Much has been said regarding the current status of the honey bee in America today. It seems like every other week we receive a new report on the wellbeing of hives across the country. Half of these mention that bees are heading straight toward extinction and the other half claim bees are making a dramatic comeback. While both of these do contain some truthful parts, being that bees were once heading towards extinction but have since made a mild comeback, both statements are not entirely truthful. In reality, honey bee numbers across America have started to rise for the first time in a ten-year drought yet we still see a massive decrease in functioning hives each year.
Colony-collapse disorder is the term given to bee hives suddenly and rapidly deteriorating, killing all the bees and destroying the hive. Colony-collapse has many causes but almost always occurs in the winter, when the bee population of the hive drops to its lowest. It is when the population is the smallest that factors like neonicotinoid pesticides and varroa mites can take down a whole hive. We have known about this main cause for quite some time, and much has been done to reduce the prevalence of these toxins. For instance, many states have banned the use of neonicotinoids as a pesticide to protect pollinators, and the EPA is already working on a federal ban right now.
However, the varroa mite is a different story; it is not some compound that the government can ban. The varroa mite is common brown beetle roughly the size of a nail head, found in nearly every country of the world except for Australia and other isolated countries. Varroa mites begin their lifecycle as tiny eggs laid inside the comb of a hive. Here, the mites will wait for the queen bee to lay an egg in their cell. Once the honey bee pupa, hatches so does the mite. The mite then attaches to the baby bee feeding off its blood while the bee consumes the honey and nectar in its cell. The mite will remain attached to the bee for the rest of its life, feeding off its blood, eventually killing it. Then it finds another bee to attach to. There are many common methods of removing varroa mites, from putting in varroa strips which contains a chemical deadly to the mites to even dusting the whole hive in powered sugar to prevent the mites from hanging on to the bees. Unfortunately, almost every method used was not effective enough to prevent collapse. Until now…
Researchers at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem have accidentally discovered that after feeding their bees tiny doses of Lithium Chloride nearly every varroa mite died. The concentration of lithium chloride is low enough to spare the bee, but the mites are killed off nearly as fast as the compound is applied. If further testing yields the same results as found, this could be essential in the quest to save the bees. Leaving only the regulation of noenicitinoids as a factor for extinction. In the end, much has been accomplished to prevent extinction, including policy changes, neonicotinoid bans, and new varroa treatments; however there is still a lot to be done to save our fuzzy friends.
-Tyler Carlson