Extension apiculturist Eric Mussen of the UC Davis Department of Entomology will be featured today (Thursday, July 28)  on the PBS NewsHour, which is broadcasting a special program on colony collapse disorder (CCD) and the nation’s honey bees.

Correspondent/producer Spencer Michels recently interviewed Mussen at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis and toured the half-acre Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven.

The same program will air at both 3 and 6 p.m. on the West Coast. The bee piece will air about “30 or 33 minutes into the show,” Michels said.

“This will feature a number of points of view about the seriousness of colony collapse disorder and where beekeeping is headed in the United States,” Mussen said.

Among others on the program will be beekeeper-researcher Randy Oliver of Grass Valley (scientificbeekeeping.com) and scientists in the Joseph DeRisi lab at UC San Francisco (derisilab.ucsf.edu).  In examining viruses and microbes in healthy commercially managed honey bee colonies over a 10-month period, the UCSF scientists recently discovered four new bee viruses, a discovery that may help unlock the secrets of why the bee population is  declining. Among the scientists: Michelle Flenniken,  a postdoctoral fellow in the Raul Andino lab at UCSF and the recipient of the Häagen-Dazs Postdoctoral Fellowship in Honey Bee Biology at UC Davis. See  entomology.ucdavis.edu/news/ucscientistsfindfournewbeeviruses.html.http://entomology.ucdavis.edu/news/ucscientistsfindfournewbeeviruses.html