COLONY COLLAPSE DISORDER (CCD)
is the phenomenon that occurs when the majority of worker bees in a colony disappear and leave behind a queen, plenty of food and a few nurse bees to care for the queen and the remaining immature individuals. While such disappearances have occurred throughout the history of apiculture, and were known by various names (disappearing disease, spring dwindle, May disease, autumn collapse, and fall dwindle disease),the syndrome was renamed colony collapse disorder in late 2006 in conjunction with a drastic rise in the number of disappearances of western honey bee [Apis mellifera] colonies in North America.
European beekeepers observed similar phenomena in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, Switzerland and Germany, albeit to a lesser degree,and the Northern Ireland Assembly received reports of a decline greater than 50%.
Limited occurrences resembling CCD have been documented as early as 1869 and this set of symptoms has, in the past several decades, been given many different names (disappearing disease, spring dwindle, May disease, autumn collapse, and fall dwindle disease).
Most recently, a similar phenomenon in the winter of 2004/2005 occurred, and was attributed to varroa mites (the "vampire mite" scare), though this was never ultimately confirmed. The cause of the appearance of this syndrome has never been determined. Upon recognition that the syndrome does not seem to be seasonally restricted, and that it may not be a "disease" in the standard sense that there may not be a specific causative agent the syndrome was renamed.
Many of these larger operations were overwintering their colonies in California, Florida, Oklahoma, and Texas. By late February 2007 some nonmigratory operations located in the mid-Atlantic region and the Pacific Northwest of the United States also had reported the loss of more than 50 percent of their colonies. The absence of dead bees in the affected hives made initial investigations difficult and inconclusive. That same year, other countries, including Canada, Portugal, Italy, Spain, Greece, Germany, Poland, France, and Switzerland, also reported substantial losses of honeybees. From 2006 to 2011 total annual colony losses in the United States averaged around 33 percent; beekeepers cited CCD as the cause of roughly one-third of those losses.
