Talk:Colony collapse disorder/Archive 8

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Israeli virus

The idea that a virus is affecting the bees, leading to CCD, has been in the news a lot lately. Example: Israeli Virus Linked to Devastating Bee Disease.130.49.147.43 13:38, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

The Israel acute paralysis virus has now been incorporated wherever it is pertinent, thanks. It's not the first time someone has suggested a virus might be linked to CCD, and it has not yet been confirmed as a causative agent. Dyanega 04:33, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

The Israel acute paralysis virus does not correlate with CCD outbreaks in the Mid-Atlantic US. Outbreaks have been selective and follow heavy use of the popular commercial Imidacloprid insecticides. Neither the virus nor the use of Imidacloprid / Neonicotinoids have been confirmed as a causative agent. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mikepastor (talk • contribs) 23:58, 11 September 2007 (UTC) ]

Removing and adding

I am removing the line "Furthermore, the low occurrence of GMO fields in Europe makes it difficult for GMOs to account, alone, for all possible cases of CCD[2]". First the reference is in French, Second it is a popular periodical not a scientific publication, third the entirety of it's support for the above statement is one line: "planted surfaces [of GMOs] are very weak." As demonstrated by another contributer there are secret plantings in Europe, probably more than just a few and most people are unaware of them. This is fact. We are not here to debate whether or not these issues are actually the cause or not but to provide the information available. I am also adding some of the links provided before in support of this. 66.14.116.114 20:21, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Remember that this is an article about CCD, not GMO. Do not go off on a tangent. JRSpriggs 01:55, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

No link from Bee Page

I was on the Bee page looking for information of ccd, I saw no mention of it or no link to this page. Could someone more familiar with the subject take the time and add information and a link in the main Bee page?Mantion 16:52, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Umm, hate to point this out, but there are TWO links there to CCD, one of which is highlighted at the very top of the page. No information belongs on that page, since it only affects one species of bee. Dyanega 17:04, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Wondering about Water

I've been wondering for some time about bees and related flying insects need for water. Many is the in the past time while I was out hiking that I have seen bees and wasps gathered around some pond of water getting a drink. As the article states 2006 was the hottest year on record with droughts all over. Could there be a connection? Perhaps these overworked little guys are simply not getting enough to drink. Do beekeepers place a water source nearby when they move them around or even check to see that there is one. If there is and if they are near agricultural fields is the water polluted with pesticide runoff? An anecdote: I once observed a bee drinking from a hummingbird feeder. As it continued it's abdomen turned progressively red with dye. It drank until full then flew off.

Since this is your own hypothesis, let me respond directly: honey bees do not store water in the hive, and water is not used for drinking, either - it is used for cooling the hive, not consumption. Bees get their water from nectar & honey, not plain water. Also, they are dying off during the winter - if they were getting killed by contaminated water, the losses would be occurring during the summer, when they're cooling the hive. Dyanega (talk) 18:51, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Well I think that they do drink [1][2], but evidentally was mistken that they use water internally. However since as you say they use it for cooling the hive and if there is a drought or heat wave wouldn't that present a similar problem for them? In other words, since they do need it shouldn't beekeepers assure a supply of water for bees?63.196.193.208 (talk) 05:46, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Your suggested "connection" was that contaminated water could be contributing to CCD - it can't since CCD happens during the winter - heat waves during the summer don't make the bees die during the winter. All of the workers that would have been exposed to contaminated water, or afflicted by a heat wave, are DEAD before the colony even starts preparing for winter. Dyanega (talk) 18:02, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

No my suggested question was that since bees do need (for whatever reason) water shouldn't beekeepers assure a supply of water for them? 63.196.193.249 (talk) 22:13, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Is CCD a Real Phenomenon?

Another thing that puzzles me. I see that the main editor of this page seems to think that the whole thing, CCD, is a crock of s---. How does he explain all of the coincidental testimony coming in from beekeepers that their bees hve been disappearing? According to this report "between 651,000 and 875,000 of the nation’s estimated 2.4 million colonies were lost" during 2006-2007 [3]. "Beginning in October 2006, some beekeepers began reporting losses of 30-90 percent of their hives. While colony losses are not unexpected during winter weather, the magnitude of loss suffered by some beekeepers was highly unusual" [4]. If this Wiki editor thinks that it's all a bunch of baloney wouldn't that bias tend to color his editing here, whereas Wikipedia editors should be neutral? Just wondering. 63.196.193.98 (talk) 15:43, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

