it's not cell phones, it's the verroa mite. It came to north america in 1987 and has grown immune to pesticides.
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The parasite, which is endemic to Asia, first arrived on U.S. shores in 1987, most likely smuggled in some eager apiarist’s luggage. (Bee importation has been illegal in this country since 1922.) It caused negligible damage in Europe, where it first appeared in 1908, because the beekeeping industry is smaller and far less mobile. In the U.S., however, the mite jumped from hive to hive with alarming rapidity. “In the U.S., beekeepers are a bunch of mechanized gypsies, moving from crop to crop all through the year chasing pollination fees and honey flows,” said Frank Eischen, a U.S. Department of Agriculture research entomologist tasked with searching for new medicines to keep the invaders at bay. “Because of all this unnatural movement, some colonies get stressed, and they may be more susceptible.”
During the first wave of infestation, the varroa killed nearly every feral colony on the continent. Well-kept colonies like Miller’s, however, escaped major damage, because application of a common miticide kept the bug in check. Over the course of the next decade, though, the mites developed resistance to that treatment. They acquired immunity to a second compound after only three or four years. And in the winter of 2005, beekeepers realized, too late, that the current medicines were no longer working. No operation was untouched: Miller, who lost 40 percent of his bees, was considered lucky; some of his colleagues lost more than 60 percent of their hives. “We hauled semi-loads of dead bees and equipment from the orchards,” Miller recalled. “In the old days we were shouting and spitting and swearing if we had an 8 percent dud rate. Now people would be happy with that.”
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