By Susan Milius
The disappearance of large numbers of U.S. honeybees is so odd that it’s attracted Ian Lipkin. Since last fall, beekeepers in at least 35 states have reported colonies that shrank rapidly for no apparent reason. Adult bees just go missing, leaving behind young bees in need of tending. This colony-collapse disorder (CCD), as it’s now called, has got bee researchers coast to coast stirred up and looking for causes and remedies.
Lipkin, however, had never studied a bee disease until now. He works in the epidemiology department of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health—human health, that is. He’s solved mysteries, though, and he says that his methods are yielding results this time too.