The first of the references you cite is extremely interesting, and needs to be incorporated into the article extensively. Note that it specifically states that over 50% of the beekeepers who reported colony losses did not, in fact, have CCD (even though many of them evidently claimed they did). To quote: Of responding beekeepers reporting the number of hives containing few or no bees in spring, 23.8% met the specified definition of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), meaning that 50% of their dead colonies were found without bees and/or with very few dead bees in the hive or apiary. CCD-suffering operations had a total loss of 45.0% compared to the total loss of 25.4% of all colonies experienced by non-CCD suffering beekeepers. A neutral editor, and neutral article, does not pay undue attention to secondary sources such as the media - and there, in black and white, is evidence that beekeepers' testimony as reported by the media is NOT a reliable source of information (ironically, the entire paper is based on beekeeper testimony, too; this indicates that what beekeepers were telling the media and what they told the researchers were NOT always the same). Wikipedia is all about using reliable sources. Note also that the actual figures for percentage losses in this report are distinctly lower than the figures given by the media or the beekeepers, including the "30-90%" quote in your second citation. A neutrally edited article will often look biased to those, like yourself, who are giving undue weight to unreliable or biased sources. Dyanega (talk) 18:51, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Guess I'm not reading it the way you are. Here's what I read: "Nationwide colony numbers have dropped from 4.5 million managed colonies in 1980 to 2.4 million in 2005. These numbers are derived from USDA-NASS figures, which may underestimate the true decline of managed colonies ... Overall, the total losses in operations suffering from CCD were nearly twice as high (45.0%) as the total losses experienced in the non-CCD suffering group (25.4%; Table 3, Figure 2) ... Although losses were higher in operations that we considered to be suffering from CCD, losses were still generally high (many losing >30% of colonies) in operations that were not suffering from CCD. Among the reasons given for the losses, starvation, invertebrate pests, and weather were the most common. CCD was identified in 12 of the 13 states reporting with >50% of respondents from Arkansas, Mississippi, and South Dakota having CCD".

They are using a definition of CCD a strict 50% or more loss and no dead in or around the hive. 49% (or the 45% the report cites) loses out. But 45% is pretty close. And who says nature keeps to such a strict quota anyway? Now maybe those other losses weren't by their strict definition CCD but those are still big bee losses (and they say as much). Again almost HALF of colonies lost between 1980 and 2005. As to the "unreliable or biased sources" you say that I am using in the second source, that source is none other that the USDA Agricultural Research Service. 63.196.193.208 (talk) 05:46, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

You are correct in that you're not reading it the way it was intended. The criterion is that of the colonies that a beekeeper lost, 50% or more need to have exhibited the symptoms of CCD. In other words, a beekeeper who lost only 10% of his colonies would be classified as a victim of CCD if all 10 colonies had lost their workers and had no corpses; a beekeeper who lost 100% of his colonies but had corpses in all of them would NOT be scored as a victim of CCD. The criterion is not how many bees or colonies were lost, but what percentage of the losses could be directly attributed to CCD and not plain old winter die-off. That's why there are such wildly variable figures, and so many questions about the European reports and such - many beekeepers who lost their bees in 2006-2007 jumped to ASSUME that every single dead colony was a victim of CCD, even if they had none of the symptoms. That's why I consider reports based on the beekeepers' opinions to be biased and unreliable - the USDA report figure is based on what the beekeepers claimed, but without any proof or hard figures from the beekeepers to show that those claims were true. If only 1/4 of the beekeepers losing bees were affected by CCD, as the report suggests, that's a LOT lower than the percentage of beekeepers who were claiming that they had been affected by CCD. It's called mass hysteria; someone hears of a disease or an outbreak of something, and then LOTS of people become convinced that they, too, are afflicted by it. Part of acting as a neutral and responsible editor is not simply accepting everything that folks are saying, and waiting until the facts become available - which is why I'm grateful you gave the link to that ABJ article; it has more facts in it than any other reference I've seen to date. Dyanega (talk) 18:02, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not an expert but still if all this "alarmism" and research to find a cause is all one giant fraud or massive case of incompetence on the part of the nation's (world's) beekeepers and leading scientific organizations as you suggest how is it that HALF of all bee colonies were lost between 1980 and 2005? Are you claiming that the USDA, the National Academy of Sciences etc. etc. are all either being duped or are deliberately misleading us? If so, to what end? I think you are being rather selective in the informtion you want to present but if you think that maybe you should include a section where you lay out the evidence for your idea. You could call it "Dyanega's hypothesis" of why everyone else is wrong and I'm right. Just curious, are there any leading scientific organiztions out there which also think that this is all being overblown? Any cites?

