More Bad Buzz For Bees: Record Numbers Of Honey Bee Colonies Died Last Winter
An annual survey of beekeepers shows the rate of colony death last winter was the highest reported since the survey began thirteen years ago.
It's a sweltering morning in Beltsville, Md., and I'm face-to-face with bee doom. Mark Dykes, a "Bee Squad coordinator" at the University of Maryland, shakes a Mason jar filled with buzzing honey bees that are coated with powdered sugar. The sugar loosens the grip of tiny Varroa mites, a parasite that plagues bees; as he sifts the powder into a bowl, they poke out like hairy pebbles in snow.
"Right now there [are] three mites per hundred [bees]," says , associate professor of entomology at the University of Maryland, which studies bee survival rates. That's a high rate of mites, vanEngelsdorp says: "If this were September and you were seeing that number, you'd expect the hive to die" during the lean months of winter.
