Buzz about bees is puzzling

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), May 13, 2007 | by Jenifer K. Nii Deseret Morning News

The recent buzz about bees is striking many Utah beekeepers and bee experts as bizarre, given the relative health of their colonies this year.

Reports have been startling. Surveys indicate that beekeepers in the United States have lost one quarter of their colonies -- a five- fold increase over what they normally see -- to something called "Colony Collapse Disorder," a mysterious, yet-to-be-defined ailment that seems to have affected honeybee colonies in 27 states, including Utah.

Which, if it's true, is a big deal. Honeybees are multi-taskers, according to Rosalind James, research leader for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Research Service of the Pollinating-Insect Biology, Management and Systematics Research Unit in Logan.

In addition to making honey, honeybees also serve as pollinators of nuts, fruits and vegetables -- the seeds that grow broccoli, for example, and almonds, James said.

According to the USDA, about one-third of the human diet comes from insect-pollinated plants, and the honeybee is responsible for 80 percent of that pollination.

(Blue orchard bees largely pollinate tree fruit crops, James said, while alfalfa is pollinated mostly by alfalfa leaf-cutting bees.)

Widespread colony losses could have a significant effect on the human diet, said Kevin Hackett, national program leader for USDA's bee and pollination program.

"This is the biggest general threat to our food supply," Hackett said.

And it has received growing attention. In recent weeks, Hackett has briefed Vice President Dick Cheney's office on the problem. Congress has held hearings on the matter.

"This crisis threatens to wipe out production of crops dependent on bees for pollination," Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said in a statement.

A congressional study said honeybees add about $15 billion a year in value to the U.S. food supply.

The problem begins

So what happened? This past fall, beekeepers reported opening their hives and finding no worker bees, just newborn bees and the queen. Unlike past bee die-offs, where dead bees would be found near the hive, this time they just disappeared. The die-off takes just one to three weeks.

USDA's top bee scientist, Jeff Pettis, who is coordinating the detective work on this die-off, has more suspected causes than time, people and money to look into them.

The top suspects are a parasite, an unknown virus, some kind of bacteria, pesticides or a one-two combination of the top four, with one weakening the honeybee and the second killing it.

A quick experiment with some of the devastated hives makes pesticides seem less likely. In the recent experiment, Pettis and colleagues irradiated some hard-hit hives and reintroduced new bee colonies. More bees thrived in the irradiated hives than in the non- irradiated ones, pointing toward some kind of disease or parasite that was killed by radiation.

The parasite hypothesis has history and some new findings to give it a boost. A mite practically wiped out the wild honeybee in the United States in the 1990s. And another new one-celled parasitic fungus was found last week in a tiny sample of dead bees by University of California San Francisco molecular biologist Joe DeRisi, who isolated the human SARS virus.

However, Pettis and others said while the parasite nosema ceranae may be a factor, it cannot be the sole cause. The fungus has been seen before, sometimes in colonies that were healthy.

"There are many, many opinions about what it (Colony Collapse Disorder) might be, and whether or not it's really even one thing," James said. "Maybe it's a pathogen, maybe it's something about the way the bees are being handled that's increasing stress levels and making them more susceptible to opportunistic pathogens, maybe it's some effects of pesticides, maybe it's too much in-breeding. Nobody is really sure exactly what it is, so it's hard to know also whether or not things are going to get worse, or better. Because we really don't know what's going on."

Lack of information

Part of the problem, according to James, is in the lack of information. Much of the reporting to date has been by beekeepers who have had colonies collapse, she said. Perhaps beekeepers who weren't affected just haven't been heard.

There are about 250 beekeepers registered in Utah who oversee a total of about 30,000 colonies, said Danielle Downey, Salt Lake County bee inspector. So far, Downey said, local beekeepers seem to be holding up just fine.

"I haven't seen any colony collapse locally," Downey said. "Some of the bigger beekeepers are reporting that their losses this year are less than last year. I know that the national studies (on CCD) do include Utah (as an impacted state). But personally I don't know the source of that. I'm not seeing it."

Ditto from Martin James, Cache County bee inspector. James also is a commercial beekeeper, participating in the family business, Slide Ridge Honey.

"Actually, (Cache County beekeepers) are seeing just the opposite of these kinds of losses in this area," Martin James said. "The number of beekeepers and the number of hives have both dropped dramatically over the last 20 years, locally and nationwide. But the quiet ones are silently going about their business, and producing beautiful bees."