"Over the past two decades, concern has grown around the world about apparent reductions in the abundance of pollinators of all descriptions, with declines reported on no fewer than four continents. During this same time period in the U.S., the western honey bee Apis mellifera, the world’s premier managed pollinator species, experienced dramatic population declines, primarily as a result of the accidental introduction in the 1980s of two bloodsucking parasitic mites ... Even before CCD came to light, our committee estimated that, if honey bee numbers continue to decline at the rates documented from 1989 to 1996, managed honey bees will cease to exist by 2035 ... That honey bees are experiencing losses on an unprecedented scale, however, was essentially predicted by the report ... CCD has accelerated the rate of colony loss, and beekeepers as well as growers need immediate relief" [5] also [6][7][8][9]. 63.196.193.249 (talk) 22:13, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Half of all the bee colonies in the US were lost primarily due to beekeepers scaling down or going out of business intentionally, not death of colonies. A bee colony can be replaced very easily - you can, after all, just buy more bees, like beekeepers did this spring (there are just about as many colonies in the US at this moment as there were last year at this time, NOT counting the beekeepers who chose to close up shop rather than re-stock). This article is specifically about CCD, which is a phenomenon that no one understands, even now. CCD may have little or even nothing to do with the loss of bee colonies between 1980 and 2005 - and like any syndrome with no visible cause, bee scientists outside of MAAREC are still non-committal as to whether CCD is a genuine entity, or just a fancy label for something a lot simpler, like "stressed colony die-off". There are no "leading scientific organizations" that go around rendering their opinions of the latest news items in science. It was many years after AIDS was first documented before someone figured out the link to HIV, and there were plenty of skeptical scientists who weren't prepared to accept AIDS as a true disease until that link was established - but there are other human ailments which, to this day, STILL have not been shown to have a definitive cause (or, in some cases, treatment), and the way Wikipedia treats those is allowing for the possibility that they are NOT diseases. The goal of Wikipedia is not to follow or promote speculation, however widespread or popular, without indicating PRECISELY how speculative it is. CCD is still speculative, and it's not a matter of believing there's a fraud, nor do I have a "hypothesis" - it's a matter of reporting here what has actually been published, and there is precious little of substance so far. Dyanega (talk) 22:32, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Incidentally, if you read the references you cite carefully, you'll note that they generally say the same thing I've been placing in the article - e.g., "It is not clear whether the current spate of losses, dubbed 'Colony Collapse Disorder' by some, is a new problem, a result of existing problems that have beleaguered the industry for a number of years, or both." and "It is important to bear in mind that our understanding of the current phenomenon is in a very early stage and will change as new facts become available." - and, regarding the losses of bees over the last few decades, those genuine losses that have occurred have been blamed pretty definitively on the invading mites, not on some "mystery ailment". The jury is still out on CCD, no matter how much the press may indicate otherwise, and Wikipedia articles should not indulge in pre-supposing what the jury will decide. Dyanega (talk) 22:42, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with pretty much all of what you said. But consider, if CCD is "a result of existing problems that have beleaguered the industry for a number of years" then you'd have to add in those other non-CCD losses with those attributable to CCD and then the loss stats would go even higher. We probably should be combining them anyway, (maybe science will give the whole bee loss phenomenon taken together a new name). IOW, whether or not it's technically CCD or some other cause(s), the bees we rely on are apparently going away, correct? As the continuation of the above sentence states "Whatever the cause, the losses are real" [10]. That's the basic issue and if true, and science is strongly implying that it is, should we not be doing all we can to remedy the situation by looking honestly at all possible causes and all possible remedies intelligently even if those answers might upset somebody's applecart? If you think it's not happening you'll need to provide credible sources that say that. But as long as science is strongly implying that CCD is occurring and is potentially an awful thing we need to edit the article accordingly (with caveats about the uncertainty factor of course). 63.196.193.204 (talk) 02:46, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

By the way, is it specifically MAAREC then that you are claiming is exaggerating or misrepresenting the facts to the world? If so why? 63.196.193.57 (talk) 15:45, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

