Uncovering the Mystery of Bee Colony Collapse Disorder

[Math Is Hard]

Something that I've noticed in the last couple of years is that I see dead honeybees on the ground quite a bit when I'm out walking. I never used to see this.

 

[jim mcnamara]

Most of the later studies on CCD have ruled out most of the usual media chocies as the cause for this problem: UFO's, genetically modified foods, and pesticides.

There is one marker: IAPV(Israeli acute paralysis virus) that has a very high association with CCD colonies.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=bees-ccd-virus&catID=1&pageNumber=1

Some later reports indicate that IAPV had been found in US bees as early as 2002. Anyway, I believe the USDA is restricting the import of bees from Australia until further notice.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/09/07/2027273.htm?section=australia

Bees from Australia have high immunity levels to IAPV and may therefore have a high active IAPV infection rate, with few casualties. Having an IAPV colony mixed in with others is possibly[/color] the cause of the problem. IAPV individuals in a CCD colony is definitely a marker for the problem. IAPV is not proven to cause the problem.

 

[Q_Goest]

I thought this was interesting. Looks like a suspect has turned up, but I don't know if it's the only one. Here's the article in Scientific American:

A heap of dead bees was supposed to become food for a newly captured praying mantis. Instead, the pile ended up revealing a previously unrecognized suspect in colony collapse disorder—a mysterious condition that for several years has been causing declines in U.S. honeybee populations, which are needed to pollinate many important crops. This new potential culprit is a bizarre—and potentially devastating—parasitic fly that has been taking over the bodies of honeybees (Apis mellifera) in Northern California.
...
The parasitic fly lays eggs in a bee’s abdomen. Several days later, the parasitized bee bumbles out of the hives—often at night—on a solo mission to nowhere. These bees often fly toward light and wind up unable to control their own bodies. After a bee dies, as many as 13 fly larvae crawl out from the bee’s neck. The bees’ behavior seems similar to that of ants that are parasitized—and then decapitated from within—by other fly larvae from the Apocephalus genus.

"A parasitic fly landing on a honeybee. Courtesy of Christopher Quock"

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/01/03/zombie-fly-parasite-killing-honeybees/

 

[atyy]

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/01/03/zombie-fly-parasite-killing-honeybees/

“But being an absent-minded professor,” he noted in a prepared statement, “I left them in a vial on my desk and forgot about them.” He soon got a shock.

Two thumbs up for absent-mindedness!