At the Trout Lake Farmers’ Market in East Vancouver, beekeeper Vladimir Cukor is one of the lucky ones. His honeybees in Maple Ridge, BC, haven’t been affected by colony collapse disorder (CCD), the infamous “missing bee” phenomenon that has affected a notable portion of American bee colonies.

CCD is defined as the unexplained, rapid disappearance of a bee colony’s adult population, leaving behind either no bees or only a few, usually a queen and young workers, and sometimes plenty of food stores.

Canadian beekeepers reported bee losses almost double the norm (29 percent) of about 550,000 bee colonies over last winter, and in some places the rate was significantly higher. But it’s not CCD, says provincial apiculturist Paul van Westendorp of the BC Ministry of Agriculture and Lands. “We don’t have enough credible scientific evidence to claim that CCD is here,” he says.

Van Westendorp points out that the number of bees has been steadily declining over the past 20 years. He calls the CCD phenomenon a “huge pile of noise” that the media have helped in blowing out of proportion.

Still, even before big headlines took over, it’s clear that something was happening to our little pollinating packhorses.

A Rose by Any Other Name?

“I could show you front page articles in bee magazines from the 1970s,” says Gus Axen of Arila Apiary, a Trout Lake farmers’ market honey vendor. “CCD is nothing new. But this situation is becoming more serious and bee losses are becoming broader.”

The first recorded year of the bee vanishing act was 1869, and they’ve occurred periodically ever since in numerous countries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as during the 1960s, 1970s, 1990s, and so on.

This isn’t to make light of the current situation. Honeybees pollinate about one out of every three bites of food. Buy your favourite fruit or berry and you can bet that your friendly neighborhood Apis mellifera was probably there ahead of you, pollinating the way to your plate. Honeybees are worth $1 billion annually to Canada’s horticulture industry.

Kevin Hackett, the national program leader for US Department of Agriculture’s bee and pollination program, told the Associated Press last year that CCD is the biggest general threat to our food supply.

Steady Decline a Modern Problem

At Arila Apiary, the Axen family is concerned about more than politicized monikers. Until recently, their 180 hives on a blueberry farm in Coquitlam, BC, had small but manageable annual bee losses.

“We used to be able to keep close to 100 percent of our colonies,” says Axen of the intensely hands-on process that has helped them avoid the higher losses recorded by bigger operations in the US.

Bee losses of 2 percent at Arila were common until about five or six years ago, after which they slid up to 10 percent, Axen relates. But last year, they hit 35 percent, which, coupled with truly miserable weather that kept the bees in the hive, meant a less than sweet year for honey–and for regular customers.

Customers such as homeopath and frequent alive contributing writer Nicole Duelli for one, who was surprised to discover while shopping that the bulk-size container of honey she usually purchased from Arila wasn’t available this year. She’d been reading about disappearing bees, so Arila’s situation brought the issue home. “I’m certainly going to keep my eyes and ears open for development,” she says.”

Duelli isn’t the only one. “It would be silly not to worry,” says Cukor of Vlad’s Apiary. “There are, for me, a lot of unanswered questions.”

A Disease-Weary Job

A trace of wistfulness is evident in his voice as Cukor discusses the past. “It used to be beautiful to beekeep,” he says. “Forty years ago, you could take bees out for the honey flow. You didn’t have to worry about bacterial diseases, and if one struck your colony, you dealt with it quickly. Today it’s a constant fight to keep your hives alive.”

Axen would concur. He knows what the main problem in their hives has been: nosema, a parasite that attacks bees’ digestive systems. It happens when bees are stressed, leading to compromised immune systems.

Vancouver writer Michelle Hancock made peace with honeybees when she spent a summer volunteering on an organic farm. michellehancock.ca

Source: alive #305, March 2008