Nature Notes

Buzz Kill

By Larry Penny

(04/18/2007)    The honeybee, Apis mellifera, from the Latin “to make honey,” may be on its way out, not just here but across the world. It is suffering from Colony Collapse Disorder (C.C.D.), and the cause is baffling the minds of beekeepers and entomologists alike. Honeybees are the most prolific pollinators we know of. They increase the production of fruit, ornamental flowers, and many row crops. They’re good for orchards, farms, pastures, botanical gardens, and parks.

    We in America take honeybees for granted. They are one of the few cherished insects we have that are not native, having been brought here by colonists in the 16th century. The rest of the interlopers — the gypsy moths, Asian longhorn beetles, cabbage white butterflies, and so on — it seems we could well do without. But not honeybees. We are absolutely dependent upon them for our country’s well-being.

    First it was the bee mite that infiltrated honeybee hives and played havoc with them. Now it’s C.C.D.! Scientists say that over the past few months 60 percent of West Coast beehives have been abruptly abandoned, while the number of East Coast collapsed colonies is even greater: 70 percent. The same phenomenon has been documented in Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece, all big honey producers.

    The bee colony is a highly organized society with as many as 60,000 bees and a single queen. The drones fertilize the queen, and the workers feed the larvae and gather the pollen and nectar. Workers have pollen sacs on their legs: When they fly out of the hive they are empty, when they return they are generally full. In most cases they are yellow, because most pollen is yellow.

    Worker bees have a very advanced “global positioning system” that allows them not only to fly directly to flowers ripe with pollen several hundred yards from the hive, but also to communicate that “map” to inexperienced recruits upon their return. They do this in the dark of the hive, on the face of the comb, with what is called a waggle dance. During this dance they wag their abdomens, make figure eights, and buzz in pulses. They convey not only the direction of and distance to the ripe flowers, but also the species. The recruits pick this latter cue up via their sense of smell: Incoming bees smell like the flowers they’ve just depollinated.

    Bees are not long-lived, with the exception of the queen, who can live up to five years in some cases. Workers have even shorter lives if they use their stingers, which detach in the victim, after which the bees die. Because there are so many of them, they are expendable. They only live for the good of the society and the queen — a little like “Brave New World,” don’t you think?

    When the queen leaves the hive surrounded by a horde of drones (little more than super-menial males, they will fertilizer her in the air), she is looking for a new hive. Short of that, a hollow tree or space between outer and interior house walls will suffice. The drones, on the other hand, are through.

    A new queen will emerge from the larvae fed on bee bread, a mixture of pollen and nectar; it will kill the rest of the presumptive queens, and grow to full maturity in a matter of a few weeks on an exclusive diet of royal jelly, the stuff secreted by the diligent workers. The new queen produces eggs that become drones parthenogenetically (that is, without fertilization). Workers come from eggs that have been fertilized by drones. One colony leaves, a fresh one takes its place.

    It has been pointed out by many agriculturists that the value of pollination by honeybees far surpasses the value of the honey produced and sold. Beehives have become a common adjunct to orchards and seed fields, such as clover fields. But now the threat of C.C.D. is about to deal the agricultural business a horrible blow.

    Recently, a possible cause of these rapid declines has come to light. It turns out that the navigation and information systems may be even more sophisticated than first imagined. The German behaviorist Carl von Fritsch first worked out more than 70 years ago that electrical power lines could affect bee behavior. Bees may use radiation, perhaps even microwave radiation in their locational activities. Now, Jochen Kuhn of Landau University in Germany has tied bee colony abandonment to cellphone radiation. When cellphones are placed next to their hives, bees stay away.

     There may be something to it. If we could see radiation the way that radiation-sensing instruments can, we would discover that there isn’t a cubic inch of space that isn’t being penetrated every second by this or that electromagnetic wave. The air is jam-packed. These rays go right through us without our knowing it. But apparently bees, which can detect ultraviolet light, can sense radiation.

    Wouldn’t that be a great irony: one high tech form of communication replacing another, for the benefit of humans but at the expense of the honeybees?

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    Questions and comments can be sent to Mr. Penny at nature@ehstar.com.