by Greg Spinks

Created on: February 22, 2009   Last Updated: March 07, 2009

On November 12th, 2006, a Pennsylvania beekeeper, Dave Hackenberg, was startled when he discovered only thirty of his 400 honeybee hives alive and well. The hives, placed in a Florida field to help pollinate crops, were all active and healthy just weeks earlier.

Something mysterious happened to 370 hives; there were no bees, alive or dead. The hives were silent and empty. The beekeeper, from Lewisburg, in eastern Pennsylvania, who had transported bees up and down the east coast for over 40 years never saw anything quite like it.

Hackenburg reported the mystery to researchers and scientists back in Pennsylvania at the entomology offices of Penn State. A short time later, similar reports began to surface about the strange disappearance of the honey bees and abandoned hives.

Hackenburg's grim discovery is generally credited as the first sign of an unknown and fatal phenomenon, soon dubbed, Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD.

The losses were enormous; within a year many beekeepers reported losses of 70 percent or more of their hives; some were wiped out completely. Larry Curtis and his son, Greg, of Union City, in western Pennsylvania, lost nearly everyone of their 1,000 hives, and the family business was wiped out. The economic horizon quickly darkened for many agricultural products which depend on the bees for pollination, such as: pumpkins and squash, strawberries and blueberries, broccoli and carrots, almonds and apples. Honeybees are vital for agriculture and are responsible for an estimated $15 billion in agricultural production.

The CCD outbreak was just the latest in a string of misfortune for the honeybees, which are not native to North America. In 1984, the tracheal mites, a parasite, entered the United States and began to cause problems for the beekeepers. However, beekeepers were able to control the problems with some relatively inexpensive and common treatments. Life became more complicated and expensive when the deadly and more ferocious Varroa mite entered the country in 1987 . The mite attacks the bee's immune system. Between 17 percent and 40 percent of the beehives in the United States were soon lost as the Varroa mite spread.

As control methods began to become effective, the mites simply develop a resistance to the products used. The honeybee hive losses were particularly huge during the winters of 1995-96 and 2000-01. With the sudden and mysterious appearance of CCD, honeybee fatalities worsened considerably. Research organizations, both private and

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