I’ve recently heard of several cases of Colony Collapse Disorder here in Switzerland, for those of you who are not familiar with this phrase it means the following:
- Your bees are all gone
- There is no trace of disease
- There is no trace of pollutants
- There are no bees at all – not even dead ones, left in the hive
There have been a few comments and theories relating to the cause of colony collapse disorder ranging from the electromagnetic interference from radio transmitter towers to parasite from Israel.
One of the more recent theories to surface relates to the chemical pollution due to crop spraying.
I’ll assume that this is a new idea for you and briefly explain what it’s all about.
Consider your local farmer, he has a crop of corn in the fields that he has to spray. He buys a chemical which is approved by the state and tested accordingly. This chemical has no ill effect on bees.
The neighboring farmer has a crop of rape seed, he also needs to spray and he also buys his chemicals in a responsible manner based on government recommendations. He then sprays.
So both farmers have sprayed authorized chemicals in a responsible manner – however, who tested the chemical combination of the two on bee colonies?
Ooops! No one.
How could they?
The simple fact of the matter is that there are thousands of products out there, all individually proven and declared safe (there are also a shed load of others that aren’t classed as generally safe – I read the warning label for one in the summer, it read ‘Not safe for birds, fish or mammals’ – OR MAMMALS).
How can anyone test all the possible combinations of all the chemicals on the market?
So where am I going with this?
I wanted to take a few minutes to suggest a way that we might identify the chemical combinations which could be the cause of our problems.
Some assumptions:
A bee may fly upto 5km (max)
Wind is not a factor (no transference via wind)
Transmission of chemical pollutants occurs during either direct contact to primary source or contact direct contact via indirect source (other bee or honey comb)
So what’s the idea?
Lets have a look at Google maps (see image below).
The image shows the location of some fictitious hives.
We’ve already said that the bees will fly upto 5km – so lets add a 5km radius circle to the map (below).
Now go back to the map and add agricultural land to the map (crops not cattle for the moment).
Now that we’ve ascertained what the land usage within our 5km is we need to go and find the land owner. Here in Switzerland that’s quite easy, I can go down to the commune office (village office) and ask who owns the land – if you’re in the UK or USA this is also easily done via the land registry.
Now we know who the land owner is it’s time to go and do the really tricky part – and I can’t stress this enough, you are about to ask for help – you are not about to accuse anyone of anything.
You are now going to approach the land owner and ask him (politely)what chemicals he has used on his fields (make sure you have the picture with you).
Repeat this for all of the farms.
You should now have a complete list of used chemicals – IF you find a farmer who will not tell you which chemicals he has used on a given piece of land I suggest you go and take a sample of flora for analysis or alternatively escalate the question via your bee keeping society (who may well have more leverage than you do).
when you have the complete list of chemicals pass them to your society and ask them to proceed with it. Here in Switzerland we have the happy situation of having a research organization where we can pass this type of information, you need to find your own society/country resource.
This is a very basic idea, it can however be expanded to include other bee colonies if several colonies within a given local has suffered CCD, each colony grouping should have the same basic analysis and then the overlap should be calculated – this then would actually allow a more accurate picture of offending chemical pollution.
Finally I’d just like to state that this is my opinion only, it’s the result of some logical thought and is deliberately simplified so as to make it a plausible starting position.
I am well aware that I am not a chemist or micro biologist – but sometimes it’s the simple ideas that come from the outer periphery of a domain that make the most sense – and truthfully this article is aimed primarily at other bee keepers, I hope it inspires others to run with this idea and improve it. |