The loss stats are what the loss stats are - they won't go "even higher" - and it again neglects that most of the bee colonies lost this past winter have already been replaced. Bees are living organisms, and a renewable resource that can be renewed faster than they die off. Even those hardest-hit beekeepers who lost 75% of their colonies could potentially be back to full strength within a single season. The NET loss of colonies is, therefore, primarily a question of economics and scale; a beekeeper who loses 75% of his colonies may decide it's not worth his trouble to replace them, and THOSE colonies become part of the net loss. The basic issue is that we're losing beekeepers - if every rural family in America adopted a beehive, we could have 100 times more bees than we have today, but that would not make CCD any more or less real a phenomenon: the loss of bees is a larger and a DIFFERENT problem from the topic of this article, and this article needs to focus on CCD and not go off on tangents. You also seem to have the way science and evidence proceed turned around backwards - when a scientific claim is made, the burden of proof rests on those who made the claim, not on the rest of us. No credible sources have yet to come forth and state that CCD exists outside of the US, for example, and no credible sources have yet to give a specific causal agent or factor behind CCD. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist outside of the US, or that it doesn't have a causal agent or factor. But WP articles reflect what the credible, authoritative sources have to say, and in that respect there is nothing that needs to be fixed in the present article. As for MAAREC, an objective editor understands the difference between a potentially biased source and an unbiased source - they are a potentially biased source of information. No one here, myself included, has accused them of exaggeration or misrepresentation. What they have said has been quoted, but it is not the job of an editor to treat what someone says as undisputed fact, when even the people saying it acknowledge that it's all preliminary and largely speculation. Dyanega (talk) 18:26, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, let me put it ths way, I, and perhaps many others, would be interested if you, being the apparent reigning expert of this page, but who doesn't buy the idea of CCD, could write a section outlining the evidence against it with credible cites. I don't ask as a challenge because I don't think you can do it but because it would fit in the the article. Lots of controversial articles have a pro and con section. This would also allow you to expand on this aspect of the issue, and combine it in one area, rather than scattered bits throughout, especially as you do seem to be eager to get this point across. 63.196.193.57 (talk) 19:07, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I'll say it again: that is NOT how evidence works. This page is a place to put the evidence FOR CCD (and theories about potential causes) using credible cites. What evidence has been published by credible sources IS cited here already! What else needs to be added that I have missed? What additional cites do you believe need to be included here? It's not a matter of debate, or pro and con - if Wikipedia had existed when cold fusion was first reported, the way the article would have read is "Pons and Fleischmann claim to have demonstrated cold fusion" (and then given the citation to their work). THAT is an NPOV sentence, and would have been appropriate from Day One, even before there was any debate or concern over the accuracy of their report (what the article could NOT have said is "Cold fusion has been demonstrated by Pons and Fleischmann" - that is a statement of opinion, implying the truth of the claim). There doesn't have to BE a "con" side in order to follow NPOV. You seem to be saying that using NPOV phrasing is wrong, because you think popular opinion has accepted the phenomenon, but NPOV doesn't require an editor to give credibility to popular opinion, just to credible sources, and the credible sources are still non-committal on this issue, so the article will reflect this. For the record, since you seem so dead set on your belief that you understand my opinion, I do believe that there is a real phenomenon behind CCD - but that is totally irrelevant to how I or anyone else should edit this article. Just because I believe it's happening doesn't mean that I should abandon my objectivity. I'm a scientist and a bee biologist, I know what objectivity is and how to maintain it. I can believe in something and still be utterly skeptical. That's how science works. Dyanega (talk) 19:35, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Fine. Sorry to have troubled you. 63.196.193.57 (talk) 00:15, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Dyanega, it's time to stop feeding the troll. You've explained the issues more than clearly enough. Including the fact that neither you nor anyone else owns this article. The page represents our collective understanding of the current scientific findings on the topic. If the anon wants to challenge the existence or non-existence of CCD, he/she needs to go question the researchers publishing on the topic, not keep harassing the people reading this Talk page. Rossami (talk) 21:06, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

That was uncalled for. You, sir are a jerk. 63.196.193.57 (talk) 00:15, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Just putting some personal thoughts here I have noticed (at least in my Area in SW USA) that ants and ladybugs are in short numvers too. Might be due to our dryer seasons, but I am concerned. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.141.238.102 (talk) 04:32, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

"Possible effects" section - what about the rest of the world?

This section deals exclusively with possible effects in the US, where - as is stated - "no native plants require honey bee pollination, except where concentrated in monoculture situations". However, the lead mentions that effects similar to CCD have been observed in much of Europe, where honey bees are native. I am rather surprised that a Good Article would have such an obvious omission; I hope someone will do something about this soon. 86.132.137.5 (talk) 14:21, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

