Beekeepers are worried, and we should be, too. A mysterious new malady called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has hit hives across America and Europe, and every few months the mainstream media swarm around the story when some new silver bullet explanation appears. This is because without bees as pollinators, agricultural production -- read: "food I eat" -- will suffer dramatically and we are talking billions of dollars a year.
This time the explanation is a "new" virus called Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (ADPV) which was discovered in Israel in 2004 and has apparently spread out from there. Some say it may be responsible for the problem. More careful writers (and readers of the scientific literature) would say that it is an "indicator" because it has been found in many of the hives that have suffered from CCD.
This is despite the fact that worker bees killed by the virus are found near their hives, while those affected by CCD simply disappear and leave the hives empty of adult workers. The smarter money knows that biological systems are intricate, and there is rarely a single cause or effect at work.Nonetheless, some things are more disruptive than others. Many beekeepers lay the blame instead at the feet of an insecticide, Imidacloprid, that happened to come into wide use shortly before the bee problems surfaced. I should note that there have been no reports of CCD or IAPV amongst organic beekeepers.
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