It has been over a year since I first started hearing about Colony Collapse Disorder. While there are many unanswered questions, I think the beekeeping community is starting to get a better understanding of why CCD is occurring.

Here’s the pattern ... bees come out of Florida after being on citrus (treated with a pesticide called Bravado), go to gallberry for more honey, and within a few weeks, once they finish blueberries in Maine and don’t have fresh food, they break down. The queen quits laying or dies, brood goes to that snotty condition and about half the colonies die. However, if they get fed fresh food ... protein ... they don’t. It’s when they start to eat their stored food in the colony that came from the treated citrus trees ... that they die.

In his latest blog post, Kim Flottum (editor of Bee Culture magazine) describes several situations where CCD has been observed. One of the more promising theories is that recently developed nicotine-based insecticides are compromising the immune system of the bees, making them susceptible to pathogens. The more I think about it, the more I imagine how extremely difficult it must be to engineer an insecticide to kill only harmful pests, while leaving beneficial insects unharmed. Honestly, I'm not sure that I even believe it's possible. Can we really make compounds which are toxic to one insect and completely harmless to another? While Bayer and Monsanto may say yes, I tend to think otherwise. You can read more about it here.