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Are Bees Not To Be?

Honey Bees Vital to Crop Pollination Disappearing From Hives

By Lindsay Robison

Honey bees are dying. So what? We kill insects, including bees, every day. But they’re dying in masses, and nobody knows why. Similar bee die-offs have happened before, but never to this extent or without an explanation.

Scientists and beekeepers have several theories for the most recent die-offs. Some are very believable, some seem completely unfounded…although interesting. But believable or not, if an answer isn’t found soon, you are going to be affected in more ways than one.

Eighty percent of the crops that must be pollinated, which include more than 90 different foods, are pollinated by honey bees. This amounts to about one-third of our diet or, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), every third forkful that goes into ours mouths.

Okay, so the die-offs can obviously affect our food supply, which impacts our well-being. But how does it affect farm mutuals, especially since farm mutual insurance companies don’t insure crops? Well, think of it this way: If not enough bees exist to pollinate the crops, the crops don’t grow. If crops don’t grow, farmers have nothing to harvest. If there is nothing to harvest, there is essentially no farm, which means no equipment or buildings in need of insurance.

Like to eat crisp apples in the fall or a refreshing fruit salad of peaches, kiwi, blueberries, strawberries, and melons in the summer? How about cooked squash or a salad topped with asparagus, broccoli, and cucumbers? Taken part in the soy craze? If the die-offs don’t end soon, you might not be able to satisfy those hungers. If you want to take it even further, honey bees pollinate the alfalfa that cows eat, which, ultimately, provides us with more than one source of food. So a juicy hamburger or that tall glass of milk with your cookies could be things of the past. And forget about nuts in those cookies, honey bees have a hand – or legs – in pollinating nuts, too.

The situation might not ever cause Biblical levels of plague, however. The U.S. beekeeping industry experienced die-offs in the 1880s, the 1920s, and the 1960s, and we’re still eating foods honey bees pollinate. But with the current unexplained circumstances, it can seem scary and is definitely something needing attention. In fact, CBS and PBS covered the issue on their news programs “60 Minutes” and “Nature,” respectively, in late October.

In previous die-offs, scientists found the dead honey bees in or around their hives, but in these most recent incidents, what experts have dubbed “colony collapse disorder,” (CCD) bees have simply disappeared. This is odd because bees are social creatures. They live together in hives and interact with one another and take care of their young. Eric Mussen, an extension apiculturist at the University of California-Davis, says honey bee larvae need to have food brought to them while they grow in the hive. “That is why honey bees do not usually ‘abandon the brood,’ as they do with CCD.”

A Congressional Research Service report cited other differences between the current bee disappearance and previous ones. These losses have happened quickly – sometimes in as little as two weeks and in alarming numbers – anywhere from 30 percent to 90 percent of some beekeepers’ colonies during the 2006-2007 winter, a large difference when compared with the 15 percent to 20 percent expected yearly loss.

When honey bee pollination accounts for $15 billion worth of the crops harvested in the United States each year, according to the USDA, the current losses stretch the honey bee industry even thinner, which has been dwindling for the past six decades. Honey bee colonies have dropped from more than five million in the 1940s to only about 2.25 million today.

“Almonds alone require 1.3 million colonies and are predicted to require 2.12 million by 2012, a number nearly equal to the number of colonies presently in the U.S.,” says Greg Hunt, an assistant professor in the Department of Entomology at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.

Commercial beekeepers who earn their livelihoods transporting their honey bees around the country renting them out like tiny migrant workers to farmers who need to pollinate their crops are going to have to stretch their colonies even more if need continues to grow and CCD continues. Beekeepers will be forced to travel even farther. It has become so bad that some beekeepers are trekking the 3,000 miles between California and Maine just to pollinate blueberries. This traveling adds stress to the bees and to the beekeepers who depend upon the bees to pay their bills.

