Vanishing Bees

Vanishing Bees

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Thirteen years ago, in 2005, beekeepers in the United States began observing a mysterious and disturbing phenomenon: once-healthy colonies of bees were suddenly collapsing, leaving behind empty hives full of honey and pollen. Over the following decade, widespread honeybee deaths—some of which have come to be called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)—have continued to bedevil beekeepers and threaten the agricultural industries that rely on bees for pollination. Scientists continue to debate the causes of CCD, yet there is no clear consensus on how to best solve the problem. 

Jay Vroom, president and CEO of CropLife America weighed in on the causes and the ramifications of colony collapse disorder in bees. "I don't think that there is a single, primary concern. All of these stress factors come together and will affect every individual hive in different ways. It is an all of the above set of solutions that need to be addressed. Colony collapse disorder is only one faction of the magnitude of the problem. Some have declared that colony collapse is not the leading concern. Outright bee deaths is much more important than the mysterious colony collapse disorder that is still out there but perhaps not as big a factor as it once was thought to be.

 Vanishing Bees: Science, Politics, and Honeybee Health by Sainath Suryanarayanan and Daniel Lee Kleinman remains a timely and relevant backlist book from Rutgers University Press. Originally published in November 2016, the book poses the urgent question: what happens when farmers, scientists, beekeepers, corporations, and federal agencies approach the problem from different vantage points and cannot see eye-to-eye?

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