“It would have been easy to assume the situation was a result of a pesticide application error, a heavy infestation of mites, or some other stressor common to bees,” entomologist Cox-Foster says. “But it was hard to dismiss Dave’s insistence that something different was happening. He’s a respected and responsible beekeeper.”

Fingers were being pointed at everything from cell-phone radiation to pesticides to divine rapture. Within several months, researchers in the college and across the country would begin focusing on three potential culprits: pathogens, environmental chemicals, and nutritional stressors.

Identifying Pathogens
Cox-Foster began discussing possible scenarios with vanEngelsdorp, who is also a Penn State extension entomologist. “We received samples from failing colonies all over the country and tested them for all known viruses and bee diseases,” she says. “This little handful of bees had almost every bee virus, oftentimes bacteria, and fungi living in them. But we couldn’t say that any in particular was the culprit, because we could find the same organisms in seemingly healthy bees. So we wondered if there was something new, something unknown to us, that was affecting them.”