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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Thanks to Tom Van Arsdall for forwarding the Washington Post
article below:</span></font><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><br>
<br>
</span></font><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:
Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Calibri><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Calibri><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/14/AR2010031402600.html">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/14/AR2010031402600.html</a>
<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Calibri><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=5 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";font-weight:bold'>Bees
are busier than ever as disease besieges colonies</span></font></b><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=2 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>By
Adrian Higgins<br>
Monday, March 15, 2010; A05 </span></font><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>In
normal times, David Hackenberg would begin trucking his 20 million honeybees
from the almond orchards of <st1:State w:st="on">California</st1:State> to the
orange groves of <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Florida</st1:place></st1:State>
this week. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Instead,
after a month working the almond blossoms on the West Coast, his exhausted
pollinators will get some rest and relaxation in the Georgia woods before the
East Coast apple blossoms summon them to work once more next month. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>These
are not normal times for bees, or for commercial beekeepers, so Hackenberg's
pollinators will skip the citrus gig to reduce their exposure to pesticides and
get some rest. "Everybody is seeing [bee] losses this winter," said
Hackenberg, of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Lewisburg</st1:City>, <st1:State
w:st="on">Pa.</st1:State></st1:place> "This was probably the worst year
ever." <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>More
than three years after beekeepers starting seeing the sudden disappearance of
hive populations, scientists have yet to find the cause -- let alone the fix --
for a condition called colony collapse disorder (CCD). Meanwhile, the
commercial beekeeping industry is struggling to provide pollination services to
the nations' farmers. One-third of food crops rely on insect pollination. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>A
recently published survey suggests that hive losses have stabilized at around
30 percent a year, but that high figure is based on last winter's data.
Anecdotally, the losses have climbed this winter, although a formal tally won't
occur until the spring. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>"I
am very concerned about this year based on what we have seen in California and
other parts" of the United States, said Jeffery S. Pettis, research leader
for the Agricultural Research Service's honey bee laboratory in Beltsville. He
has visited the almond farms of <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:State>
three times this winter to assess losses. The state's growers produce 80
percent of the world's almond crop and require 1.5 million of the nation's
estimated annual peak of 2.5 million managed hives. In the halcyon days after
World War II, there were more than 5 million managed hives in the United
States, and countless feral honeybee colonies that are now gone. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Hackenberg
said he and other major commercial beekeepers have seen "50 percent or
better" losses since late fall and in the winter, when bees typically are
clustered in a warm and fuzzy ball within the hive. "We started seeing
losses in late October, early November -- and they just kept going through the
middle of January," he said. Some of the losses will be made up by
beekeepers splitting one strong hive into two weaker ones. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Eighty
percent of his afflicted hives showed signs of CCD, Hackenberg said. With the
condition, foraging worker bees don't return to a hive even if a full brood is
waiting to hatch. One theory is that the foragers, knowing they are sick, fly
off to die rather than compromise the hive. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Scientists
at first figured that they would identify a single virus or pest responsible
for the collapse after the phenomenon surfaced in fall 2006, and an early
suspect was a bloodsucking parasite called the Varroa mite. If bees were the
size of humans, said Jerry Hayes, of the Florida Department of Agriculture, the
mite would be as large as a rat. Another was a pathogen named Israeli acute
paralysis virus, which showed up in collapsed colonies. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>After
three years of research, scientists think the cause is not a single factor but
a cocktail of maladies that together weaken and sicken the bees. "We know
CCD bees get all the pathogens causing the symptoms; it doesn't leave answered
what's the underlying cause," said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Pennsylvania</st1:place></st1:State>'s acting state apiarist. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Environmental
stress, including pesticides and the strain of being trucked across time zones
and climates, may also be a factor. Poor nutrition may also contribute, a diet
of corn syrup or the nutritionally inferior nectar or pollen of crops such as
cranberry, cucumbers or melons. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>"I
thought we could find the smoking gun, make a recommendation and save the
industry, and we have not been able to do that," Hayes said. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>"We
think there's a cumulative effect, and trying to point the finger to one
particular thing is difficult," Pettis said. "But bee health is in
really bad shape, and we need to understand why." <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Until
a decade ago or so, beekeepers earned most of their income from honey, but the
honey crop is no longer profitable. The globalization of the market has
depressed prices as the costs of hive management have increased. Beekeepers now
rely on pollination fees for the bulk of their income. Hackenberg's hives are
shipped 12,000 miles a year from <st1:State w:st="on">California</st1:State> to
<st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Maine</st1:place></st1:State> for
almonds, apples, cherries, blueberries, pumpkins, watermelons and cantaloupes.
The plants require the pollen from one flower to be deposited on another for
best results, and honeybees are designed to do just that in their own search
for nectar and pollen. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>As
bees have become sicker, beekeepers have had to take better care of them
through feed and medication, and poor beekeepers have gone out of business, so
hives are now managed by fewer keepers. But even the most diligent beekeepers
are up against it this winter. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Zac
Browning, a major beekeeper who lives in Blackfoot, <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Idaho</st1:place></st1:State>, prides himself on the care his
employees give his 18,000 hives, which includes sheltering them indoors in
winter. Through an expensive, labor-intensive regimen of feeding and
medication, Browning has kept his hive losses down to around 10 percent even
since 2006. But when he shipped colonies to the almond fields of <st1:State
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:State> this winter,
one-third of the hives were found to be exterminated, most of them empty of
foragers. "We had to reduce our obligations and cut contracts," he
said. Beekeepers in almond country have been getting as much as $150 a hive in
pollination fees, up from around $60 before colony collapse disorder surfaced. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>"We
have increased our inputs [of medications and protein supplements] the last
five years to ensure survival, and it's a perpetual cycle of diminishing
returns," Browning said. "We put more in and get less out." <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>"We
have been losing bees and beekeepers in this country for 60 years, and now we
are at the point where almost half the colonies in the country are needed to
pollinate almonds in <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:State>,"
vanEngelsdorp said. "We are close to the margin" of a viable ratio of
pollinators to crops, he said. "It's amazing to me how close we are to
that line." <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>"Something
is going wrong here," said Hackenberg. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Calibri><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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