Honey bees are in the mainstream news again, in Saturday’s issue of The Globe and Mail, with Is the bee virus bunk? — science writer Andrew Nikiforuk’s report on Mark Winston and the state of beekeeping.

BIOLOGY: HOW AGRICULTURE IS PUTTING POLLINATORS IN DANGER:
Is the bee virus bunk?

Last year, after three decades among the hives, Mark Winston closed both his apiary and his Simon Fraser University bee research lab. With several books to his credit, and many articles on bee biology, Winston was well established as one of the world’s leading authorities on honey bees. News of his retirement, a measure perhaps of a deep frustration with “the state of bee farming,” was received by many Canadian beekeepers with a sense of loss.

Winston continues to study the insects that have been his life’s work, however, and warns that the real crisis still lies ahead for apiculture.

In fact, colony collapse disorder may be as much a symptom of bad agricultural management as mad-cow disease among ruminants fed industrial animal feed or wasting viral diseases afflicting crowded pig factories or explosions of sea lice among farmed salmon.

By “separating bees from their keepers,” Prof. Winston argues, modern farming has increasingly exposed bees to a host of debilitating parasites, pesticides, antibiotics and malnutrition.

He’s dubbed it “agricultural collapse disorder” — with the message that industrialized bee farming has made the bees more susceptible to pests, diseases, and mass die-offs or dwindling. An increasing number of bee scientists are seeing what Mark Winston sees, and Heather Clay of the Canadian Honey Council warns that beekeepers need to get off the “chemical treadmill” we’ve been on for decades.

Although the honey production and pollination industries in Canada are not yet indutrializes to the same extent as in the United States, it seems clear that bee health has “hit the wall” generally on both sides of the border.

Nikiforuk’s article traces the history of bee pests and diseases in North America, outlines the various stressors on bee health in modern apiculture, and suggests a direction for change that Winston would like to see take hold, both in the offices of Ottawa and in the apiaries across Canada.

See:
Biology: How Agriculture is Putting Pollinators in Danger: Is the bee virus bunk?
by Andrew Nikiforuk
The Globe and Mail, 3 November 2007