Mystery killer silencing honeybees - Without BEES, crop yields would fall dramatically by 80%

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"While a few crops, such as corn and wheat, are pollinated by the wind,most need bees. Without these insects, crop yields would fall dramatically.Agronomists estimate Americans owe one in three bites of food to bees.Frazier said researchers also were looking at a new group of pesticidesthat might impair the bees' ability to orient to their hives. So maybe theyare dying only because they cannot find their way back " Possible culprits: New Pesticides and Global Warming.... surprised? I'm not! hilly.com/mld/inquirer/16623837.htm Mystery killer silencing honeybeesIf the die-off continues, it would be disastrous for U.S. Crop yields.By Sandy BauersInquirer Staff Writer David M Warren / Inquirer Staff PhotographerA bee, laden with pollen. Honeybees pollinate more than $15 billionworth of U.S. Crops, including Pennsylvania's apple harvest and New Jersey'scranberries and blueberries.Something is killing the nation's honeybees. Dave Hackenberg of central Pennsylvania had 3,000 hives and figures hehas lost all but about 800 of them. In labs at Pennsylvania State University, the Pennsylvania Departmentof Agriculture, and elsewhere in the nation, researchers have been stunned bythe number of calls about the mysterious losses. "Every day, you hear of another operator," said Dennis vanEngelsdorp,acting state apiarist with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. "It'sjust causing so much death so quickly that it's startling." At stake is the work the honeybees do, pollinating more than $15billion worth of U.S. Crops, including Pennsylvania's apple harvest, thefourth-largest in the nation, worth $45 million, and New Jersey's cranberriesand blueberries. While a few crops, such as corn and wheat, are pollinated by the wind,most need bees. Without these insects, crop yields would fall dramatically.Agronomists estimate Americans owe one in three bites of food to bees. The problem caps 20 years of honeybee woes, including two mites thatkilled the valuable insect and a predatory beetle that attacked the honeycombsof weak or dead colonies. "This is by far the most alarming," said Maryann Frazier, an apiculture- or beekeeping - expert at Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences. One of the first to notice the latest die-off was Hackenberg, who livesin Lewisburg, north of Harrisburg in Union County. He and his son truck about 3,000 hives up and down the East Coast everyyear as part of a large but little-known cross-continental migratory bee industry. Hackenberg's bees pollinate oranges in Florida, apples, cherries andpumpkins in Pennsylvania, and blueberries in Maine. Come summer, they arebuzzing along the Canadian border, making honey. This season, Hackenberg hauled his hives to Florida by Oct. 10, just ashe has done for 40 years. By November, some hives were empty; others had justsickly remains. He made some calls and found out a beekeeper in Georgia had seen thesame thing. Since then, with concern mounting, experts have been investigating. Afew months ago, they were referring to the die-off as "fall dwindle disease."Now, they have ratcheted up to "colony collapse disorder." Last weekend, apiarist vanEngelsdorp and other researchers headed tocentral California, where hundreds of acres of almond trees - the source of 80percent of the world's almond harvest - are about to blossom. Last fall, workers transported managed hives - about 450 pertractor-trailer - to California from colder areas such as the Great Lakes andthe Dakotas. Now, hives are coming from Texas, Florida, Maryland andPennsylvania. In all, about half the country's managed hives are needed forthe mass pollination. As workers openthe hives to check them, "the picture's not so good,"said Jeffrey S. Pettis, a leader in bee research at a U.S. Department ofAgriculture lab in Beltsville, Md. Pettis said bees often had some winter loss, but this level of deathwas unprecedented. As dead or dying insects are collected, dissected and tested, severalpossibilities are emerging. The most recent mite problem - the varroa mite - compromises a bee'simmune system, so a virus might be the new culprit, Frazier said. Or it couldbe a new fungal pathogen. Frazier said researchers also were looking at a new group of pesticidesthat might impair the bees' ability to orient to their hives. So maybe theyare dying only because they cannot find their way back home. Honeybees are not natives. The country already had about 3,500 speciesof pollinating bees before Europeans brought honeybees in the 1600s. Butbecause honeybees produce honey and can be managed so easily, they have becomea mainstay of U.S. Agriculture. "Part of the problem is that today we develop these big monocultures ofcorn or peas or cabbage," Frazier said. "They wipe out the diversity of nectarsources and reduce nesting sites for wild bees. And we use, unfortunately, alot of pesticides to keep the insects we don't want from eating these crops,which also works to eliminate the pollinators." So a Pennsylvania orchard manager, say, will bring in bees for the twoweeks the apple trees bloom, then take them out so he can apply substances tocontrol other insects. Neither entomologists nor growers can say what will happen when the2007 growing season for most of the country's crops starts. "We're coming uponto the season where people are really going to be worried," Frazier said. Although research suggests the stress of moving bees long distancesmight be a factor in the die-offs, smaller beekeepers with stationary hivesworry the problem will extend to their colonies as well. Already, Janet Katz, a beekeeper in Chester, N.J., thinks three of her21 hives are failing. And the bees are stressed already, she said. "The weather last seasonwas not cooperative," she said. "Over the course of the season it was too wet,too dry, too hot and too cold, all at the wrong times." Bees store honey every autumn - a hive needs 60 pounds to survive thewinter - but with this year's warm weather, they ate a lot, and beekeepers hadto supplement with sugar syrup. Now, the bees have sealed themselves inside the hives to stay warm, andthe keepers can't open the structures until spring. "Are we going to see this same thing, this collapsing disorder, inthese bees? We don't know," Frazier said. "It's very possible this may extendto our nonmigratory population. We just won't know until spring." -------------------------Contact staff writer Sandy Bauers at 215-854-5147 orsbauers < sbauers%40phillynews.com> .