The Beeholder, April 2009.

The battle against the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder which has swept the US over the past two years took a bizarre turn this month as some experts say they no longer believe it exists. Baffled by their attempts to pin down a cause for the widespread colony losses, some scientists are now blaming a cocktail of existing threats, which they say have come together in a ‘perfect storm’ to decimate honey bee numbers.

Chief among the more usual suspects is the Varroa destructor parasitic mite and the Nosema variant N. ceranae, first mooted as a cause by Spanish scientists, and Israeli Acute Bee Paralysis Virus. These are backed up by fears over pesticide use and the ongoing debate over lack of diversity in the bees’ diet, brought about mainly through modern monoculture farming practices, particularly in the US.

Dr Dennis Anderson, principal research scientist in entomology with the Australian research organisation CSIRO, said: “Researchers around the world are running round trying to find the cause of the disorder – and there’s absolutely no proof that there’s a disorder there.”

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