If you can find reliable sources that discuss the existence and impacts of CCD elsewhere, then please go ahead and include them. Most of the European literature seems to be focused on trying to link CCD to GMO crops, which has been completely excluded as a possibility by all of the leading CCD research groups, so adding more of the same hardly seems a fair and balanced representation of the issue (it already takes up more article space than it should, given how little support the theory has). Wikipedia gathers existing information, after all, rather than supplying original analysis. As an aside, I know of no plants anywhere in the world - US, Europe, or otherwise - that have ONLY honey bees as pollinators. That isn't to say that a few may not exist somewhere, but any such plants certainly don't appear to be documented, which suggests that they aren't major components of any ecosystem. Natural systems tend to have a fair bit of redundancy, and given that there are nearly 20,000 bee species other than honey bees, it should not come as a surprise that most non-agricultural plants would still get pollinated even if honey bees were to vanish. Dyanega (talk) 18:03, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

UK

The UK, not mentioned, calls this the Mary Celeste syndrom: BBC News details. --Wetman (talk) 16:11, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

My error. Found it, hidden away. --Wetman (talk) 16:14, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

PLease UPDATE

This section Colony_collapse_disorder#Possible_causes_and_research references a symposium scheduled for Dec 2007, which has passed. Can someone who knows this subject please address this? A GA shouldn't be 5 months out of date. ThuranX (talk) 18:48, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Also, Haagen-Daaz is now sponsoring research; would corporate private funding be notable for this? ThuranX (talk) 18:50, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Encore Software is also sponsoring research via a rlationship with the Pollinator Partnership. Casual Gamers who purchase the onlien game BEEBO DELUXE can rest assured that they are gaming for good: a portion of the proceeds will benefit CCD and honeybee health research. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Daphmax (talk • contribs) 22:35, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

If you have some reliable sources, preferrably press releases by the companies involved, then I'd say that would be fair game for inclusion here. As for the symposium, no proceedings appear to have been made available to the public, as far as I can see. In fact, there seems to be virtually nothing about CCD actually released by any of the researchers studying the phenomenon recently...despite a continuing stream of things from the press, mostly quoting beekeepers and not bee researchers. The article may be falling a bit behind, but I would argue that it's better to wait for some authoritative sources to appear rather than simply echoing the mass media, which still comes across as pretty near hysterical. I'm particularly astonished that the news articles are giving figures for this winter's die-off at 35% and saying that this is an INCREASE from the previous year's die-off. Note that the previous year's die-off was estimated at around 45%, which means that someone, somewhere, appears to be cooking the proverbial books to make things sound like they're getting worse, when things actually improved. Dyanega (talk) 00:15, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

earth's magnetic poles

These two articles, takne together, make clear that changes in the magnetic fields of Earth, including a possible magnetic pole reversal may be afoot and could possibly affect bees.

• http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/pf/58784286.html
• http://www.setiai.com/archives/000064.html

While we don't want to advance novel theories, we should look into the magnetic pole theory and see if it is being mentioned as a CCD cause. 216.153.214.89 (talk) 01:52, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Popular culture/ Fiction

There have been references to the CCD phenomena in various fiction media, such as the TV series Doctor Who and the movie The Happening- shouldn't these warrant a mention in the article, since a lot of people would be coming searching for the meaning behind the phrase "The bees are disappearing", even if such fictional references do associate CCD to a non-factual cause? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.151.47.232 (talk) 00:22, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

No, there should not be such a section. It would add nothing but trivia to the page. Rossami (talk) 03:40, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

correction of references

Please note that these two reference must be corrected.
Instead of:
^ Bortolotti L, Monanari R, Marcelino J and Porrini P. (2003). "Effects of sub-lethal imidacloprid doses on the homing rate and foraging activity of honey bees". Bulletin of Insectology 56 (1): pp. 63–67.
^ Medrzycki P, Monntanari L, Bortolotti L, Sabatinin S and Maini S.. "Effects of imidacloprid administered in sub-lethal doses on honey bee behaviour. Laboratory tests". Bulletin of Insectology 56 (1): 59–62.

Please change in:
^ Bortolotti L, Montanari R, Marcelino J, Medrzycki P, Maini S, Porrini C. (2003). "Effects of sub-lethal imidacloprid doses on the homing rate and foraging activity of honey bees"http://www.bulletinofinsectology.org/pdfarticles/vol56-2003-063-067bortolotti.pdf . Bulletin of Insectology 56 (1): pp. 63–67.
^ Medrzycki P, Montanari R, Bortolotti L, Sabatini AG, Maini S, Porrini C. (2003). "Effects of imidacloprid administered in sub-lethal doses on honey bee behaviour. Laboratory tests"http://www.bulletinofinsectology.org/pdfarticles/vol56-2003-063-067bortolotti.pdf . Bulletin of Insectology 56 (1): 59–62. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Entomo (talk • contribs) 14:06, 24 June 2008 (UTC)