USDA Bee Survey Hopes to Find Cause of Colony Collapse Disorder

There's been a lot of buzz lately about colony collapse disorder (CCD), a mysterious condition killing off swarms of U.S. honeybees every year. A new USDA-sponsored survey hopes to finally nail down CCD's cause. The government agency announced on Monday that specialists from the Agricultural Research Service and Penn State University will survey apiaries from 13 states in an effort learn more about CCD.

The survey will use $550,000 of government funding allocated in the 2007 Farm Bill. Rather than conduct a full-on bee census, scientists will focus on mortality and health problems of 320 specific apiaries throughout 13 states. Specialists plan on collecting bees and debris from various hives, and then test them for the presence of pests, pathogens, and foreign mites.

The research project comes not a moment too soon: Since CCD first appeared in 2006, some beekeepers claim they've lost between 30 and 90 percent of their hives. According to a story in the Miami Herald, an Agriculture Department telephone survey conducted last year found that apiaries lost 29 percent of their honeybee colonies between September of 2008 and April of 2009.

And while losing bees means losing all that sweet honey, the real problem here is the impact CCD could have on agriculture. Honeybees pollinate a huge percentage of the nation's crops. California's almond crop, for example, relies on more than 1.4 million colonies of bees annually, about half of America's entire bee population. If bees continue to disappear, it stands to reason that the food crops we rely on so heavily will disappear, too. One of the greatest threats to the nation's food security could be the ailing health of little, ol' bees.

I'm hopeful that the USDA survey can come up with some good insight into what exactly is causing this disorder, but the research is hardly the first of its kind. Scientists have been scratching their heads over CCD's cause since the problem first appeared in 2006. Over the past four years, explanations ranging from microbes and viruses to cell phone use to pesticides and environmental stress have all been offered up as potential culprits. Despite all that research, we still know very little about CCD.

The USDA survey runs through the end of the year. We'll keep you posted on any advances made in CCD research. In the meantime, keep your fingers crossed for the poor buzzers.

Photo credit: Fir0002 via Wikimedia Commons