Save the noble honeybee

Utah is the Beehive State. The state motto — Industry — reflects the cooperation and determination of worker bees in a hive. The theme has filtered into popular culture where baseball teams have been named "The Bees," "The Buzz" and "The Stingers." Beehives are imprinted into our walkways. They stand guard at the Capitol.

But now comes word that half of the honeybee population in America has been silently wiped out. A tiny parasite has been clinging to bees and literally sucking the lifeblood out of them. Crops are going unpollinated. Almond growers are already saying the word "disaster" out loud. Honey production is down. And a new line of parasite-resistent bees is still in the embryo stage.

In short, the buzz is that bees are fading out. And that means high prices for everything from watermelons to Queen Anne cherries.

The crisis also strikes a little deeper than economics. The almost mystical nature of hives — with their honeycombs, queens, drones and dancing messengers — gives the problem a more poignant immediacy.

For years, Utah beekeepers have been treating their bees with insecticides. This latest batch of parasites, however, has them stymied. The problem is so grave on the west coast that Utah keepers have taken their bees to California and rented them to almond growers there for $100 a hive — 20 times the normal rate.

Locally, some growers will do well this year, others will not. Many have been able to secure hives for their orchards. The big losers, if there are any, may be the cherry farmers. Cherries need to be cross-pollinated; that is, the pollen from a Bing cherry tree, for instance, must be matched with the blossoms on another variety, a Lambert cherry, say. With peaches and other varieties of fruit, bees can just pop from blossom to blossom on the same tree and get the job done.

One novel thought is that the deluge of migrating butterflies may be able to step up and do the pollinating job that bees normally do. In a state famous for having seagulls step in during a cricket outbreak, having butterflies step in during a dearth of bees would seem as natural as, well, nature.

Fruit growers will know in the next couple of weeks how they fared. And if growers feel the pinch in the middle of May, it means consumers will be feeling it in the fall.