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In the winter of 2006, a number of honey bees disappeared overnight in various parts of the United States. The hive and the queen bee in the hive remained, but all the other worker bees disappeared at once. There were no traces of dead bees around. In addition to the U.S. case of this year, similar phenomena have occurred in the South America, Europe, Asia, and other parts of the world from before 2006 to the present. This phenomenon of honey bees disappearing is called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).
Colony Collapse Disorder is also called the Mary Celeste phenomenon. It is named after the Mary Celeste, a ship that was found drifting unmanned off the coast of Portugal in 1872. All the people disappeared, leaving only the ship, and the case is still unsolved. The name "Mary Celeste" is derived from the similarity between "disappearance leaving only the ship" and "disappearance leaving only the beehive.
A similar phenomenon to CCD is the mass death of honeybees in many parts of the world (including Japan). The causes of mass bee deaths and disappearances have not been identified. Possible causes include plague, viruses, and mites; pesticides and insecticides; electromagnetic waves emitted by smartphones and other machines; genetically modified crops used to prevent pests; and stress. In the U.S. in particular, in order to have bees pollinate crops in time for flowering, the bees are loaded onto trucks with hives and moved around the U.S. Many of the places where they are transported are herbicides. In many of the places where they are transported, a crop is grown without any other plants due to herbicides. The stress caused by this movement and environmental change has been cited as the cause of mass bee deaths and disappearances.
Today, many crops such as almonds, peaches, pears, cherries, raspberries, blackberries cranberries, soybeans, apples, cherries, strawberries, cucumbers, melons, and watermelons rely on bee pollination. There are nearly 100 species of crops in the U.S. that have pollen carried by bees and other insects, meaning that one-third of all crops are dependent on bee pollination.
The number of bees in the U.S. and Europe is decreasing every year due to mass die-offs and disappearances. Farmers are suffering economically as the price of bees is higher and crop yields are lower. (In Latin America, Asia, and Africa, the number of bees is increasing, and worldwide, the number of bees is increasing.) We do not know what will happen in the future, but if more of these phenomena occur and bees continue to disappear or die in large numbers, our diet may be affected.
For more information about the honey industry, click here.
