http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_Collapse_Disorder

The main observation with colony collapse disorder is that the colonies are nearly gone and there are no dead bees present in or around the hive. This should not be confused with the typical winter bee die off, where the colony appears much smaller in number and there are many dead bees in the hive and at the entrance. The winter die off is because the temperatures where too cold in consecutive days for the bees to survive.

I would like to put forth some information here from my research in order to shed whatever light possible toward the situation. Please feel free to e-mail us with any insights that you may have, we can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it I think that as Top Bar beekeepers we may be able to act as a control group or at least add significant information to the research being done because the Top Bar hive is an alternative way of beekeeping. And perhaps as Top Bar Beekeepers we may hold part of the solution to the colony collapse outbreak. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/11/AR2007021100650_2.html

It seems to me that there exists a strong possibility that the Top Bar method of beekeeping could be immune to the colony collapse disorder outbreak, providing that the Top Bar beekeepers are not applying Langstroth methods to the Top Bar hive. What sets the Top Bar method of beekeeping apart from the Langstroth method is the less intrusive management style. With the BackYardHive there is a window in the hive allowing the beekeeper to inspect the hive without continually opening the hive to inspect it, in turn putting unneeded stress on the bees. And when inspecting the hive or harvesting comb, the beekeeper only needs to take off a few top bars at a time, reducing the area of the hive that is open to the outside world. The entire colony is not being exposed. Again less stress for the bees. Since the entire colony is not being exposed this means that it is not necessary to smoke the hive when inspecting or harvesting honey. Bees relate to the smoking as if it were a forest fire. They begin to gorge on honey for their flight out of the burning forest. This creates great stress on the bees. Another benefit of the Top Bar hive is that the beekeeper removes the entire comb where as with the Langstroth method the honey is spun out of the comb and returned to the hive exposing bees to the possibility of bacteria and viruses entering the hive. All of these factors add up to a stronger immune system for the Top Bar bees creating a strong colony that can fight off small doses of bacteria and viruses. If the colony collapse disorder is immunological then the Top Bar method of beekeeping may help the bees survive this collapse.

Here is one of the current ideas concerning the disorder in relation to the immunological possibility "there is some sentiment that the disorder may involve an immunosuppressive mechanism potentially linked to the aforementioned "stress" leading to a weakened immune system…Researchers at Penn State have further suggested that a combination of bee mites, wing virus (which the mites transmit) and bacteria work together to suppress immunity and may be one cause for CCD", found on "Diana Cox-Foster, a Penn State entomology professor investigating the problem said an analysis of dissected bees turned up an alarmingly high number of foreign fungi, bacteria and other organisms and weakened immune systems. ‘That is a real abnormality’". found on:

The most mysterious part of the colony collapse disorder is that the worker bees seem to be leaving the hive and not returning. This is evident because they are finding no noticeable dead bees in the hive or at the entrance of the hive. This literally means that the adult worker bees are leaving the hive and are not returning. This means that the bees are not "sick" in the hive and that they are going out on a foraging mission and are getting "sick" on the 15 or 30 minute journey and are not making it back. What is evident to me is the bees are not making it back to the hive because of navigational problems. To think that the bees are getting "sick" in fifteen or twenty minutes seems inconceivable to me. So I looked into the navigational strategies of the honey bee and in a book by John Alcock called Animal Behavior: An Evolutionary Approach, Third Edition, I found the following: "If a sun compass were the only mechanism available to bees and pigeons their homing abilities should be severely affected by cloudy weather. But both species can forage and navigate successfully on totally overcast days. Thus these species have more than one compass mechanism, one of which may be sensitivity to the weak lines of magnetic force created by the earth’s magnetic field….Both pigeons and honeybees have magnetic compounds concentrated in certain tissues of their bodies; these compounds may be part of a magnetism detector." (For more information see 267 Gould J L 1980. The case for magnetic field sensitivity in birds and bees. American Scientist 68:256-267)

The question would be is this a magnetic disturbance in the earths magnetic field or perhaps the magnetic interference of the rise in high definition towers in the past few years. Scientists have found magnetic material in the bodies of the bee that could be disturbed by bee cloning causing a problem in the ability of the bee’s mechanism in orientation. When explaining the intricacies of the queen bee Rudolf Steiner said in 1923 that the modern methods of breeding queens would have long-term detrimental effects- so grave that a "century later all breeding of bees would cease, if only artificially produced bees were used." Bees by Rudolf Steiner

Then I went to the best information I could find, which lead me to the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for science, Edward O. Wilson. In his book The Diversity of Life he states, "As extinction spreads, some of the lost forms prove to be keystone species, whose disappearance brings down other species and triggers a ripple effect through the demographics of the survivors. The loss of a keystone species is like a drill accidentally striking a powerline. It causes lights to go out all over." The question remains how much that the honeybee has become a keystone species within the human race because of the pollination of our food supply. And further more could it be possible that the top bar bee keeping method would a have a significant effect on the survival of bees in North America?

I am not so sure that we should stand by and wait for the scientific community to arrive at conclusions when it seems that issues as colony collapse could be remedied sooner by taking a proactive and intuitive approach based on the information gleaned from previous scientific information. Nature has a built in "measure" system called biodiversity. It is like having various locked doors to the same species. One species is kept safe in several different genetic "safe houses" so a virus that picks the lock to one of these doors will not have instant access to the species as a whole. What is important is to have genetic diversity in a species so that protection can exists and the virus would not be able to disrupt the entire species. "Organisms possessing common ancestry rise to dominance, expand their geographic ranges, and split into multiple species. Some of the species acquire novel life cycles and ways of life. The groups they replace retreat to relict status, being diminished in scattershot fashion by competition, disease, shifts in climate, or any other environmental change that serves to clear the way for the newcomers. In time the ascendant group itself stalls and begins to fall back. Its species vanish one by one until they are all gone. Once in a while, in a minority of groups, a lucky species hits upon a new biological trait that allows it to expand and radiate again, reanimating the cycle of dominance on behalf of its phylogenetic kin." The Diversity of Life, Edward O. Wilson

The shipping of bees cuts another corner in nature, a fungus, a disease or a virus has sudden access to the whole country via mail. Every time beekeepers use feral swarms not only is biodiversity being kept up we are reducing the risk of importing disease into our local region.

And so it goes "In an echo of ancient beliefs, some saw the bees as the embodiment of the human souls. Lincolnshire Notes and Queries (1851) tells the story of two traveling servants from the start of the century: "[They] laid down by the road-side to rest, and one fell asleep. The other, seeing a bee settle on a neighboring wall and go into a little hole, put the end of his staff in the hole, and so imprisoned the bee. Wishing to pursue his journey, he endeavored to awaken his companion but was unable to do so, till, resuming his stick, the bee flew to the sleeping man and went into his ear. His companion then awoke him, remarking how soundly he had been asleep and asked what he had been dreaming of – ‘Oh!’ said he, ‘I dreamt that you shut me up in a dark cave and, I could not awake until you let me out." Sweetness and Light: The Mysterious History of the Honeybee by Hattie Ellis