Mystery of the dying bees
‘Since October 2006, 35 per cent or more of the United States’ population of the Western honey bee (Apis mellifera) – billions of individual bees – simply flew from their hive homes and disappeared.
[..] Across the 24 U.S. states affected by the mysterious phenomenon, losses have ranged up to 90 per cent. “I’ve had a couple of yards where I’ve had 200 hives and they’re down to 10 hives that are alive,” says David Bradshaw of Visalia, about 180 kilometres southeast of Los Banos along California’s Route 99.
What’s causing the carnage, however, is a total mystery; all that scientists have come up with so far is a new name for the phenomenon – Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) – and a list of symptoms.’
