Reviews of Science for Science Librarians: An Update on Honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder

Abstract

Honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder (HCCD or CCD) is an epidemic in which worker bees mysteriously disappear from hives, despite the presence of a living queen and immature brood—the care and feeding of both being their ordinary preoccupation—and sometimes even despite the presence of ample supplies of stored honey that would sustain them. While it understandably has a great impact on honey production, the greatest significance of HCCD is its effects on tens of billions of dollars’ worth of crops that depend on bees to pollinate their flowers so as to have higher rates of seed or fruit set. A review of the literature done in 2008, covering journal articles up through 2007, disclosed a wide variety of potential causes for HCCD being put forth, largely in articles confined to the literature of entomology and apiology. This update, which covers 2008–2013, suggests that the number of factors still seriously implicated has actually diminished and that the majority of papers today favor multifactorial explanations, which now appear in much higher visibility journals in science, especially multiscience and microbiology.

KEYWORDS:

• alternative pollinators
• Colony Collapse Disorder
• Israeli Paralytic Virus
• Nosema ceranae
• Varroa destrutor