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</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Geneva" FAMILY="SANSSERIF" SIZE="2"> Wild Things<BR>
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By SANDY MILLER HAYS, Agricultural Research Service<BR>
You've probably already heard that something strange is going on in the world of honeybees. In fact, if honeybees could suddenly talk, perhaps the first words out of their mouth might be "Houston, we have a problem."<BR>
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Thanks to a very mysterious syndrome known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), beginning in the fall of October 2006, some beekeepers began reporting the losses — no, make that the disappearance — of as much as 90 percent of their bees.<BR>
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An alfalfa leafcutting bee (Megachile rotundata) on an alfalfa flower. This bee is widely used for pollination by alfalfa seed growers. ARS scientists in Logan, Utah, are always on the lookout for wild bees that can be recruited to help the honey bee with the huge job of pollinating the nation’s crops. (Photo by Peggy Greb)<BR>
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That's right: The bees were simply...gone. The main symptom of CCD is a largely empty hive, with no or very few adult honeybees present, but a live queen and some immature bees. There aren't even any bodies lying around as clues!<BR>
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I can almost hear you saying, "Hey, we've all got problems, so why should I get all worked up about bees?" The answer is, because bees get all worked up about us, indirectly. That phrase "busy bee" didn't come out of nowhere; bees are responsible for the pollination of a enormous variety of crops that we depend on every day.<BR>
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In fact, about one mouthful in three of our typical American diet directly or indirectly benefits from honeybee pollination. And that includes that sizzling sirloin steak on your plate, because bees also pollinate important forages such as alfalfa that help "fuel" the cow who's going to wind up as your steak. The California almond crop alone uses 1.3 million colonies of bees for pollination — roughly half of all the honeybees in the United States — and that need is expected to grow to 1.5 million colonies by 2010.<BR>
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The good news is, the scientists of the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) are all over this problem. In April 2007, they held a CCD research workshop and brought together more than 80 of the major bee scientists, bee industry representatives and others to map out a research agenda. From that, they developed a Research Action Plan to coordinate investigations to discover what factors may be causing CCD and what actions need to be taken.<BR>
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The researchers are focusing on four areas of concern: pathogens (disease-causing organisms), parasites, environmental stresses, and bee management stresses such as poor nutrition. The experts think the culprit behind CCD isn't likely to be just one of those, but a combination of any or all of the four.<BR>
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In the time-honored tradition of not putting all of one's eggs in a single basket, ARS scientists also are focusing attention on wild bees that might be able to help the beleaguered honeybees carry out their vital pollination chores.<BR>
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One promising "wild thing" has the tongue-twisting name Osmia aglaia. This is a beautiful, emerald-green bee, small in size but big on pollinating the flowers of blackberry and raspberry bushes.<BR>
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This is just one of what the scientists call "non-honey bees" — bees that don't produce honey, but do just about everything else you'd want a bee to do. The wild bees are also sometimes called "solitary bees," because while they might make their nests near other bees, they're not into the communal lifestyle of the honeybees.<BR>
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Another wild bee that can be particularly useful is the alfalfa leafcutting bee, which, as its name implies, is a lively pollinator of that particular forage crop. It gets its picturesque name from its habit of cutting plant leaves into tidy little pieces that it uses to make leafy nests for its young. And there's the blue orchard bee, which labors in our apple, cherry and almond orchards.<BR>
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If we're going to put these wild bees to work for us in a really useful way, we need to learn more about their ways. So ARS has a lab in Logan, Utah, that's North America's only scientific institution devoted exclusively to providing practical, science-based knowledge on how to manage these wild bees.<BR>
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Rest assured, no one's saying that we're all going to go hungry next week because of our recent woes with CCD and the disappearing honeybees. But by learning more about the wild bees and how they can be used to fill in the gaps in our pollination needs, I'd say the ARS scientists are doing a good job of hedging our bets!<BR>
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The Agricultural Research Service is the chief in-house scientific research agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. You can read more about ARS discoveries at</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Geneva" FAMILY="SANSSERIF" SIZE="2"><A HREF="http://www.ars.usda.gov/news/"> http://www.ars.usda.gov/news/<BR>
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Laurie Davies Adams<BR>
Executive Director<BR>
Coeovlution Institute<BR>
425 Washington Street, 5th Floor<BR>
San Francisco, CA 94111<BR>
415 362 1137 (p)<BR>
415 362 3070 (f)<BR>
LDA@coevolution.org<BR>
www.coevolution.org<BR>
www.nappc.org<BR>
www.pollinator.org<BR>
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</A></FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Geneva" FAMILY="SANSSERIF" SIZE="2"><B><A HREF="http://www.ars.usda.gov/news/">National Pollinator Week is June 22-28, 2008. Create or attend an event in your state. Visit www.pollinator.org National Pollinator Week for complete details.</A></B></FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Geneva" FAMILY="SANSSERIF" SIZE="2"><A HREF="http://www.ars.usda.gov/news/"><BR>
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</A></FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Geneva" FAMILY="SANSSERIF" SIZE="2"><I><A HREF="http://www.ars.usda.gov/news/">Join the Pollinator Partnership working to protect agriculture and ecosystems - visit www.pollinator.org</A></I></FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Geneva" FAMILY="SANSSERIF" SIZE="2"><A HREF="http://www.ars.usda.gov/news/"><BR>
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