It’s a startlingly fast and stealthy killer—dark, invisible and as yet unidentified. A plague of unknown origin is sweeping through honeybee hives and decimating their populations. The bees simply vanish. The lack of knowledge of the underlying cause moves it closer to becoming an extinction-level crisis.

It began on the East coast in the form of scattered hive-failures in 2002. Back then, failures were rare, relatively speaking. They’ve since furrowed foreheads as high up in the government as Congress, and have Agriculture Department employees reaching for antacids.

Richard Rys, a Massachusetts beekeeper, told the Cape Cod Times (capecodonline.com) he lost two hives during the fall of 2006. He sums up the problem best, “The hives were going great, with brood and plenty of food in there. Then one day there were just 100 bees in the hive — one day there’s 30,000 bees and then there’s 100.“

It’s fodder for the likes of an M. Night Shyamalan movie, but there’s no hint of Hollywood here. It’s very real.

The pestilence came to a head during the fall of 2006 and winter of 2007 when beekeepers began to notice sudden, massive disappearances of their hives. Thirty percent to ninety percent die-off rates were reported to the Department of Agriculture.

An arm of that agency, the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), began to study the few sorry bees left in a futile attempt to diagnose the cause. Those studied were under attack by every bacteria, virus, fungus, parasite and disease known to affect apiaries. Like HIV, something was compromising the bees’ immune systems.

When I first wrote about this back in 2007, the honeybee-eradication problem was worsening. Since then, I’ve learned that bumblebee populations are being impacted, as well.

In New England, for some dairy farmers who made the switch from dairy cows to honeybees, the crisis is becoming one nightmare wrapped inside another. What they could earn from milk through their blood, sweat and tears simply couldn’t keep the lights on. Even government subsidies couldn’t keep them afloat. The middleman’s near extortionist cuts made milk too expensive in the marketplace and demand waned.

So, some of them learned about beekeeping and embraced it as their new occupations.

Throughout New England, honey, along with maple syrup, is nectar for the gods to tourists and locals alike, and hives are cheap to acquire. Three-hundred dollars will buy you a decent one. But what’s sent to market in honey jars is hardly the bulk of the economic sustenance the bees offer.

Beekeepers rent their hives to agrarian farmers to pollinate certain types of flowering trees, nuts, fruit and vegetable plants. The earnings can be lucrative.

According to the Department of Agriculture, in California alone (to which New England hives are sometimes shipped), the almond crop requires 1.3 million colonies of bees to pollinate their trees. That’s almost half of all honeybees in the nation. And demand for almonds is expected to grow. By 2010, the Department of Agriculture predicts almond growers will need 1.5 million colonies.

Various theories as to the cause of the problem are bubbling to the surface, but none is prevalent, much less provable. As is often the case in the scientific community, everybody is an expert, but they characteristically disagree with each other.

Some entomologists blame certain types of pesticides. As mysterious as the problem is the swath of the vanishings. Of five apiaries close together, only one or two may be affected, but not the others. Opponents of the pesticide theory contend that if pesticide use was to blame, it would hardly be so selective.

Some attribute the problem to stress. Often driven long distances when rented to an almond farmer, the trip stresses bees, and their immune systems can be compromised. But that doesn’t hold water either. The Agriculture Department points out that bees have been traveling long distances for years without Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) being the result.

At first, entomologists dubbed the phenomenon, “Fall Dwindle Disease.” They clung to the false hope that the winter’s harsh conditions would halt the plague’s spread. It didn’t. Natural-course containment was a non-starter.

To the disinterested, the question may be, “So what if the bees are disappearing? They’re pests at picnics.” Perhaps, but consider that honeybees—and honeybees alone–pollinate as much as $15 billion worth of the nuts, fruits and vegetables grown in this country each year. Absent that pollination, vacant produce shelves and hyperinflation pricing for certain nuts, fruits and vegetables can be the only results.

With food prices now sharply on the rise to begin with (ironically, dairy leads the way), CCD continues unabated at a particularly bad time. As more and more hives succumb, beekeepers can’t meet growing demand from produce and nut farmers.

That means lower crop yields. Lower crop yields will eventually make almonds as costly as macadamia nuts, and a five-pound bag of apples as costly as ten pounds of filet mignon.

For the ARS, this is the stuff of biblical plagues. If they and their research partners can’t identify the cause, then find a way to stop it, the humble, hard-working honeybee and bumblebee may get the next extinct check marks on the growing list of endangered species. If that happens, some of the plants and trees upon which we depend for food-supply staples could simply fold their blossoms and grow no more.

Jim Hyde
Editor
New England Getaways Guide