The plight of the honeybee continues to make headlines, and reporters continue to seek out UC experts for comment. Today, the Sacramento Bee noted that colony collaspe disorder "hits agriculture hard."
Acccording to the story, many adult bees have mysteriously disappeared – leaving only the queen and the young brood bees – and researchers don't yet know exactly why.
"As a research community, we're just scrambling," the story quoted Susan Cobey, a UC Davis researcher and bee breeder.
According to the article, researchers and beekeepers nationwide collected samples of affected hives in 2007. Most of them were also hit by Israeli acute paralysis virus.
Researchers are now injecting that virus into healthy bees to see the result, but they believe there is more at play. Colony collaspe disorder is "most likely an interplay of different viruses with mites and pesticides," the article said.
