What is causing the disappearance of honey bees?

Question

This is a pretty dire situation. If honey bees completely disappear, plants and flowers including fruit trees and other agricultural plant life will no longer be pollinated, and a third of the world's food supply will disappear. We have to find the problem quickly...

Answer 1

Many believe that our increasing use of chemical pesticides and herbicides, which bees ingest during their daily pollination rounds, are largely to blame. Commercial beehives are also subjected to direct chemical fumigation at regular intervals to ward off destructive mites. Another leading suspect is genetically modified crops, which may generate pollen with compromised nutritional value.

It may be that the build-up of both synthetic chemicals and genetically modified crop pollen has reached a "tipping point," stressing bee populations to the point of collapse. Lending credence to this theory is that organic bee colonies, where chemicals and genetically modified crops are avoided, are not experiencing the same kind of catastrophic collapses, according to the non-profit Organic Consumers Association.

Bee populations may also be vulnerable to other factors, such as the recent increase in atmospheric electromagnetic radiation as a result of growing numbers of cell phones and wireless communication towers. The increased radiation given off by such devices may interfere with bees' ability to navigate. A small study at Germany's Landau University found that bees would not return to their hives when mobile phones were placed nearby. Further research is currently underway in the U.S. to determine the extent of such radiation-related phenomena on bees and other insect populations.

Answer 2

They aren't disappearing. Not in my backyard, or out in the woods in the Hill Country, anyway.

Answer 3

This phenomenon is called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). It is now believed that CCD is caused by a virus related to Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus.