A few hives short of a meltdown

That's the picture some are painting this spring in the wake of heavier than normal losses by beekeepers. "Unless someone or something stops it soon," one recent wire service story speculates, we could all be living on a "bread and water diet".

But though that picture may have a certain apocalyptic appeal, it ignores some inconvenient facts.

For starters, California's almond farmers -- who grow the most bee-intensive crop in the country -- are forecasting a record harvest this year. In fact, the latest estimate, released last week, is for this year's crop to be almost 20% bigger than last year's. The state's plum, peach and nectarine farmers say that their trees are full of fruit too. And so do Washington state cherry, pear and apple farmers.

In fact, though pollination is still continuing for a few crops, so far there has been no indication that the honeybee disappearances will have any effect whatsoever on any harvest this year.

This is certainly not to suggest that there is no problem, but only to say it's way too early to start stocking up on canned fruit.

Definitely, something very strange is going on. This winter and spring an extraordinary number of worker honeybees have been abandoning seemingly normal hives and leaving healthy queens and brood to starve. No one knows why this is happening; scientists have named it Colony Collapse Disorder.

Most agricultural pollination is done not by wild bee colonies but by commercial beekeepers who truck hives to sell their services where they are required. Since the early 1970s, the number of bee colonies in the United States has declined by almost half, due to a variety of factors including urbanization, pesticide use, pollution, various pests, and beekeepers retiring and going out of business.

The long-term dwindling of the bee population has resulted in the cost to farmers of these rented hives going up by $50 or $60 each, to $125 or more. But farmers say that rate has leveled off over the last few years.

This new problem began in November when commercial beekeepers along the East Coast began reporting sudden and drastic die-offs in their hives.