XXII CNIE - Accademia nazionale italiana di Entomologia

COLONY COLLAPSE DISORDER—APIS-POCALYPSE NOW?
May R. Berenbaum
Department of Entomology 320 Morrill Hall University of Illinois 505 S Goodwin
Urbana IL 61801-3795
In order to grow and reproduce, virtually all plants require sunlight, water, nutrients, and
some means of reducing the risks of herbivory; for about 80% of the planet’s flowering
plants, an additional require is an animal partner to facilitate pollination. In the process
of domesticating crops, humans have over the millennia developed a broad diversity of
ways to meet the needs of crop plants for water, nutrients and protection from herbivory.
However, for at least 90 crops in the United States, delivery of pollination services has
been provided almost exclusively by the semi-domestication of one species—Apis
mellifera, the western honey bee. Thus, pollination services contributed by the honey
bee are worth an estimated $15 billion annually (NAS 2007).
Despite this heavy dependency upon a single species, there has been relatively little
investment in improving the apiculture industry and a series of problems experienced
over the last quarter century, including the accidental introduction of parasitic mites,
small hive beetles, and Africanized bees, has led to a demonstrable decline in both the
number of beekeepers and the number of colonies available for pollination. A study of
the status of pollinators in North America, published in 2007, pointed out the inherent
instability of the beekeeping industry and predicted that, “if it were to continue to
decline at the rates exhibited from 1947 to 1972 and from 1989 to 1996, it would vanish
by 2035” (p. 118, NAS 2007).
Although the release of the report in October 2006 did not garner much attention, the
predictions soon appeared to be prescient. Starting in November 2006, reports began to
surface among American beekeepers of catastrophic losses of unknown origin. Losses
are commonplace in the beekeeping industry, but the constellation of symptoms
characterizing these particular losses, including a sudden reduction in the number of
foragers, an absence of dead bodies in or near the colony, the presence of abundant
brood, honey and pollen, and an apparent reluctance of hive pests to colonize afflicted
hives, had not been seen previously (van Engelsdorp et al. 2007). Within a year, this
phenomenon, called colony collapse disorder, had been reported in over 30 states in the
United States; similar sudden losses were also reported in Europe, South America, and
parts of Asia. To date, losses associated with CCD have exceeded in duration, magnitude
and extent any previous U.S. disappearances. In the U.S., losses over the winter of 2006-
2007 were estimated at 23% (Cox-Foster et al. 2007) and over the winter of 2007-2008
at 36% (van Engelsdorp et al. 2008).
Extraordinary measures allowed U.S. growers to meet their need for pollination services
despite the spread of CCD; the phenomenon, however, stimulated a renewed interest in
investigating apicultural practices and honey bee biology. Hypotheses, ranging from
plausible to supernatural, proliferated throughout 2007; among the less plausible,
enthusiastically advocated by certain segments of the population but rejected largely on
epidemiological grounds by beekeepers and bee biologists, included genetically
modified corn pollen, elevated carbon dioxide, cell phones, and jet chemical contrails.
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