There have been many mysterious honey bee regression cases in the United States in the past, such as in the 1880s, 1920s, and 1960s, but beginning in 2006, scientists have been concerned with the rapid decline in the honey bee population. This swift decline has brought more attention to this topic, but no real action from the government has been done about the situation. Other countries such as Europe have put a ban on certain chemicals that are believed to directly relate the fall of the honey bee. As of now, the United States has not done anything about these chemicals being used in the States. Bee farmers have been complaining about this situation since the beginning of the decline in 2006, up to 90 percent of hives were lost. Bee farmers say that their bees are just leaving the hive to pollinate and never returning. The colony collapse disorder, also known as CCD, is the name for this speedy decline in bees. Bee farmers agree that around a 15 percent loss of hives in common throughout an average winter, but in the winter of 2012 statistics say that nearly 45 percent of hives were lost. This 45 percent is 78 percent more than that was reported last winter. Some say that the honey bees may just be overworked because they are constantly transported around the country pollinating. Also, a theory evolved that cellphone towers were disorienting the honey bees enabling them to return to the hive. One that in not educated on the topic of the bee population declining might be happy due to the stinging reputation that honey bees obtain. What one does not realize is that honey bees allow us to eat many of the foods we consume on a regular basis such as, nuts, strawberries, and avocados. Not only do that help produce the food we eat, but they also help produce a plant called alfalfa which cows eat. If cows cannot eat, then they could also decline. If honey bees went extinct the human population would not end, but we would lose many healthy food options or would have to pay more for these products due to a more expensive way of pollination. There are also studies that say pesticides are the issue in the decreasing population of honey bees, but pesticide companies such as Bayer write articles that argue others accusations.  The United States of America will be affected in negative ways if the honey bee population is dissipated and the U.S. government needs to take action to fix this issue. 

In 2006 when bee farmers lost almost ninety percent of their hives scientists became very interested. At first scientists believes that pesticides are the main cause, but research kept bringing conflicting information. After further research, there was a study that actually showed that low levels of pesticides can have an effect on honey bee hives. In one study it states that the chemicals have a reaction with the honey bees brain which causes them to not find their way home. A second study indicates that the pesticides are resulting in bees not being able to produce enough food to produce new queens. The specific pesticide in question are known as neonicotinoids. This chemical circulates throughout the plant which allows it to reach the plants flowers and that is where the bees pollinate. This is known systemic chemical and is similar to nicotine. The leader in neonicotinoid pesticides is the company Bayer CropScience. Once these studies began to surface a scientist for Bayer began trying to disprove them. An ecotoxicologist at Bayer, David Fischer, said that both of these studies were faulty because the honeybees in the experiment were exposed to way too much neonicotinoid and believes that there would not be a negative effect on the honey bees if a proper dose of the chemical was used. The National Institute for Agricultural Research in France conducted an experiment which they gave honeybees sugar water that was laced with neonicotinoid then taken a less than a mile away from their hive. The research indicated that in an unaccustomed environment the bees were thirty one percent less likely to return home than the well honey bee and 10 percent less likely in a familiar environment. This experiment shows that the neonicotinoid chemical has an effect on the honey bee’s ability to return home to their hive. After conducting the amount of bees that would not return home they did a test that shows how the hive would react to this decline in bees. The scientists found that the hive’s population would drop around two thirds are more. Another experiment was done by Dr. Goulson in which he also fed the sugar water laced with neonicotinoid to 50 bee hives and fed non laced sugar water to 25 bee hives then took the bees to a farm. Dr. Goulson found that all the bees in the laced sugar water hives died besides a few queen bees’ year after year. He also realized that the bees that were given the sugar water with neonicotinoid produced eighty-five percent fewer queens. Also another researcher, Dr. Pettis, has published research that neonicotinoid lowers the honey bees’ immune system and makes them more susceptible to infections from parasitic fungi. After all this research has been done many scientists believe that pesticides are a bigger problem to the honeybees than they realized. This research pushed the European Union to put a two-year ban on these neonicotinoids in 2013. Unfortunately, in 1999 a similar ban was placed on this chemical in France but the disappearing bees kept vanishing.

