[Pollinator] The pollination crisis made the front page of the Oregonian

[Jennifer Tsang]

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/11750505278113
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Researchers puzzled at the sudden drop of honeybees 


Pollination - Die-offs of the hard-working insect stump beekeepers and worry
growers 

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

MICHAEL MILSTEIN 

The Oregonian 

Scott Keene's bee colonies buzzed with life last fall. Then, about December,
the southern Oregon beekeeper realized his prized insects -- an unsung hero
of agriculture -- were disappearing. 

He'd check a hive that had been churning with insects and, "It'd just be an
empty box." It looked as though the bees had abandoned house, leaving
helpless young behind. By February, 1,000 of the 1,400 colonies of bees he
hires out to pollinate crops through California and Oregon were gone. 

Worse yet, neither he nor other beekeepers around the country who have
suffered the same fate know why. 

Researchers investigating the scattered but sudden crash of honeybees, which
festered through last year before exploding nationwide, are just as puzzled.
They call it "colony collapse disorder," and though it bears some
resemblance to past outbreaks of deadly mites and viruses, it appears
especially sudden and severe. 

No common threads seem to explain the cases. 

"Even people who thought a month ago they were in good shape are having
trouble," said George Hansen, a beekeeper based in Colton who is about to
move his bees from California's almond groves north to the Hood River fruit
orchards. 

Oregon and Washington cherry, pear, apple and other crops depend on hired
bees to ferry pollen from tree to tree and flower to flower in spring.
Pollen sticks to bees' hind legs, falling onto other flowers as they go,
fertilizing the blossoms so they ripen into fruit that arrives plump and
sweet at your table. 

Northwest beekeepers and farmers cross their fingers, hoping there will be
enough bees to work their crops. But bee ranks are shrinking here and
nationwide even as demand for their services rise, forcing fewer bees to
labor harder than ever while they endure mounting assaults from parasites,
pesticides and disease. 

"Working them to death" 

The bees roll from field to field, crop to crop, aboard rattling pallets,
trucks and forklifts, often sustained on the same sort of high fructose corn
syrup that goes into soft drinks and junk food. Keepers divide hives to
rapidly build numbers to pollinate more crops. 

The bees get little rest. 

"We're working them to death is what we're doing," Reedsport beekeeper Larry
Williams said by cell phone from the groves of central California, where he
works about as hard as his bees -- sleeping in his truck rather than wasting
time finding a motel room. 

He lost 2,000 of his roughly 4,000 hives last year to ill-timed spraying of
pesticides among cranberry fields on the coast. 

"We're just stressing them so hard, and then we have all these diseases and
things, and they can't take it," he said. "You just need that one thing, and
it pushes you over the edge." 

Beekeepers, who know their bees as well as you might the family dog, worry
about all this pressure as much as anyone. But they're driven to it by
global economic forces and a desperate need for bees as a buzzing backbone
of agriculture. 

Quiet on numbers 

They are an itinerant and independent bunch, especially as spring
approaches, making it tough to tell exactly what's happening to bees
statewide. In the apiary world, asking beekeepers about their losses is a
bit like asking people about their bank accounts. 

There are about 100 beekeepers in Oregon with five or more hives, according
to the Oregon Department of Agriculture. A hive holds tens of thousands of
bees, depending on the season. At least a few Oregon and Washington keepers
have been struck by colony collapse disorder, reports Bee Alert Technology
Inc. The Montana company tracks the outbreak but promised to keep specific
numbers and locations private. 

"We've seen beekeepers of every scale and size and every amount of
experience getting hit," said Jerry Bromenshenk, a professor at the
University of Montana and president of Bee Alert. One keeper who lost about
75 percent of his bees will spend $1.2 million to rebuild his hives. 

The disorder first gained attention in Eastern states last year. But as
Bromenshenk's team looked deeper. "It didn't take us two weeks to realize it
was happening all over." 

They have details of some 400 cases, but there are all sorts of variables --
some with traces of curious fungi or pesticides, but others that are
different. "You get an idea of the needle in the haystack we're looking
for," he said. "There may be no one cause." 

Any one of many factors may be pushing already stressed bees too far, he
said. 

"You've got guys who have been doing bees their whole lives, and they're
losing everything, and they don't know why," Williams said. 

Keene, 37, and based west of Medford, may be the worst hit Oregon beekeeper
so far. He gave up on taking his hives to pollinate the California almond
crop, where beekeepers earn their biggest income of the year -- up to $150 a
colony. 

"I didn't want to haul a bunch of bees down there and end up putting out a
bunch of empty boxes," he said. 

Trouble over decades 

Keene suspects that a bad batch of manufactured corn syrup, fed to his bees
just before they started vanishing, may have poisoned them. Some -- but not
all -- other beekeepers who suffered losses used such syrup. 

But most beekeepers will tell you that their hard-working bees have endured
more than their share of trouble in the past few decades, any of which, or
all of which, could be contributing to what is happening now. 

"How many things can you pile on to bees that are already stressed?" asked
John Jacob, who raises bees in Rogue River and in Portland. He sells queen
bees to other keepers and said demand is through the roof from other keepers
who need new queens as they try to rebuild hives after they collapsed. 

He suspects the problem is a mounting combination of factors. 

"Everybody wants to find one smoking gun, and I don't think we will," he
said. 

Bee die-offs struck before, and nobody ever figured out what caused them,
said Michael Burgett, an entomologist at Oregon State University. Mites may
cause bees to leave their hives in search of new colonies, only to die of
exposure, he said. 

Says Bromenshenk: "We're asking a lot of these colonies these days." 

Michael Milstein: 503-294-7689; michaelmilstein@ news.oregonian.com 




C2007 The Oregonian

 

 

Jennifer Tsang
Coevolution Institute <http://coevolution.org> 
423 Washington St. 5th Fl.
San Francisco, CA 94111-2339
T: 415.362.1137

F: 415.362.3070

www.nappc.org

www.pollinator.org

 

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