SOMETHING strange is happening to honeybees. They're vanishing. In parts of the country, bees are leaving hives and not returning. The phenomenon, dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder, has wiped out a quarter of the hives of commercial beekeepers since last summer, according to the American Beekeeping Federation, and set off a flurry of debate about how to stop it, whatever it is, and what it all means. Though scientists from UC San Francisco announced Wednesday that they had identified a parasitic fungus and a virus as two potential causes, the culprit or culprits behind a national phenomenon still have not been definitively confirmed.
Flight of the honeybees
THE CALIFORNIA GARDEN
Bees have been mysteriously disappearing en masse. Good riddance, you say? Not so. You just might miss nature's little pollinators and the magic they work on the flowers and fruit in your backyard.
As if out of some lost Rod Serling script, this warp in the daily rhythms of a tiny creature has potentially big consequences. Bees, after all, don't just make honey.
"One-third of our daily diet is based on crops produced by honeybee pollination," says Eric Mussen, an entomologist and bee expert at UC Davis who believes Colony Collapse Disorder has the potential to threaten U.S. food production. Crops that rely on bees, he says, represent "the lion's share of our fruits and vegetables."
But it's not just at the dinner table where these unsung constant gardeners may be missed. Bees are as essential as water or sunlight in home gardens, Mussen says. The sight of these hairy-legged bugs clambering around your flowers and fruit trees should not prompt calls to the exterminator but, instead, should touch off celebration.
Being a few shovel-lengths away from 50,000 bees would spur many gardeners to sprint for the nearest shed, but at the Crenshaw Community Garden, the throng of bees is a groundskeeping crew, tending robust clumps of Korean parsley, onions and berries.
"It seems like a lot, but it's only the size of a basketball," says Anna Bonner Mieritz, an L.A. gardener and bee hobbyist whose triple-drawer hive is abuzz with activity. "They really are sweet, friendly creatures."
Over at her plot, an intent squad of honeybees stuffs their heads down the flutes of lush lavender blossoms. Although Mieritz hasn't had any problems with Colony Collapse Disorder, she sees the epidemic as an opportunity to "open eyes about smaller, local agriculture," which isn't subject to the chemical and nutritional stresses of big agribusiness.
It's also a chance to raise awareness about this little-understood bug and the sting that can result when we swat the hand that feeds us.
Without bees, salad bowls and fruit platters would be bare and pricey. Honeybees supplied by commercial beekeepers are responsible for pollinating more than 90% of the country's annual crops of carrots, cucumbers, broccoli, onions, pumpkins, squash, apples, blueberries, avocados, almonds and cherries. Peaches, grapes, melons, sugar beets and alfalfa -- critical to the dairy cows producing the milk for your Frosted Flakes -- also depend heavily on the pollination by bees.
Shunned as pests, these troupers lend nature, and us, a big hand. They never ask for a raise and will work for food -- the nectar and pollen that will be turned into our honey and their winter stores. In the process, bees operate as reproductive FedEx guys, delivering pollen grains caught in their hair from the male part of the flower to the female part, an operation that sometimes, as in apples, involves trips between different trees to produce fruit.
Without pollinators it's mutiny on the bounty. So far the disorder has affected mostly commercial beekeepers, particularly in the East. Troy Fore, executive director of the American Beekeeping Federation in Jesup, Ga., has lost 40% of his colonies this year and says some keepers have suffered losses of 90%.
A Congressional subcommittee held hearings on the problem in March, and a Southern California environmental group, Empowerment Works, convened a press conference last week to raise awareness about the issue. Though no one has quantified the disorder's effect on home gardens, the mystery has alarmed some backyard tillers who know just how important these critters are.
"There's good research that the more bees pollinate your fruit trees, the bigger the fruit," says Amy Stewart, author of "Flower Confidential: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful in the Business of Flowers," who just bought a colony of bees for her Northern California home. "Even for shrubs and flowers it's important for bees to pollinate them."
Local bee enthusiasts say they haven't experienced major losses from Colony Collapse Disorder. Hop onto online forums, however, and you'll read comments about missing bees from the Bay Area to L.A., with one Angeleno lamenting on Salon.com that rosemary and sage blossoms are devoid of bees this year. "It's the kind of thing Vonnegut might have based one of his ironic post-apocalyptic visions upon," the entry says. "Are we paying attention yet?"
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