Buzz about bees is puzzling

Utah keepers say colonies are in good shape despite mystery ailment in U.S.

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.

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