Bee crisis may pack $15B sting

Bee crisis may pack $15B sting

Rick Wills
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, March 29, 2007

John McDonald, a retired biologist from Spring Mills, Centre County, lost his 10 bee colonies and plans to start from scratch this year. "They were all gone when I looked on a warm day in January," says the beekeeping hobbyist.

May Berenbaum gets dozens of e-mails and phone calls each day from people speculating about what might be causing the devastating die-off of honeybees in the United States.

"People are telling me about everything from cell phone towers and insecticides to genetically altered foods," said Berenbaum, head of the department of entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "We have all sorts of theories, but it's still a mystery."

The mystery is costly and dangerous, which Berenbaum hopes to impress on members of Congress today when she testifies in Washington before the House Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture.

What experts say is the country's first true national bee crisis has surfaced in about 30 states. There are recent reports of similar bee die-offs in Europe.

Backyard hobbyists and commercial beekeepers are at risk from the escalating cost of just staying in business. But the loss also jeopardizes the $15 billion a year that honeybee pollination adds to American agriculture.

Everything from blueberries and apples to almonds and pumpkins are pollinated by honeybees.

Researchers say the need for a remedy is urgent.

"This is nothing short of scandalous, how casually we have treated pollination. There is just a long history of taking it for granted," said Berenbaum, who fears Colony Collapse Disorder -- or CCD, as the bee die-off is known -- could rival the destruction boll weevils inflicted on the country's cotton-growing areas in the early 20th century.

"We really need to have a comprehensive look at how to keep bees healthy," said Dennis van Engelsdorp, chief bee expert at the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.

In Pennsylvania, at least 12 percent of the state's beekeepers have experienced bee colony losses ranging from 55 percent to 90 percent, van Engelsdorp said. Between 40 percent and 57 percent of all bee colonies have been lost in the state in the past year, he said.

Starting last fall, beekeepers in Pennsylvania and elsewhere were stunned by the devastation of bee colonies.

Ken Eastman, of Monaca, Beaver County, lost 149 of 150 colonies.

"I will restart very small, but I cannot afford to spend $10,000 to start all over again," he said.

John McDonald, a retired biologist from Spring Mills, Centre County, lost his 10 bee colonies.

"They were all gone when I looked on a warm day in January," said McDonald, a hobbyist who plans to start from scratch again this year.

Earlier this month, McDonald wrote a column for the San Francisco Chronicle that asked whether genetically modified crops could be killing bees.

The same question is being posed by some European beekeepers, who have seen outbreaks similar to those in the U.S.

In isolated cases in Germany, some beekeepers have seen declines as high as 80 percent of their colonies this year, according to Der Spiegel, a German magazine.

Researchers like Berenbaum and van Engelsdorp say there is no evidence that CCD is caused by genetically altered crops.

"There is a lot of speculation. The science has not suggested that this is a factor," van Engelsdorp said.

The more likely cause is disease, he said.

Colonies that have suffered from CCD have all had an unnamed fungus, he said. "We don't know if that is a secondary or primary cause of CCD."

Most puzzling to beekeepers like Eastman is the sheer lack of a pattern in the bee deaths.

"I have some beekeeper friends just miles away who lost everything," he said. "Other beekeepers in Beaver County lost nothing."

Rick Wills can be reached at rwills@tribweb.com or (724) 779-7123.