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Where has all the buzz gone? It's CCD, say experts

Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, is one of the reasons honeybees are dying in the city and across the world.

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The birds are gone, and now it is the turn of the bees.

No thanks to the rampant urbanisation in Bangalore, which has witnessed 632% increase in land use, the Garden City, which has already lost its sparrows and crows, is now set to lose its best pollination agent—the honey bees.

Experts have many reasons to offer for the decline of honey bees that once used to flock the city. One is the worldwide phenomenon of CCD (colony collapse disorder), a mysterious phenomenon that is causing bees to desert their hives and colonies.

Second is the alarming levels of radiation emitted by the mobile telephony towers. The third is the attack by a mite called Varroa, which virtually cannibalises bees. Yet another is the indiscriminate use of pesticides in farming. And, of course, the rampant urbanisation at the cost of greenery is depriving bees of their habitat, the plants.The CCD phenomenon has been reported across the world, with bees in the US and Europe deserting their colonies in droves. The honeygatherers who return to their hives at the end of the day, have been deserting the queen bee and the colony, and just flying to nowhere in a development that has left experts baffled and worried.

“The Varroa mite is attacking honeybees across the world. The parasitical mite that virtually eats up its host also attacks Indian varieties of bees like Apis dorsata and Apis laboriosa,” TV Ramchandra from Centre for Sustainable Technologies (CST), Indian Institute of Science (IISc), said.A CST study in the coastal areas of Karwar and Honnavar has shown that excessive usage of pesticides not only kills the pests that feed on crops, but is also killing the honeybees.

“Honeybees pollinate fast. In an agricultural society like India, they are essential. When we submitted a report to the Karnataka Biodiversity Board (KBB) about this issue, they started educating people in the area about reducing the use of pesticides and have also encouraged apiculture. The study showed alarming rates at which honeybee colonies were declining,” Ramchandra said.

Cities like Bangalore are also losing out on honeybees due to change in land use culture, higher temperatures and excessive pollution. “In the past four decades, land use enhancement in the city is to the tune of 632%. Bangalore has also lost 79% of its water bodies and 78% of vegetation. This means, that the garden city does not have enough host plants for the honeybees,” he said.

Endorsing the theory, Prof Chandrashekar Reddy, former chairman of zoology department of Bangalore University, who has done an extensive study on honeybees, said most of bee deaths in the city were due to starvation.

“During spring season, which is also the flowering season, there is a lack of host plants for the bees. We used to advise bee keepers to keep artificial flowers with sugar water so that the bees don’t die of starvation. But, in natural cases, there is an evident shortage of host plants for honeybees,” he said, blaming the state government for not encouraging apiculture which has remain unorganised in the state.

“We have also seen that honeybees are not able to fly with heavy wind speeds in the cities as there are not many trees to cut the wind speed down. Most of them get blown away from the colony and end up deserting the colony itself,” he said.Honeybees are known to communicate through sound. With excessive sound pollution, experts feel that the bees are getting disoriented, losing their way to their colonies.

“Pollution of any kind affects them as they are very sensitive beings. In a small experiment we had done at Gandhi Krishi Vignan Kenda in the heart of the city, we saw that a tree which once had 25 colonies had declined to just four after Bellary Road works began,” Ramachandra said.

@dna

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