Although nature has many other pollinators, including native bees, birds, bats, and wind, honeybees, which were brought to America from Europe, are the most important managed species. Without them, salad and fruit bowls would be empty and Californian grown almonds non-existent.
Though Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), the name scientists have given the recent disappearance, has generated a lot of attention, America’s relationship with nature’s six-legged pollinators has been on precarious footing for quite some time. Both native and commercial honeybee populations have been declining for decades; the most dramatic drop occurred in the 1990s, when the accidental introduction of two parasitic mites wiped out thousands of managed colonies. Even before CCD was identified, the National Academy of Sciences predicted that managed honeybees could cease to exist by 2035, given their current rate of decline.
Still, CCD seems to be something unique. Bees are not returning to their hives to die, as they normally do. Colonies are deserted within weeks, leaving few corpses left for autopsy. Though destructive diseases have resulted in localized population losses, CCD is widespread. It has occurred in twenty-seven states, with similar situations being reported in Canada and Europe.
Although culprits, like the single-celled, spore producing parasite Nosema ceranae have been isolated from dead bees, it may not be as simple as a one disease, one disorder problem. In colonies suffering from CCD, individual bees are found with an extremely high number of stress-related disease organisms. Just as stress can tax our immune systems and make us more susceptible to disease, it can also takes its toll on bees, who are packed into artificial living spaces, carted across the nation to fulfill pollination demands, fed a diet of corn syrup, and exposed to pesticides. The bees, it seems, are sick and tired of modern living.
Of course, this is not the first time a natural system has buckled under the demands of an increasingly industrialized, commercialized, and artificialized America. Global warming, the obesity epidemic, and species extinction are all outcomes of humans pushing nature to its most unnatural limits, only stopping to reverse course when things go noticeably wrong.
