Where Have All the Bees Gone? That Is the $15 Billion Question

Bees. Most of us fear them and for good reason, especially if you're allergic to bee venom. Nonetheless, the dark side of what bees can do is inconsequential in comparison to the good they do. When bee populations are in decline, crops and flowers are on the line to the tune of $15 billion.

The bees in this article aren't aggressive Yellow Jackets. They're members of the wasp family. The bees discussed here are the more docile honeybees and bumblebees, and they're in serious and mysterious decline--a wane that could have enormous implications for our food supply.

For reasons that have Agriculture Department entomologists losing hair, honeybee hives have been mysteriously vanishing in significant numbers nationwide and in Europe. (By hives, I don't mean the boxes in which the bees live. I mean the bees as a colony.)

Throughout New England, honey is a must have for residents and tourists alike, but producing the nectar of the gods takes a back seat to how they earn much more money for their owners. Beekeepers rent honeybees to farmers to pollinate certain types of nuts, fruits vegetable plants and flowering trees. As many as 30,000 hives are needed to pollinate the almond trees in California alone.

Some dairy farmers in New England have sold their cattle herds and bought queen bees and hives because honey and renting hives is more lucrative than is milk. There the middle man makes a killing while the farmer doesn't get what his herd's product is worth. In addition, bees are far lower maintenance. Cleaning a hive a hive (the box) is nothing compared to mucking a barn. Plus, they're cheap and easy to set up. A good queen costs a mere $21, and a whole hive costs (depending on where you buy it) about $300.

Exactly when the problem began is debatable. Scattered reports of hive failures go back to 2002, but they were scattered and rare then. Now, the anomaly has grown in biblical proportions.

It became a truly distressing national phenomenon in the fall of 2006 and winter of 2007 when beekeepers began to notice sudden, massive disappearances of their colonies.

Thirty percent to ninety percent die-off rates were reported to the Department of Agriculture. An arm of that agency, the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), began to study the few sorry bee survivors to try to diagnose the cause. The bees they studied were riddled with every bacteria, virus, fungus, parasite and disease known to affect apiaries.

Continuing unabated, the problem has heightened anxiety in direct proportion to its prevalence. It's as if the bees' immune systems are simply shutting down, leaving them vulnerable to infestations and pathogen onslaughts of all kinds. In a sense, it's like HIV for bees.

Adding to the bizarre nature of the bee vanishings is that, of five apiaries close together, only one or two may be affected, but not all.

Realizing it was a problem growing unabated -- and with the hint of catastrophic consequences for the food supply keeping them up at night -- entomologists initially dubbed the phenomenon, "Fall Dwindle Disease." They hoped winter's harsh conditions would halt its spread. It didn't. Hopes for natural-course containment were dashed, and hives continue to disappear. Its stubbornness has now earned it the more foreboding moniker "Colony Collapse Disorder" (CCD).

During the winter of 2007, ARS formed the Colony Collapse Disorder Working Group, comprising ARS and universities and state agricultural departments. Their mission? Determine what the problem is and find a solution. But so far, the score is CCD millions and ARS 0.

While some folks shrug and ask, "So what?" It's important to understand that honeybees pollinate as much as $15 billion worth of the nuts, fruits and vegetables in this country each year. Absent that pollination, vacant produce shelves may become new departments selling exotic breads and cheeses in our supermarkets.

ARS is now concerned enough to start issuing some dire warnings. From their Web site "...this crisis threatens to wipe out production of crops dependent on bees for pollination." Among those crops, besides almonds are: other nuts, fruits, berries and vegetables.

Within the working group, various theories about the cause are bubbling to the surface, but none is prevalent, much less provable. Some entomologists blame certain types of pesticides. Some attribute the problem to stress. Often driven long distances when rented to a farmer, the trip stresses bees, and their immune systems begin to fail. But bees have been traveling long distances for decades without CCD being the result.

If ARS and their research partners can't identify the cause, then find a way to stop it, the humble, hard-working honeybee may make the growing list of extinct species. If that happens, some of the agriculture upon which we depend will shrivel into obscurity right beside the bees.

About the Author

James H. Hyde is Co-Founder, Editor and Designer of newenglandtimes.com http://www.newenglandtimes.com. He has served as Managing Editor of three magazines, two at the same time; is a winner of the prestigious Jesse H. Neal Award for "Best In-Depth Analysis Article of the Year"; has written two syndicated newspaper columns; and has written for "The New York Times."

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