I don't know if you have been following this story, but there have been massive honey bee die-offs recently in the United States. Considering that honey bees are the primary pollinators for many of the crops grown here, this is a problem that greatly exceeds just the bees.
Scientists have been racing to figure out what the problem is, and many theories have been suggested to explain the bee die-offs, most of them completely ridiculous. Most of the non-ridiculous ones are focused on the possibility of transmitted disease in the bees or some environmental toxin. To distinguish the two, I found this experiment in the NYTimes coverage:
The national research team also quietly began a parallel study in January, financed in part by the National Honey Board, to further determine if something pathogenic could be causing colonies to collapse.
Mr. Hackenberg, the beekeeper, agreed to take his empty bee boxes and other equipment to Food Technology Service, a company in Mulberry, Fla., that uses gamma rays to kill bacteria on medical equipment and some fruits. In early results, the irradiated bee boxes seem to have shown a return to health for colonies repopulated with Australian bees.
"This supports the idea that there is a pathogen there," Dr. Cox-Foster said. "It would be hard to explain the irradiation getting rid of a chemical." (Emphasis mine.)
That's quite clever, I think. It just goes to show you two things. 1) Science works and 2) if you want to solve a complex problem, break it into parts.
People are also testing for toxins and looking for parasites in pathological sections and by DNA screening, but that seems very much like a needle-in-a-haystack approach to me. I like this experiment better.
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From what I've read, the bees they find from colonies experiencing this tend to have fungal infections -- but said colonies don't all have the same species of fungus.
To me, that sounds like an immune system disorder, possibly caused by a pathogen, possibly caused by a chemical.
The interesting thing is that, if it's immuno-related, this experiment doesn't necessarily distinguish between the two cases -- the radiation could just be killing off the secondary infections.
I've read that parasites, predators, and scavengers avoid the afflicted hive. That would suggest some 'sick hive' signal to keep them (and conceivably the honeybees themselves) away from the hive, some chemical signal, a 'bad smell' warning. (Humans may not be able to detect it.)
"To me, that sounds like an immune system disorder, possibly caused by a pathogen, possibly caused by a chemical."
Well, it should be possible to determine if the pathogen would cause problems in a hive without immune system problems. Either way, it's progress beyond the crazy theories that have erupted with no evidence either way on them.
If the bees were simply avoiding the contaminated hives by moving to, say, a hollow tree instead, they'd still be working to make honey in the area, wouldn't they? And if that's the case, wouldn't the pollination rates remain as high as ever? Are we looking at the whole process or just the empty hives?