Colony Collapse Disorder and where does it leave us?

"Colony Collapse Disorder (or CCD) is a poorly understood phenomenon in which worker bees from a beehive or Western honey bee colony abruptly disappear. While such disappearances have occurred throughout the history of Apiculture, the term 'Colony Collapse Disorder' was first applied to a drastic rise in the number of disappearances of Western honey bee colonies in North America in late 2006."

(Via Colony Collapse Disorder - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.)

I'm still following this topic and it just seems to get more and more distressing. The USDA has created a "Questions and Answers" section and as expected of a government site they put the fear of economy into us by throwing out rather scary big numbers.

"Bee pollination is responsible for $15 billion in added crop value, particularly for specialty crops such as almonds and other nuts, berries, fruits, and vegetables. "

Granted as the dollar seems to keep sinking that is a major concern but what I found more interesting was the following,

"The scientific literature has several mentions of honey bee disappearances—in the 1880s, the 1920s and the 1960s. While the descriptions sound similar to CCD, there is no way to know for sure if the problems were caused by the same agents as today's CCD.

There have also been unusual colony losses before. In 1903, in the Cache Valley in Utah, 2000 colonies were lost to an unknown 'disappearing disease' after a 'hard winter and a cold spring.' More recently, in 1995-96, Pennsylvania beekeepers lost 53 percent of their colonies without a specific identifiable cause."

Nature seems to work in cycles and although I can't find anyone mentioning the fact that it looks like every 40 years something seems to cause the bees to disappear I have to wonder if maybe something about the nature of the bee or the genetic makeup itself?

Until I can I find more though I've starting looking for ways in which I as an individual might be able to help - I don't use pesticides and if I did I would avoid them around midday (high activity time for bees seeking nectar), so the NAPPC has been an interesting site to check out and Wikipedia has nice section on "nectar sources".

The challenge though is to find a way to plant more nectar sources and not end up having a swarm of bees around my kids, they just don't seem to match very well.

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