What the future holds
With the onset of colder weather, reports of collapses are on the rise. Until more is known about the CCD phenomenon, researchers can’t predict what will happen in the coming months. With the potential for a continuing and exponential decline in bees, beekeepers are struggling and growers are worried.

vanEngelsdorp suggests caution in affixing blame to any one cause. “One operation we are monitoring has already lost 30 percent of its bees, which mirrors what happened last year,” he says. “Whether it’s CCD or other known problems is still a question. People are quick to jump on the CCD bandwagon. We are working with USDA to develop a systematic protocol for sample collection so we know exactly what we are looking at and can rule out collapses from known causes.”

Frazier already has heard from several large beekeepers who had significant collapses in the fall. “We expect things to worsen over the winter,” she says. “Large beekeepers are going out of business over this. And since this is a small industry to start with, the impact of even a few closures would be heavy. My sense is that this is going to be a very, very big problem this winter, and we are going to lose beekeepers. They just can’t sustain these kinds of dramatic losses.”

Adds Cox-Foster: “We think IAPV is here to stay. If it's extremely virulent it could burn itself out, but that could be bad news for the beekeeping industry if colony losses cause bee populations to drop below a level of economic viability. Pollination services for crops such as almonds, blueberries, and apples are coming from a very small number of operations. If those outfits can’t maintain their economic viability, we don’t see a crowd of people lining up to replace them.”

A bright side to this story is how rapidly beekeepers and researchers have responded. A little more than a year has elapsed since beekeeper David Hackenberg started making phone calls, and much has been accomplished. As the crisis unfolded, scientists across the country in government, industry, and land-grant universities mobilized. Interdisciplinary teams collaborated. The system worked.