Minnesota Repossessor Don Mashak 's Thoughts on Honey bees and Colony Collapse Disorder

My Grandfather introduced me to the Hobby of Keeping Honeybees in my youth. In those days, the management of honey bees included mainly wrapping them for winter, burning colonies infected with American Foulbrood, harvesting honey and protecting unprotected honeycomb from Wax Moths.

A lot has changed since then and I believe these are the root cause of the phenomenon known Collectively as Colony Collapse Disorder. In a nutshell, I believe Colony Collapse disorder is an amalgam of 4 different adversities inflicted on Colonies.

These 3 Adversities are:
1) Pesticides;
2) Chemical Treatments of Disease and Pests;
3) The use of High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS);
4) Super-Diseases caused by excess treatments administered by the Bee Keeper.

The first is simply the widespread use of old and especially newly created insecticides. Honeybees simply fly into farmers field's or suburban flowers, bushes and lawns that have been treated with pesticide and they die, never to return to the colony. Normally very discriminating, other hive mates from the same colony continue to go to the source of the problem pesticide because their sources of food have been greatly constricted. Urban Expansion and Monolithic Crop cultures have replaced normal "honey bee pasture".

The Second is the the use of a variety of chemicals by the bee keeper to control various diseases and pest of the honey bee. Hive Beatles, Varoa Mites, Nosema, American Foul Brood and European Foul Brood
are amongst the adversities that honey bees face which we "treat" with various chemicals. I submit that these very chemicals cause honeybees to leave their hive to escape the painful reactions to and toxicity of these very chemicals.

The third is the use of High Fructose Corn Syrup for feeding bees to stimulate brood rearing in the spring and to top off the honey bees winter stores in the fall. It has been demonstrated that honey bees need a diet with sucrose sugar in it. HFCS contains insufficient sucrose in it. When the price ratio of Honey to HFCF made replacing virtually all the honey that the honeybee colony overwintered on with HFCF, the honeybees weakened and died of malnutrition.

And lastly, the rise of Super-Resistant-Diseases. Simply, treatments have been over-used and the intended and unintended diseases have developed a resistance to the various chemicals and agents intended to kill them. The dynamic process of the evolution of these super diseases is the result of to forms of natural selection. Diseases and Pests that are resistant to the treatments survive and make each successive generation of the disease/pest even more resistant to the treatment. Worse, the honeybess, artificially protected from their environment never develope resistance to the disease and bugs. Because of the intevention of drugs and chemicals, the unmitigated exposure to the disease/pests necessary to promote natural selection for resistance to the diseases and pests, does not occur.

SUPER COLONY

The above pictured colonies include a colony that I believe is resistant to the last cause of colony collaps disorder. The Tallest Colony pictured had a 4 frame and a 3 frame split taken from it in spring of 2008. As you can see from the picture, it still produced a large surplus of honey.

So what, the average bee keeper says. The "So what"
is that the colony has not been treated with any chemicals or drugs for 2 years. And I have added 30% sugar any time I fed with HFCS. I am currently working to replicate these gene pool.

The point is, I took some heavy losses for a few years but now these honeybees seem to have developed a resistance to Coloney Collapse Disorder not related to pesticides. I encourage all bee keepers to start developing their own "resistant" honeybees.