It is a very strange malady: beehives are being deserted by the bees, who abandon their larvae and pupae.  But we do not know where they disappear to. Two studies, the results of which have just been published, underline the multifactor character of this problematic.

A researcher in the Department of Entomology at Pennsylvania State University, Dennis vanEngelsdorp knows Gembloux well. The links between his institution and the Faculty of Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech (ULg) have been strong for some years now. It was he who was amongst the first to be alerted by the beekeepers and he who straight away set up an interdisciplinary working group; it was also he who scientifically described the problem (in December 2006) and gave it a name: Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD. What is it a question of? ‘We estimate that the syndrome of collapse accounts for around 7% of bee colony losses in the USA,’ explains Bach Kim Nguyen, a doctorate in Professor Eric Haubruge’s Functional and Evolutive Entomology Unit (Gembloux Agro-Biotech – University of Liège). ‘It is thus not the most significant, but it is a strange phenomenon, which is much preoccupying the minds of the beekeepers. For us to be able to talk of CCD, it is necessary for the hives to be found practically empty, with no trace of bee corpses – it is supposed that they die far from the hives. It is as if the bees have disappeared.  In fact, the beehives are still occupied by eggs, larvae and pupae – the brood – but the adult bees have disappeared. That signifies the death of the hive, as the balance of the super-organism has been broken, and without care the colony’s offspring cannot survive.’