pesticides of all kinds can kill honey bees. but a greedy practice has decimated the
bee population. normally, bees put up enough honeycomb to last all winter. too many
bee keepers take all the honey comb, let the bees die and ordered new bees in the
spring. the result was spreading disease to all these new colonies which were
shipped north and infected wild colonies and those bee keepers kept their bees over
winter. http://www.answers.com/topic/diseases-of-the-honeybee
"Varroa destructor and Varroa jacobsoni are parasitic mites that feed off the bodily
fluids of adult, pupal and larval bees. Varroa mites can be seen with the naked eye
as a small red or brown spot on the bee's thorax. Varroa is a carrier for a virus
that is particularly damaging to the bees. Bees that are infected with this virus
during their development will often have a visible "K-wing" deformity.

Varroa has led to the virtual elimination of feral bee colonies in many areas and is
a major problem for kept bees in apiaries. Some feral populations are now recovering
— it appears that they have been naturally selected for varroa resistance (these
so-called feral populations may be africanized bees).

Varroa was first discovered in Southeast Asia in about 1904, but has now spread
virtually worldwide. Varroa was discovered in the United States in 1987, in New
Zealand in 2000.

Varroa is generally not a problem for a hive that is growing strongly. When the hive
population growth reduced in preparation for winter or due to poor late summer forage
the mite population growth can overtake that of the bees and can then destroy the
hive. Often a colony will simply abscond (leave as in a swarm, but leaving no
population behind) under such conditions. "

our typical honey bee is not native to the US and their importation early on drove
the native bees almost to extinction. Ingrid

George Shirley wrote:

limey wrote:

I understand malathion kills honey bees? (which is a bad thing.) The
county used to spray for mosquitoes several times a summer but were
using malathion. I haven't seen a honey bee in a long time - is that
the cause?



There's been a lot in the ag news about some sort of mite that's been
killing off whole hives of European honey bees, the kind we've had in
the USA for over 200 years. I don't think anyone still uses malathion to
kill mosquitoes nowadays.

George



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