Bee mystery continues

Colony collapse disorder (CCD) has puzzled beekeepers and entomologists alike since it first emerged in the US in the autumn of 2006. Its hallmark is that colonies are apparently abandoned without significant numbers of dead bees being found. Similar problems were then also found in the UK and other European countries (Curr. Biol. 18, R1073). The British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) has now released new figures regarding the colony losses over the winter of 2008–09. With a national average of 19.2 per cent, the losses were less catastrophic than the previous year, but still more than double the rate that was considered normal before CCD arose. In a survey among 1,150 members of the BBKA, the highest proportion of colony losses was reported from the north of England (32.1 per cent), and the lowest from the east of England (12.8 per cent). An attempt by US researchers to track down the causes by systematic analysis of the gene transcription patterns of bees from healthy and from affected colonies has added to the mystery. BBKA President Tim Lovett said: " These ongoing losses in the pollination army of honey bees cannot continue if we are to secure food supplies. " Referring to a recent government funding initiative, he added: " Answers through research are urgently needed and steps must be taken to ensure that a substantial part of the £10 million hybrid fund made available under the 'Pollinator Decline Initiative' is ring-fenced for honey bee health research, [as] recommended by the Public Accounts Committee. " Meanwhile, the search for causes continues. Although a localised die-off in Germany has been linked to pesticide use and a chemicals company has agreed to pay compensation (Curr. Biol. 18, R684), the bulk of the problem has remained unexplained. An attempt by US researchers to track down the causes by systematic analysis of the gene transcription patterns of bees from healthy and from affected colonies has added to the mystery. Using a microarray with probes representative of 9,867 different genes, May Berenbaum and colleagues at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign scanned for differential expression of specific genes in affected colonies from the East and the West Coast of the US, compared with historical samples from the time before CCD. Reporting in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (published online), the researchers, to their surprise, found no evidence of upregulation of the immune response, as …