The latest big movie from well known director M. Night Shyamalan features a science teacher concerned about the plight of the bees. The film is called “The Happening” and is about a mysterious mental malady that grips the nation as thousands of people are compelled to inexplicably commit suicide.
The movie will certainly expose a many people to the plight of the bees and help to educate them about Bee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a mystery plague that is decimating bee hive populations across the nation and threatening the health of the nation’s food supply.
The plight of the fictional characters in the movie somewhat mirrors the plight of the bees in the real world. Both scenarios feature what appear to be perfectly normal healthy adult organisms that suddenly and without evident cause wind up dead. And both scenarios are inspiring some foreboding dread about what these deaths may indicate for the health of the larger society and/or the environment.
According to movie reviews the as yet to be released film features Mark Wahlberg as a science teacher who tries hard to inspire his students to hypothesize why the honeybees are disappearing. I think its great that Hollywood is taking notice of this crisis. It will hopefully serve to inform a group of people about this important issue that doesn’t read the science section of the newspaper.
It often takes a movie to really imprint an issue onto the consciousness of a nation. Shortly after the huge success of the movie “The Day After Tomorrow” the public as a while began to take the climate change issue much more seriously than before. The movie featured a highly fictionalized version of the natural disasters that might occur due to global warming.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Bee Deaths Occur in Strange and Mysterious Manner
Perhaps the most confounding aspect of Bee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is the strange and mysterious manner in which the deaths have occurred. Bees that eventually die from CCD seem to be perfectly normal healthy bees from the pupa to the larva stage, all the way up to being robust productive adults. Then one day they suddenly and without evident cause die.
When CCD first struck it was sometimes described as ‘missing bee syndrome’ because the bees would leave the hive and never come back. Even their dead bodies were often never found. More recently CCD seems to affect entire hives in an alarmingly swift blow that leaves up to 70 percent of the hive dead. But so far no obvious cause has emerged, and that is highly unusual.
Researchers have a long history of dealing with various plagues and infirmaries that have struck the bee population. From viruses to parasites to fungus, managed bee hives have weathered many storms over the last century or so. But etymologists and bee keepers have always been able to keep pace with the plagues and have aggressively moved to counter every threat to the hives. CCD is proving to be a unique challenge.
Each specific threat to the hive has unique and readily identifiable features. If its bacterial in nature, the bacteria often show up in sample of bees in the larval stage. Fungus’ are discovered by testing dead bees and by taking samples of bee hives. Viruses are identified by testing dead bees and then finding a common virus. But this time no fungus can be found, no bacteria is associated with CCD, and no common virus has been identified.
I asked Jay Evans at the US Department of Agriculture’s bee research facility in Beltsville, Ohio about this issue.
“We have dealt with other diseases in bees before but we could always find some pathology, some real sign of the disease itself,” he said. “For instance, if its bacterial you actually see some bacteria samples in the larvae as they develop. With CCD this is the first time we have had really heavy bee losses without any of the usual suspects showing up or any of the signs you might expect.”
The fact that the bees that eventually succumb to CCD are strong and healthy from egg to adult is raising serious questions about the nature of CCD.
“The larvae themselves which are usually the weak link in the colony are looking very healthy to us,” said Evans. “So far it just seems to be something that effects the adult bees. Whatever it is, is not showing itself in turns of typical disease symptoms.”
When CCD first struck it was sometimes described as ‘missing bee syndrome’ because the bees would leave the hive and never come back. Even their dead bodies were often never found. More recently CCD seems to affect entire hives in an alarmingly swift blow that leaves up to 70 percent of the hive dead. But so far no obvious cause has emerged, and that is highly unusual.
Researchers have a long history of dealing with various plagues and infirmaries that have struck the bee population. From viruses to parasites to fungus, managed bee hives have weathered many storms over the last century or so. But etymologists and bee keepers have always been able to keep pace with the plagues and have aggressively moved to counter every threat to the hives. CCD is proving to be a unique challenge.
Each specific threat to the hive has unique and readily identifiable features. If its bacterial in nature, the bacteria often show up in sample of bees in the larval stage. Fungus’ are discovered by testing dead bees and by taking samples of bee hives. Viruses are identified by testing dead bees and then finding a common virus. But this time no fungus can be found, no bacteria is associated with CCD, and no common virus has been identified.
I asked Jay Evans at the US Department of Agriculture’s bee research facility in Beltsville, Ohio about this issue.
“We have dealt with other diseases in bees before but we could always find some pathology, some real sign of the disease itself,” he said. “For instance, if its bacterial you actually see some bacteria samples in the larvae as they develop. With CCD this is the first time we have had really heavy bee losses without any of the usual suspects showing up or any of the signs you might expect.”
The fact that the bees that eventually succumb to CCD are strong and healthy from egg to adult is raising serious questions about the nature of CCD.
“The larvae themselves which are usually the weak link in the colony are looking very healthy to us,” said Evans. “So far it just seems to be something that effects the adult bees. Whatever it is, is not showing itself in turns of typical disease symptoms.”
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