<Reporter Shim Young-goo>
These little bees are 1.5 cm in size.
It is a valuable resource not only for honey production but also for pollination of various crops.
But last winter, the disappearance of these bees, and the disappearance on a large scale, occurred all over the country.
Taegu Jeong, who has been in the beekeeping business for 12 years in Gyeonggi-do,
can still remember the moment he opened the hive to awaken the bees in February.
[Jeong Tae-gu / Beekeeping Farmer: I opened the (beehive) and it is absurd, because there are no bees.
oh how do i do this
I think only a third of (of our bees) are alive.]
Most of the 250 or so hives were empty, and the remaining bees were very weak.
[Jeong Tae-gu / Beekeeping Farmer: In this situation, I do not have the qualifications to go out (picking honey).
Shouldn't it be combined (with other bees)?
I can't go out on my own.]
It's not just Mr. Jung.
[Park Myung-Jun / Beekeeper: (When entering winter) Only 10% of what I thought was left.
The bees themselves just disappeared.]
The government estimates that 390,000 colonies of bees, or about 7.8 billion bees, disappeared during last winter.
The disappearance of the honeybee colony was first reported in the United States in 2006, and was given the name 'colony collapse', meaning the disappearance of the bee colony, but the cause is still under investigation.
In Korea, mass death was first confirmed due to a viral disease in 2010, pesticides in 2011, and noise and vibration at construction sites in some areas in 2012 were blamed for the cause.
What is the cause of this?
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<Reporter Goo-Hee Jeong>
The winged paralysis virus was detected in all the affected farm bees.
In some farms, five other viruses were also found.
Nevertheless, the Agriculture, Forestry and Livestock Quarantine Headquarters did not believe that the virus was the main cause.
This is because the presence of the virus does not necessarily mean that there is an outbreak, and the body has not been extensively discovered.
There was also a lot of damage from pesticides, but there were also many missing areas that had nothing to do with pesticides.
Bees poisoned with pesticides stick out their tongues and die.
Construction noise and vibration may also damage some areas, but it is difficult to explain the nationwide disappearance of bees.
The damaged hive has been scrutinized.
It was collected between late January and early February, and there was a marked difference from normal hives.
Because of the pupa room.
In winter, there are no pupae in the hive, so it should be clean, but last winter, the queen bee laid eggs and the entrance to the room was filled.
The hives collected in Goheung, Jeollanam-do were full of pupae, so winter spawning could be clearly confirmed.
[Researcher Dae-geun Oh / Department of Beekeeping Ecology, National Academy of Agricultural Sciences: You have to maintain a constant temperature to get (bees).
Winter is not the right time to maintain a constant temperature.
That's why I don't make pupae.]
This is a hive collected from Gumi, Gyeongsangbuk-do.
The pupa chamber is empty, but only the corpse of a caterpillar whose shape is difficult to recognize remains.
The eggs were laid at an abnormally high temperature, but it suddenly became cold and they were not raised properly.
It is believed that the overwintering failure of bees.
[Researcher Choi Yong-soo / Department of Beekeeping Ecology, National Academy of Agricultural Sciences: When the temperature fluctuation is severe, the stress is very great, and it is not only the stress that the worker bees receive, but also the development stage of the future generations who continue to maintain their own species. ]
Even if the eggs have grown to the pupa stage, the parasite mites are attached to them and hinder their growth.
[Researcher Joo-Kyung Kim / Department of Beekeeping Ecology, National Academy of Agricultural Sciences: Oval This is a bee mite.]
Mite attaches to the body of a bee, sucks body fluid, and transmits disease.
Not all bees are missing.
Bees with thorough mite disaster prevention and good temperature control survived the winter well.
The bees that kept the hive temperature above 10 degrees in winter and supplied sugar water as food had no problems.
So, the Rural Development Administration estimated that abnormal weather was the main cause of the disappearance of bees.
How did the weather last year affect the bees?
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<Reporter Dong-Kyun Seo>
Let's take a look at last year's temperature.
In spring, the temperature was exceptionally wide.
In March, due to the high temperature, the cherry blossoms in Seoul bloomed the fastest in 100 years of observation.
Spring flowers were also affected by this inconsistent weather, especially locust flowers, which are the main food for bees.
When they bloom sequentially from south to north, the bees move around to collect honey, but when they bloom all at once, the honey yield was only 30% of the normal year, and the
honey for the bees to eat also decreased.
The rainy season started in July for the first time in 39 years as the North Pacific high pressure was not working in the summer, and the period was also two weeks shorter than usual.
As June became hot and dry, mites, which appear only in July and August, were also rampant from early summer.
The final blows were in November and December.
Bees become more active when the temperature exceeds 14 degrees.
It can be seen that the bees woke up at an abnormally high temperature and started spawning early, leading to mass death.
The extreme weather alone cannot explain the entire honeybee disappearance.
But it seems clear that climate change is increasingly killing bees.
(Video coverage: Kim Won-bae, Kim Seung-tae, video editing: Yoon Tae-ho, design: Choi Jae-young, Shim Soo-hyun, Jo Su-in)