Trouble's abuzz

Food producers fear implications of mysterious bee disease

Ashley Gurbal, agurbal@altoonamirror.com
A mysterious disease is causing the disappearance of thousands of honey bees — and with them could go the fruits, nuts and vegetables they pollinate.

“One out of every three bites you and I and other people eat comes from bees, due to pollination,” said Diana Cox-Foster, entomology professor at Penn State University. “When people think of bees, they think of honey and wax and don’t think they’re all important, but they play major roles in the food supply and ecosystem.”

The bees are disappearing because of colony collapse disorder, in which a beekeeper opens his hive to find most of the bees gone without a trace, and sometimes a small cluster of live bees.

“It’s like if you’re a dairy farmer, you go out tonight and milk, and everything’s fine,” said Ken Hoover of Dysart, president of 2 C’s & a Bee beekeepers’ association, which encompasses Blair, Cambria and Clearfield counties. “And then you go out in the morning and all the cows are gone, and there are no bodies.”

A recent study conducted by the Apiary Institute of America estimates that between 651,000 and 875,000 of the nation’s 2.4 million colonies were lost in winter 2006-07, and 25 percent of those were probably due to CCD, which researchers have been studying since last year.

Cox-Foster and Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences are participating in a nationwide study on CCD and last month received $150,000 from ice cream maker Haagen-Daz for the research.

‘‘About 40 percent of our flavors, or 28 of the 60, are dependent on using ingredients pollinated by honey bees,’’ said Diane McIntyre, senior public relations manager for Haagen-Daz. ‘‘We want to use the power of the Haagen-Daz brand to raise awareness of consumers of what they can do.’’

Ice cream makers aren’t the only food producers worried about CCD. Neil Hinish, owner of Hinish Orchard in Roaring Spring, said the problem is ‘‘really, really serious.’’

He purchases the use of bees from a commercial beekeeper to pollinate his orchard and said the cost of bees was up about 30 percent last year.

‘‘If my beekeeper said to me he couldn’t supply me with bees, I’d have to go out of business,’’ Hinish said. ‘‘If the honey bees vanish, there won’t be fruits and vegetables to eat.’’

Penn State will use the money to purchase equipment to speed up sample processing, Cox-Foster said.

“The process, right now, to look at viruses, we have to grind up individual bees,” she said. “The equipment will be able to process multiple samples at once.”

Whether CCD will affect hives this year isn’t clear yet. Cox-Foster said late winter is a “critical period of time,” as beekeepers will be opening their hives in a few weeks, when the weather is warmer.

If a hive has fallen prey to CCD, the beekeeper is left with little evidence.

“Part of the mystery is that they’re leaving the hive and going elsewhere to die,” Cox-Foster said. “The queen’s still there, and a small number of young bees. ... We have reports of finding bees, but it’s hard to see a bee once it dies.”

One of Penn State’s experiments is being done in a greenhouse, Cox-Foster said, so those bees don’t have anywhere to go when they leave the hive.

CCD isn’t the first threat beekeepers have faced. Other diseases, mites and black bears attack hives, too.

“Man and honey bees have interacted for as long as either has been here,” Hoover said. “It’s never been easy. There’s always been a challenge.”

Earl Kennedy, 78, of Dysart is familiar with the challenges of beekeeping — he’s been doing it for 27 years. But CCD is the biggest one he’s seen.

He compared CCD and the research to a disaster the prompts the re-evaluation of policies.

“It’s like when you have to have a 60-car pileup on the interstate before someone says, ‘Maybe these trucks are moving too fast,’” he said.