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8 Mar 2007

Scientists ask: Where are all the bees?
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/03/03/State/Scientists_ask__Where.shtml

Scientists ask: Where are all the bees?
A Dade City beekeeper sounds a nationwide alarm as colonies mysteriously
disappear.
By DAN DEWITT

DADE CITY - To a veteran beekeeper like David Hackenberg, it was as
astonishing as seeing water flow uphill.
Last October, he left 400 hives in a field in Ruskin to feed in
Brazilian pepper tree blossoms. When he returned a month later, all but
36 of the colonies had been abandoned, right down to the part of the
honeycomb filled with larvae and pupae - the future of the hives.
"I could tell the whole order of things had just gone haywire," said
Hackenberg, 58, who has been keeping bees since he was 12.
Hackenberg, who spread the word to scientists and other beekeepers, is
credited with sounding the alarm about what may be the most devastating
honeybee die-off in U.S. history.

The crisis, marked by bees mysteriously vanishing from their hives, has
been identified in 24 states in every part of the country, said Jerry
Hayes, Florida's chief apiary inspector; about 35 percent of Florida's
colonies have disappeared, he said, with the losses concentrated in the
southern half of the state, where many beekeepers from the eastern
United States spend the winter.
Unless scientists can find the cause of the die-off, and a solution, its
long-term consequences may be as ominous as its name: Colony Collapse
Disorder.

Not only are the livelihoods of beekeepers endangered, Hayes said, but
so is the estimated one-third of the nation's food supply that depends
upon honeybee pollination - apples, almonds, melons, blueberries and
some varieties of citrus, including grapefruit.
"Honey is a byproduct of pollination," he said. "It's wonderful and it's
great, but more importantly, without honeybees taking pollen from one
flower to another, that plant has no reason to build a fruit or a nut."

Scientists alerted
Even so, beekeeping remains a small and underappreciated industry,
Hackenberg said, "the ugly stepchild of agriculture."
That is why Hackenberg has been so important, Hayes said. He is
well-connected, opinionated, funny and, for an interview on Thursday
afternoon, dressed to stand out, wearing a multicolored hat advertising
his business, Hackenberg Apiary, and a large, square belt-buckle
engraved with images of bees and honeycomb.

A former president of the American Beekeeping Federation, he has been on
the telephone constantly in recent weeks, talking to reporters across
the country from his winter headquarters in a remote corner of
northwestern Pasco County.
When he began telling fellow beekeepers of his vanishing hives last
fall, some were skeptical, but others told him they had been losing
large numbers of bees for more than a year.
By reporting this to agriculture officials, Hayes said, Hackenberg "was
the one who got this whole thing started."

In response, farming experts from several states and universities have
formed an emergency working group to study the disease.
So far, the scientists know only two things for sure, said Dennis
vanEnglesdorp, Pennsylvania's state apiarist: The main symptom has been
the mass abandonment of hives. And the variety of fungi, viruses and
mites found in collapsing hives suggests a widespread failure of the
bees' immune systems.

"It's a lot like AIDS," Hackenberg said.
The rest, at this point, is conjecture, according to the study group's
preliminary report.
Bees are increasingly trucked long distances to take advantage of crops,
such as almonds, that pay high pollination fees. This may strain their
ability to recover from infections, the report says, and expose them to
a wider range of diseases and toxic chemicals.
"They forage over a large area so they pick up a lot of junk," Hayes
said. "I'm surprised there's a honey bee alive."

The "prime suspect" for the collapse, according to Hackenberg, is an
increasingly popular class of pesticides called neonicotinoids that the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has identified as highly toxic to
honeybees.
Another possible culprit, vanEnglesdorp said, is a new strain of fungus
that has appeared in many of the failing hives. But both he and Hayes
warned it is far too early to settle on a single cause of the outbreak.

"The awkward and frustrating thing at this point is that we're all
grasping at straws," Hayes said.
Colonies disappear
Beekeepers have reported several smaller but equally mysterious
collapses in the past, vanEnglesdorp said. In the 1980s, invasive mites
from South America all but wiped out the feral bee population and
contributed to a steep decline in U.S. beekeeping. The number of hives
in Florida has since dropped from a peak of 12,000 to about 1,000
currently, Hayes said, and the number of colonies from nearly 400,000 to
279,000.

That, at least, was the count before the current collapse, which cost
Hackenberg about 2,000 of his 3,000 hives - and an estimated $350,000 in
lost revenue and the expense of rebuilding his stock of colonies.
By "splitting" hives, taking bees from a healthy colony to a new box
with a young queen, Hackenberg has already created 400 hives. He has
deposited some of these into nearby orange groves, where they will
improve the harvest, produce a premium grade of honey and use the nectar
to build "good, strong, boiling-over beehives that we can take up North
to pollinate apples."

So, he is confident his business will survive this year, he said. "But
what's going to happen next year, if whatever is causing this is still
out there? What's to say the problem is not going to get bigger?"

Dan DeWitt can be reached at dewitt@sptimes.com or 352 754-6116.



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