“By the time you lose a hive and replace it, you’re going to have to dig into your pocket,” says Pennsylvania-based hobby beekeeper and former biologist John McDonald. He has a small beekeeping operation – only eight hives right now – but he is feeling the money crunch from losing all of his colonies last year. “These big operations, I can’t imagine how much money they lose, or have lost.”

A package of bees alone, which consists of one colony, costs about $55. By the time you add the hive and frames for that colony to thrive upon, you’re looking at another $120 to $180 per hive. Small- to medium-sized operations with at least 2,000 hives will require an investment of more than $350,000. Even if the operation loses only 30 percent of its bees to CCD, that’s still more than $100,000 to replenish the amount of bees lost.

David Hackenberg, owner of Hackenberg Apiaries in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, has been severely affected by CCD and has felt the effects of the losses. In the course of adding up the numbers, he figured he has lost more than $450,000 because of the die-offs. Hackenberg considers his 3,000-hive operation a small one, but he rents out bees to growers from Maine to California as many as eight times a year to help pollinate crops. And the lack of bees is making this difficult to fulfill.

In order to make up for the shortages, Hackenberg, like many other beekeepers, has had to raise his prices to rent his bees. Gordon Sorrel, president and CEO of Texas Insurance Information Services that writes policies for beekeepers, sees the bright side of this situation. “It may be hard times for the bees, but I’m not sure it’s hard times for the beekeepers,” he says. “The market is a wonderful thing, and what usually happens when you have this supply and demand, if the demand exceeds the supply for such things as honey bees for pollination, you know what happens to the price. So what’s happening right now is that beekeepers, if they can keep their hives healthy, are actually in the position to make some good money.”

But keeping the hives healthy and bringing in the business at the higher prices pose problems. “Growers balked at prices when they found out they were going to have to pay higher prices to get bees,” Hackenberg says. “They said ‘We’re not going to do that.’ They found some people who said they would run them lower, but when the dust settled, they didn’t have the bees to rent them…. Some farmers are saying ‘when the price gets right you’ll have enough bees.’ Well, if we can keep them alive. The problem is like I told a grower in California last year, he said, ‘If I give you enough money you’ll find me some bees.’ I said ‘Look, I can lay $100 bills down in front of the hives, but that ain’t going to keep them alive.’”

And it’s not good for the industry, either. Being hundreds, possibly thousands, of hives shorter than just one year ago and facing rising expenses makes it difficult for beekeepers to make ends meet. Hackenberg knows quite a few businesses that have gone belly up, and although he has not cut back on the bee business yet, he and his wife have made cutbacks in their lifestyle to compensate. He does consider himself lucky, though. “I have friendly bankers,” he says. “I know some people who don’t have friendly bankers and probably won’t be with us within another year.”

The shortage is forcing beekeepers to look outside the United States to restock their colonies, which may be part of the problem. Bringing in bees from outside the United States could also mean bringing in pathogens that could further harm our bees.

“We have been historically afraid to import bees and for good reasons because of pathogens and parasites that could be introduced,” Purdue’s Hunt says. “However, we seem to have 99 percent of the problems that bees could have.”

Theories trying to explain CCD range from legitimate possible explanations to downright sensational. Three possibilities are getting the majority of attention from researchers, according to the USDA. These include pesticides, new parasites or pathogens, and viruses. Two strongly correlated causes researchers have found are Varroa mites, which have killed numbers of bees in the past, and a virus known as the Israeli acute paralysis virus. Many scientists are pointing their fingers in this direction, but it is most likely a combination of these theories, with some others things factored in.

Stress could be one extenuating factor. Just like in humans, stress can wear down the bees, weakening their immune systems. Malnutrition could be another factor. Hunt gives a good example for the malnutrition case. “Growers in California want beekeepers to bring big, strong colonies, but shipping bees is hard on them,” he says. “When they get there, the bees are waiting for almonds to bloom. Naturally, this weakens the hives because there is no food coming in to feed the brood.”

