Where's the Buzz?

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Where's the Buzz? Text and photos by Tina L. Lavallee | June 2005



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Intro

Spring is here and the trees and flowers are all abuzz, but a familiar face may be missing. A quick look in the garden will reveal a number of insects sipping nectar from blossoms, but the honeybee is probably not among them. North Carolina’s honeybee population has been so decimated by the Varroa mite that only people living close to an active beekeeper can count on seeing honeybees in their plantings. With losses of wild colonies estimated as high as 95 percent, the state is teetering on the brink of a serious shortage of these beneficial insects. To prevent a future silent spring, N.C. State University is taking action through a program designed not just to restock the state with bees, but with new beekeepers as well.

The villain in this story is the Varroa mite, a tiny crab-like parasite that preys on honeybees. A native of Southeast Asia, the mites invaded the western United States in the early 1980s and spread eastward, wiping out millions of honeybee colonies that lacked natural resistance to the new pest. By 1989, the mites reached North Carolina and attacked the state’s abundant wild bee colonies, virtually eliminating them. “You never hear of anyone finding a bee tree anymore,” says long-time Randolph County beekeeper George Byrum. “They’ve simply vanished.”

The mites start their dirty work by hitching a ride on worker bees as they gather nectar and return to the hive. The mites are so small that the bees themselves are unable to detect and remove them. Once inside the colony’s brood chamber, female mites lay eggs that hatch and feed on the developing bee larvae. The infestation is not obvious at first, but as the mite population increases, the bee colony becomes weakened by the lack of new worker bees to gather food and tend the queen. In time, these losses cause the collapse of the colony due to starvation.