WASHINGTON — In normal times, David Hackenberg would begin trucking his 20 million honeybees from the almond orchards of California to the orange groves of Florida this week.
Instead, after a month working the almond blossoms on the West Coast, his exhausted pollinators will get some rest and relaxation in the Georgia woods before the East Coast apple blossoms summon them to work once more next month.
These are not normal times for bees, or for commercial beekeepers, so Hackenberg’s pollinators will skip the citrus gig to reduce their exposure to pesticides and get some rest.
“Everybody is seeing (bee) losses this winter,” said Hackenberg, of Lewisburg, Pa. “This was probably the worst year ever.”
More than three years after beekeepers starting seeing the sudden disappearance of hive populations, scientists have yet to find the cause — let alone the fix — for a condition called colony collapse disorder. Meanwhile, the commercial beekeeping industry is struggling to provide pollination services to the nations’ farmers.
One-third of food crops rely on insect pollination.
Scientists at first figured that they would identify a single virus or pest responsible for the collapse after the phenomenon surfaced in fall 2006. But after three years of research, scientists say they think the cause is not a single factor but a cocktail of maladies that together weaken and sicken the bees.
“We think there’s a cumulative effect, and trying to point the finger to one particular thing is difficult,” said Jeffery Pettis, research leader for the Agricultural Research Service’s honey bee laboratory in Beltsville, Md. “But bee health is in really bad shape, and we need to understand why.”