But the list of theories doesn’t stop there. Another theory is that of genetically modified crops. By incorporating toxic proteins found in pesticides directly into the crop’s genetic material, this can cut down on the time it takes farmers to care for their crops, but it also causes problems. While spraying pesticides on crops at one time required certain pests to ingest the toxin and it be activated inside the pest’s stomach, genetically modified crops don’t require activation or the ingestion by certain pests. The only thing required for the toxin to work is it being ingested.

Some don’t believe this is the cause, but others – beekeepers and researchers alike – are looking into it as a possible cause for CCD. McDonald is a big believer in the genetically modified crop explanation, even if bees don’t pollinate some of the crops being modified, corn for example. “People say ‘Well, bees don’t pollinate corn,’” McDonald says. “Well that’s true; corn is wind pollinated. But they do collect the pollen to raise their babies with. Bees require huge amounts of pollen for protein sources, so whenever corn is at the proper stage, you’ll see swarms of bees gathering bags of pollen on their legs and bringing it back to their hives. So that was my original idea, that the toxin was getting transferred to the hive from pollen.”

Hackenberg believes in another, more researched theory – that of pesticides known as neonicotinoids. Farmers spray these chemicals on their crops and homeowners use them in their yards to keep bugs away. Hackenberg has been in contact with many researchers who are looking into this problem, but he has some theories of his own from what he has seen with his own bees.

“I think the reason neonicotinoids may be so damaging to honey bees is that they are found in fairly low levels in the pollen and nectar of the plants,” he said in a March 2007 letter he wrote to the growers who rent his bees. “The field bees often do not die when working on plants treated with the products. Instead they may bring the pollen and nectar back to the hive and store it in their comb to use later…. The young bees raised on this food may exhibit memory loss and impaired immune response.”

The letter goes on to tell the growers that these pesticides weaken the immune systems in the bees so much that it makes them susceptible to viruses and pathogens that end up killing the hives – almost like AIDS but in bees.

And then there’s the theory that has brought a lot of attention to the subject: cell phones. We’ve all heard that cell phone frequencies are evil – they may be giving us brain cancer – and honey bees, according to one British study, aren’t safe from these devices either. According to a Consumer Affairs article, “A limited study at Landau University has found that bees will abandon their hives when cell phones are turned on and placed next to them.” This theory hasn’t gotten much backing from anyone, but it has brought national attention to the problem – both consumer magazines and television newscasts have carried the story. Truthful or not, the theory has at least brought the problem to the attention of the entire country.

While CCD won’t kill us off en masse like it has honey bees, we, as humans, are bound to be affected. “I don’t know if the die-offs have reached the point where it’s actually affecting the pollination here yet, but if it continues, there will undoubtedly be some price to be paid,” McDonald says. And Mussen believes we could have some local shortages of certain foods around the country. “We can get around that as long as we’re willing to pay to outsource for those foods,” he says. “I would be very unhappy to be as dependent on foreign sources for food as we are for oil.”

The biggest losers, though, will be the beekeepers who rely upon farmers to rent their colonies for pollination as well as the farmers who need that pollination. “Beekeeping is a low-profit margin business….” Hunt says. “Add in the mite problem and higher gas prices and it is no wonder that beekeepers cut corners wherever possible.”

Roger Starks from the Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based Howalt-McDowell Insurance Co., another of the few companies that write policies for beekeepers, agrees. “They short themselves – on what they eat, on their insurance, too,” he says. “Some 80 percent never had liability insurance. They need to have it.” But some just can’t afford it.

Depending upon where beekeepers cut corners, farm mutual insurance companies might be losers, too. While premiums for beekeepers might not be any more expensive than for anyone else, Hackenberg says insurance premiums, in addition to higher expenses and bee losses, are killing them. So while food isn’t likely to disappear anytime soon, if the bees continue to die, so might the means to get the money that allows us to buy that food.

Posted: Monday, January 21, 2008 12:00:00 AM. Modified: Monday, January 21, 2008 3:29:00 PM.

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