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| A beekeeper checks a farmed beehive soaked with honey. Gettyimagesbank |
By Ko Dong-hwan
Millions of farmed honey bees in Haenam County have been mysteriously killed or have disappeared, prompting the local government to investigate the cause.
The incident started last September. Until recently, ten farms in the county in South Jeolla Province had reported the issue. Five of the farms said more than 80 percent of their bees were killed or had gone missing, while the rest of the farms said the damage reached more than 50 percent of their colonies. There are about 80 honey bee farms with about 20,000 hives altogether in the county.
Reports cited the farm owners saying that the bees that vanished mostly last December and this month, probably left their hives for some unknown reasons and died due to the winter cold. A county official said it is "extremely rare that such a large number of honey bees suddenly vanished during the December-January period."
The county's bee farmers association said they first thought this mass killing and vanishing was because of a certain disease sweeping bee farms and tried to control the threat. Nonetheless, such efforts haven't led to any clear solution, leaving the farmers deeply concerned.
Haenam's honey production received a direct blow from the incident, having collected only a quarter of the previous year's yield. According to a beekeeper from the county, one hive usually produces 20 kilograms of honey but it only produced five to eight kilograms last year. "To make things even worse, they just disappeared out of blue," the farmer said.
The Haenam county government last September requested the province's veterinary service laboratory to assess the incident, eventually receiving the conclusion that it might have been as a result of foulbrood ― a fatal bacterial disease. However as the damage continued to worry the farmers, the county authority now plans to conduct a second assessment based on more extensive sampling than before.
The county government official presumes the incident most probably was caused by a certain mutated virus infection and, because there were more warm days than usual during the bees' hibernation period, which begins in October, the infection could have spread further.
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