Scientists also think there is a parasitic mite that is named the Varroa destructor, an Asian parasite, that could be doing all this damage. Scientists explain that this mite tunnels into a honeybees’ brain and destroys its immune system. Agriculture Department entomologist, Jeffery S. Pettis, says that “Varroa destructor is a modern honeybee plague” (Haberman). Dr. vanEngelsdorp said, “The beekeepers that are treating for varroa motea lose significantly fewer colonies than beekeepers that are not treating colonies for varroa mites,” (Shwartz). Scientists believe that this mite has a strong factor to the decrease in bee population and studies show that there has been a large amount of research into finding a cure. 

All this talk about the population of the honeybee decreasing is known as colony collapse disorder, CCD. The main indicator that CCD is present in a colony is generally the lack of mature bees in a hive. The hive will still have food and undeveloped bees, but oddly the adult bees seem to be missing. Farmers are not sure if they are leaving and dying or just not finding their way back to the hive. There will be dead bees in the hive that are diseased but there is no trace of how the illness made it to the hive. An explanation of why the hives are losing all of its honey bees is that the mature worker bees that leave to pollinate are dying at an early age which causes the hive to collapse. Another interesting fact about the crumpled hives is that the kleptoparasites that often enter dead hives to feed on the larva are nowhere to be found once the hive is analyzed. All these actions puzzled together make scientist think that this must be some sort of poisonous issue. 

There are many possible causes that could be triggering this lack of bee population. One of the many things is parasites and diseases. The average parasite and disease can cause some loss of bees but nothing compares to this dramatic decline in population. As I mentioned before scientist are interested in the parasite Varroa destructor. Although the Varroa destructor mainly infects adult bees which could explain the sudden loss of many adult bees, farmers are aware of this parasite and do not suspect this to be the problem. Scientist then considered the Tarsonemid mite, Acarapis woodi. This parasite is scattering across the United States currently and is known to attacks the trachea of mature honey bees which causes them to die. These symptoms makes scientist think that this could be causes CCD. They make this assumption because this Acarapis woodi was supposed to be the cultrate in the Isle of Wight disease, an illness that wiped out the bee population in Great Britain in 1904. But pathologist L. Bailey believes this connection of CCD and Acarapis woodi to be false. A third parasite that could be causing this epidemic is a protozoan known as Nosema apis. Nosema apis in a parasite that targets the intestines of the adult honeybees. This parasite tends to not affect the hives in great numbers but in high levels could dissipate a hive. Nosema apis is not likely to be the cause of CCD because it is apparent when this parasite is in effect. Also, Nosema apis tends to infect hives every spring which makes this parasite too common. Although this strand of Nosema is common in the United States, there has been a new strand, N. cerana, which has migrated from Asia and is now spreading through the States. This migrating strand has caused scientist to conjecture that this could be underwriting to CCD. While there are many parasites that could be causing CCD, one still needs to look into viruses that could affect grown bees. There are many viruses that adult bees carry which could potentially be a playing in CCD, but day to day honeybees do not show any symptoms from these viruses. Although adult bees do not show symptoms, if the honey bee is exposed to harsh weather, poor nourishment, or one of the parasites I mentioned above they can very well start showing symptoms of these viruses. For example, Chronic paralysis viruses can infect mature bees causing them to shake and distant themselves away from the nest to die. There are many parasites and viruses that can be affecting the honeybee and could be a factor of colony collapse disorder. 

Large honey bee farmers tend to give their colossal amount of bee with many different types of insecticides to enable them to live longer and stay healthy. These pesticides are used to deter parasites such as the Varroa destructor and A. tumida. The Varroa destructor has been in the United States since the 1980s and is treated by farmers constantly due to the fact that almost every hive is infected by this parasite. Apistan, a pesticide that was used to treat Varroa destructor, has become useless because the parasite has become immune to the compound. After this pesticide stopped working, honeybee farmers began to implement plastic strips that enclosed a pesticide, organophosphate coumophos, but this method also became worthless. Farmers began to run out of options but then ended up turning to a chemical called Amitraz. Scientist do not yet know exactly what the symptoms this chemical can produce. As farmers use more and more chemicals, a few have to not be ideal for bees. There is reason to believe that some of these chemicals may cause wax to collect on the hive’s combs causing the bees to be around residue form the chemicals. This chemical residue may cause the life span of the working bee to decrease. Some honeybee farmers might try to use a more natural way of preventing these viruses and parasites such as, essential oils and fumigation, but sadly are not as successful. If one looks at the things that could be causing CCD from this prospective it seems like the farmers are hurting their own product. 

    