious honeybees from a squirrel house in
rural Dutchess County, New York. Four stingers had
already landed on his face, leaving welts along the
fringe of his thick brown beard. That morning, the owner
of the squirrel house had read an article in the local
paper about Comfort’s interest in collecting feral honeybees, so he called and invited him over. Commercial
bee colonies, faced with massive mortality rates, are
not faring so well these days, and unmanaged hives like
this one could be their salvation. Comfort hurried over,
eager to capture the hive’s queen and bring her home
for monitoring and, if she fares well, breeding.
The nation’s great bee die-off has provoked a furious debate: What has caused a third of all commercial
honeybee colonies to perish each year since 2006?
Although widespread bee deaths have occurred before,
the current sharp decline is different. This time some
bees have simply vanished, abandoning their hives.
The phenomenon, known as colony collapse disorder
(CCD), has been attributed in part to the same viral and
bacterial infections, pesticide poisonings, and mite
infestations that devastated bees in the past.
Whatever the proximate cause, it increasingly
appears that the bees are succumbing to a long-ignored underlying condition—inbreeding. Decades of
agricultural and breeding practices meant to maximize
pollinating ef;ciency have limited honeybees’ genetic
diversity at a time when they need it the most. Addressing CCD may therefore require more than a simple ;x.
“We need to have a diverse set of genetic raw material
so we can ;nd bees resistant to disease,” says Steve
