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There’s a great article about collapsing bee colonies at Salon.

To the bee, a flower is a fountain of life, and to the flower, a bee is a messenger of love.

- Kahlil Gibran

From a carefully written overview of collapse disorder at physorg.com.

One of the compelling subjects Michael Schacker tackles in A Spring without Bees is the perplexing way colony collapse disorder has been covered by the U.S. media.

Here’s a quote:
Rather than giving CCD the serious investigation that it deserves, the U.S. media sometimes has even presented the ongoing catastrophe as a joke or an oddball type of story.

And another:
In a syrupy tone of voice usually reserved for the birth of baby pandas, CNN newswoman Frederica Whitfield exclaimed, “Where have all the honey bees gone?” “No one knows” was the answer given in her report. In light of having just studied the history of the French IMD/honey bee controversy, watching the broadcast was a surreal moment. Nowhere had the media reported the true history of the insecticide battle in France, especially omitting the fact that the French bees came back in 2005. Colony collapse disorder is typically presented as a mystery in the U.S., a puzzle that no one on Earth can definitively give the answer to.

Hmm… There are clear reasons why those with money to lose would prefer CCD to stay shrouded in mystery. It’s less clear why the media, especially TV and video, haven’t done a better job exploding the mystery meme.

As a person with a foot in each world – beekeeping and filmmaking – this is especially interesting to me. Here are three reasons why I think TV media has so far failed to report the full story about pesticides and CCD.

THE MYSTERY IS SEDUCTIVE
There’s something about the CCD mystery story that’s… seductive. The idea that our honeybees are – poof – disappearing has a dark magic about it. It alludes to all the things that make us anxious about the environment while rendering us helpless.

SCIENTISTS ARE MORE CREDIBLE THAN BEEKEEPERS
So far, the story U.S. scientists are telling about CCD (that it’s a tough-to-crack mystery with multiple causes) is different from the story some beekeepers are telling (that there’s a problem with the crops bees are foraging on and it looks like pesticides). Both speak from observation. But their conclusions are different. Whom to believe? My guess is that a soft spoken scientist riding the research train is going to sound more credible to a university trained filmmaker than an impassioned beekeeper. Both may be interviewed. But the scientist’s side gets more weight.

Why scientists & beekeepers aren’t quite matching up is another story… better told by Schacker in A Spring without Bees.

NO JOURNALISM DEGREE REQUIRED
Stories get told differently on TV than they do in print. (Filmmakers are more story-arc oriented than newspaper reporters are.) Documentary filmmakers may care about truth and approach the facts of a story with the same time and care as a newspaper reporter but arrive at the process with a different point of view and training.

So you throw those three things together… a culturally potent story told by a story-sensitive filmmaker with pro-scientist bias and you get…

Something less than probing.

When I wrote about Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in September 2007 it appeared as though scientists had identified a pathogen (Israeli Acute Paraylsis Virus) responsible for the massive bee die-offs of 2006 through today. Alas, it didn’t take long for scientists to disprove IAPV as the primary cause of CCD. Since then the prevailing story’s been that CCD is a complex syndrome resulting from multiple stressors working in concert to kill the bees.

Well, dear readers, I just finished reading Michael Schacker’s new book A Spring without Bees. It feels as though the scales have fallen from my eyes. Shacker makes a compelling case that a single substance, the chemical pesticide imidacloprid (IMD), may be responsible for the bee deaths currently categorized under CCD.

A few of Schacker’s points:

• In the United States and France there are strong geographic links between IMD and colony collapse disorder.

• The advertised benefits of the IMD product PREMISE (for termite control) closely match the symptoms presented by a collapsing colony of honeybees. According to the PREMISE label the termites “stop feeding and are unable to maintain their colony” and “makes termites susceptible to infection by naturally occurring organisms.”

• American media has grossly underreported scientific research and policies coming out of France (and now Germany) that show a strong link between CCD and IMD, choosing instead to emphasize the mysterious aspects of CCD.

This is an important book. It’s passionately and clearly written. Carefully researched. A pleasure to read. Highly recommended for anyone seeking new insights into what’s ailing the honeybees.

They’ve done it! Scientists have identified a pathogen associated with honeybee colony collapse disorder. It’s a virus (Israeli acute paralysis virus). And although it’s what differentiates dead colonies from healthy ones it may not be the single cause of this year’s dramatic bee deaths. Other factors could include drought or the mass trucking of bees from one region to another for pollination. There’s some good reporting on the topic at NPR and the New York Times.

Based on my own personal experience drought has little to do with nectar flow – the recent drought years here in Colorado were some of our biggest honey years yet. This year by contrast, a year in which we got a decent amount of spring and summer rain, has been a slim one for honey production. Go figure. Although I can’t speak with authority on the scientific relationship between drought and honey production – I’m leaning toward the mass trucking of bees as a second possible stressor related to colony collapse disorder. We’ll have to see…

There’s a good article in the New York Times about a mysterious new syndrome hitting honeybees. Some people are calling it Sudden Bee Death. (You need to register at NYTimes.com to read the article but registration is free.) This is a scary syndrome. Noone’s really sure what’s going on. It’ll be interesting to see what develops.

On a happier note, our bees appear alive and well and we expect most of them to make it through the winter. Still… we’re on pins and needles waiting for more information.