Bee Colony Collapse Disorder and Adapting Gardens for Surviving TEOTWAWKI, by Craig D.

At any retreat or home base a garden is vital to help supplement your stored food supply with fresh fruits and vegetables. In the past decade a disorder has been rapidly occurring in the bee pollinator populations that can put the viability of your garden in jeopardy.  Unless you adapt to prepare for this phenomenon and its possible affects upon bee populations, your garden can have serious short comings come harvest time.

Pollination is the process in which a pollen grain (produced by male portion of a flower) is deposited upon the stigma (female portion of flower), the pollen grain grows a tube down thru the style to reach a ovary in the pistil.  Once there, fertilization can occur thereby producing a seed.  For example every corn kernel on a ear of corn has a pollen tube (silk) which has grown down to each individual ovary to bring about fertilization to produce a seed (i.e. no pollination = no seed).

Colony collapse disorder (CCD) is a phenomenon in which worker bees from a beehive or European honey bee colony abruptly disappear.  This phenomenon was named for the sudden collapse of North American honey bees in late 2006, (similar collapses have been seen in Europe, India, Brazil and Taiwan).  The reasons for this collapse are not known as of yet but the major factors seem to be from either a virus, Varroa mites and / or a fungal parasite called Nosema.  There is no known remedy for this as of yet but scientists are busy working on the issue.
“The phenomenon is particularly important for crops such as California almonds where honey bees are the predominant pollinator.  The crop value in 2006 was estimated at $1.5 billion.  In 2000, the total U.S. crop value that was wholly dependent on honey bee pollination was estimated to exceed $15 billion “ (Morse, R.A.; Calderone, N.W., The Value of Honey Bees as Pollinators of US Crops in 2000. Cornell University (2000). Honey bees are responsible for the pollination of approximately one third of the United States crop species, (see below).  It has been suggested that when honey bees are absent from a region, that native pollinators may reclaim the niche, it is assumed that these species are going to be better adapted to serve those plants (assuming that the plants normally occur in that specific area), but new research puts this suggestion in jeopardy.

Penn State researchers have found that native pollinators, like wild bees and wasps, are also infected by the same viral diseases as honey bees and that these viruses are transmitted via pollen. (Their research is published on December 22nd, 2010 in PLoS ONE, an online open-access journal).   These findings not only show that European honey bees along with native pollinators in North America are affected by CCD but also raise biosecurity issues because pollen is currently being imported into many countries thru ought the world to feed honey bees used in agricultural pollination.   This disorder is also spreading rapidly due to Beehive rental and migratory beekeeping (moving and renting bee hives thru ought North America ) .
“Since 2006 more than three million bee colonies in the US and billions of honeybees worldwide have died”, for example in 2008/2009 there was a loss of 28.6% of managed beehives,  and in 2009/2010 there was a loss of 33.8% of managed beehives in the US.

How does this affect my philosophy on surviving TEOTWAWKI? Your gardens will have to be adapted for the possibility of planting vegetables, fruits and seeds that are either pollinated by wind, self pollinated, pollinated by a species that is not affected by CCD or to be pollinated by hand.  Also some plants which are pollinated by bees but in which the editable portions are not affected by pollination (for example the carrot) would be eliminated by this scenario but their seeds are included.

Lists of plants and their pollination methods are long and can be found at the following links.

Wikipedia’s List of crop plant pollinated by bees

and,

Iowa State Pollenizing Data

Some of the more common plants that are pollinated by bees in which the fruits or seeds are used for food stuffs are:

Plants that are pollinated by wind or self pollinated.

• Some common self-pollinators are:
• • Tomatoes
  • Lettuce
  • Peas
  • Beans
  • Eggplant
  • Peppers
  • Endive and Escarole
  • Barley
  • Wheat
  • Oats
  • Cowpeas
• Some wind pollinators include:
• • Sweet corn
  • Beet

For those who raise their own beehives you may or may not have experienced this phenomenon in your beehives.  If you do have your own beehives there are signs to watch out for.  A colony which has collapsed from CCD is generally characterized by all of these conditions occurring simultaneously per the Canadian honey council (“Discussion of phenomenon of Colony disorder collapse”. Canadian Honey Council. 2007-01-27)

• Presence of capped brood in abandoned colonies. Bees normally will not abandon a hive until the capped brood have all hatched.
• Presence of food stores, both honey and bee pollen:
• • Which are not immediately robbed by other bees
  • Which when attacked by hive pests such as wax moth and small hive beetle, the attack is noticeably delayed.
• Presence of the queen bee. If the queen bee is not present and the hive died because it was queen less it is not considered CCD.

Symptoms that may arise before the final colony collapse are:

• Insufficient workforce to maintain the brood,
• Workforce seems to be made up of young adults
• The colony members are hesitant to consume provided feed, such as sugar syrup.

The Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium (March 1, 2007) offered the following tentative recommendations for beekeepers noticing the symptoms of CCD:

• Do not combine collapsing colonies with strong colonies.
• When a collapsed colony is found, store the equipment where you can use preventive measures to ensure that bees will not have access to it.
• If you feed your bees sugar syrup, use Fumagillin.
• If you are experiencing colony collapse and see a secondary infection, such as European Foulbrood, treat the colonies with Terramycin, not Tylan.

Other possible remedies include:

• Switching to native bees (suggested before Penn state research was revealed, see above). or
• Using disease resistant bees (if any become available in the future).

If you are concerned about the prospect of your plants not being pollinated, or wish to increase the chances, you can always hand pollinate your garden (or selected plants).  On flowers that have only one or other sex, locate the female flower; remove a male flower (male flowers will have a stamen, which is a pollen covered stalk that sticks up in the center of the flower. Female flowers will have a sticky knob called a stigma inside the flower, sitting on top of the pistil, which will eventually become the fruit once fertilization occurs). Carefully peel off the petals of the male flower, leaving only the stamen which is covered in yellow pollen. Take this stamen and rub it all over the pistil of the female flower.  On plants with “perfect” flowers (male and female parts in same flower) simply take a brush, remove pollen from stamens and rub on stigma.  While this is a very laborious process it will guarantee that your plant gets pollinated.

In conclusion, whether or not CCD will get worse, will correct itself due to natural events or man will find a remedy, it would be best to recognize the problem and prepare for the possibility that your food supply might not only be in jeopardy from other humans, but from natural processes themselves.

JWR Adds: Needless to say, dwarf and semi-dwarf fruit trees are easier (and at safer ladder heights) to hand pollinate than standard varieties. And, thankfully there are other insects that can pollinate (albeit inefficiently), such as Mason Bees, wasps, and even flies.