By DOUG GRAVES
Ohio Correspondent

LOVELAND, Ohio — Up until 2000, honeybees and bee collectors flourished and reigned as one of the most popular hobbies around. But since that time the number of collectors increased while hives across the Midwest and elsewhere suffered huge mortality rates. For a few years bee experts pointed to trachael and varroa mites. Most recently entomologists have blamed it on colony collapse disorder, or CCD.

“CCD is the global answer to anything we don’t have a clear answer for,” says Dr. James Tew, associate professor of entomology at Ohio State University.

Tew, an authority in addressing issues relating to honeybees, was one of the presenters at this year’s Southwest Ohio Beekeeping School held in Loveland last month. Tew said there is validity to nationwide reports that herbicides, pesticides and lawn fertilizer play a major role in CCD.

“There’s truth to those claims,” Tew said. “Honeybees have always been an environmental indicator. The average bee will forage over amazing distances and cover up to 15,000 acres and they come in contact with all types of stuff. So the hive eventually becomes a sampling of what the bees stumble into.

“For the most part honeybees are not affected by these chemicals and we believe they take low levels of chemicals back to the hives with them. So in reality CCD could be pests in the hive, pests outside the hive, it could be nutritional problems, could be genetics, or could be our management of our bee colonies. We’re still not sure.”

What Tew is sure of, though, is varroa still plays a key role in problems affecting hives.

“The varroa mite is at the crux of this mess because they vector a virus of contaminates which results in poorly developed populations of bees that don’t survive the winter very well,” Tew said.
While bee colonies are steadily declining, interest in the hobby is not wavering.

“Beekeeping is undergoing a nice revival and more people are meeting across the country right now,” Tew said. “A study shows that in 50 percent of these gatherings, there are people with two or less years experience in beekeeping. We need these new people. They don’t need to be young in age, just young in energy.”