This could be trouble...

I was just reading Dennis Murrell's blog "Bee Natural," linked above and in our blog list. First, a note for Dennis: I am devastated to hear about your hive losses and hope you can recover and do it well! Thank you for posting your insights on the issue of virus overload - hopefully folks will learn from them!

The particular blog article I'm referring to is Dennis' reflections on what happened to his hives. He has been raising bees for decades, but has focused on natural beekeeping for about the last ten years. He had placed his hives in a commercial beekeeper's bee yard for safekeeping for a couple of seasons as he headed off to Florida. When he got back, despite the bees being left alone and in near direct contact with treatment resistant diseases and pests, his hives seemed in great health. But the next season they started exhibiting some health issues. Despite antibiotic and other treatments (and I do agree with him that there are times when dosing your bees with antibiotics is a good idea - even though John might not), the bees completely died out over this last winter, exhibiting the signs of Colony Colapse Disorder (CCD).


Not likely CCD since there are lots of bees present -
but it gives you the idea of what happens when a
colony dies out. Also, not our bees nor Dennis'.


Yet it's not the death of his own bees that worries him as much as something possibly more dire. Just by mingling in the area his bees readily caught everything that the commercial bees had (except, interestingly, the mites) and those diseases tore his hives to pieces. Research has pointed to those diseases being easily trransmitted from commercial/domestic bees to wild bees and even other pollinators. And this is what has him worried.  I'll let him explain:

I don’t know whether all my past wishing would have prevented this season’s outcome. Maybe the wild bees, which have also been decimated, were the disease vector my for bees. But I suspect it was probably the other way around. And recent research shows it possible,

It’s one thing for me to loose my bees. But it’s quite another thing for the wild bee population to perish because of my bees.

The implication here is that the CCD problems we face could easily spread to feral pollinators. As I was getting at in my previous couple of blogs, they are inexorably linked, we really need to find a solution and a better way to do things when it comes to our practices both in the realm of beekeeping and agriculture.
Posted by Bob Nelson