There is currently a lot of public interest in the status of beekeeping, due to the media frenzy caused by Colony Collapse Disorder. I think it is fantastic that so many people are interested in bees right now. HOWEVER, people seem to be at the present moment largely misinformed.
The media likes to cite things like "some US beekeepers have lost 60% of their bees to Colony Collapse Disorder." This may be true, but "some US beekeepers" have also lost 60% of their bees to bears or skunks. The more relevant number is that about 32% of commercial beehives were lost each of the last two winters. To put this in perspective, normal losses are eithter 16% (according to the Congressional Research Service), or the Apiary Inspectors of America actually puts total winter losses due to causes other than CCD at 25.4%. So CCD losses have been 10-16%.
Furthermore, beekeepers can make "splits" and double their number of hives in spring, meaning beekeepers can very easily recoup their losses.
But the media, aside from only giving misleading numbers, would have you believe that I guess every year we're losing 240,000 - 384,000 hives until after six to ten years there's zero bees. This is silly. To put it in perspective:
In 1994 98% of the US wild honeybee population was wiped out by the introduction of the Varroa mite. NINETY-EIGHT PERCENT. Was that the end of honeybees in the wild here? No! 2% were resistant, the resistant bees bounced back and now no one would ever know that happened. (But commercial bees were medicated against Varroa mites, so now they're still not resistant, and still need to be medicated all the time!). I believe thats what will happen in this case if no cure for CCD is found -- the susceptable bees will die off and resistant bees won't, and gradually the percentage of remaining susceptable bees will become extremely marginal.
HOWEVER, in 1980 there were appx 4.5 million managed colonies of honeybees in the US. In 2005 there were 2.4 million managed colonies. What accounts for this halving? Its not disease, since beekeepers have no problem building up their stocks (limiting factors on how many bees one can keep are more about how many one can logistically care for than how many one can raise, one can raise as many as one needs). Its not that its unprofitable -- a few years ago beekeepers could get $35 per hives for putting them in almond fields February through April, now you can get $125 for those same hives (when you're usually talking several hundred hives, this really adds up)! The fact is, there's a shortage of BEEKEEPERS! Beekeepers are retiring much faster than anyone is getting into it!
References:
Congressional Research Service report: Recent Honeybee Declines
Apiary Inspectors of America: An Estimate of Managed Colony Losses in the Winter of 2006 - 2007
(the most authoritative sources on the subject I can think of)
Picture of the Day
PS: Since any family-group of honeybees is called a "colony," and any time a colony fails its referred to as "collapsing," it occurs to me that "Colony Collapse Disorder" is about as descriptive a name as "Death Syndrome" or something.
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