Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)

In 2006, the beekeepers in United States noticed that lots of beehives were dying for no clear reason. A month later, similar phenomenon was witnessed in Europe also. The scientists use the term “Colony Collapse Disorder” (CCD) to describe what was happening. Since then, scientists have been trying to find out, what CCD really is.

The dying bees are a problem, because bees pollinate many of the world’s crops and major role that bees play in the reproduction of plant communities in the wild. There have been several theories which try to explain the phenomenon such as climate change, habitat destruction, a paralysing virus, fungal infection and even a plague of parasitic mites.

However, one of the leading ideas is that the bees are suffering from the effects of neonicotinoids, a class of commonly used pesticides, introduced in the 1990s, which are toxic to insects but much less so to mammals. The culprit neonicotinoid is Imidacloprid, a systemic insecticide which acts as an insect neurotoxin. Because imidacloprid binds much more strongly to insect neuron receptors than to mammal neuron receptors, this insecticide is selectively more toxic to insects than mammals. Two studies were published in June 2012 related to this phenomenon. Many countries have started banning imidacloprid in response to the new findings.