ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, June 6, 1996 TAG: 9606060085
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
America's honeybees are in a bad way.
Already weakened by 12 years of battling blood-sucking mites, bees have been brought to their knees by a soggy spring on the heels of many regions' exceptionally cold winter. Experts estimate that more than 90 percent of wild colonies have been wiped out nationwide, along with a large number of those tended by beekeepers.
``It's devastated the population of unmanaged bees that are in hollow trees and old buildings and things,'' said Hachiro Shimanuki of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's bee research laboratory in Beltsville, Md.
Shimanuki estimated that this year's winter-spring-parasite catastrophe has killed off 30 percent of existing colonies of domesticated bees, but emphasized that the number varies widely by state.
In Maine, state apiary inspectors reported losing 80 percent of kept bees. In Wisconsin, beekeepers lost 67 percent of their stock. New York estimates losing 60 percent to 70 percent of its domesticated bees.
Even in Georgia, where losses are estimated at only 15 percent, hive inspectors noted a shortage of bees available to pollinate the state's squash crop.
But most farmers managed to get their plants pollinated some way, Shimanuki said.
``I don't think it's been a critical shortage,'' he said. ``Nobody has called in a panic and said, `We don't have any bees.'''
But those who depend on wild bees for pollination are in for a rough summer. Gardeners and small farmers who can't afford to rent colonies from beekeepers won't see very much in the way of cucumbers, melons, apples, blueberries and the dozens of other crops that won't produce without bees.
``The people probably who will suffer will be backyard types,'' said Troy Fore, executive secretary of the American Beekeeping Federation and professional beekeeper in Jesup, Ga. ``People who don't go to the trouble of renting bees.''
In the past, many farmers relied on wild bees to pollinate their crops. Although these aren't wild in the truest sense - they're really just domesticated colonies that have escaped human domination - they are wild in the sense that they don't require tending.
But as those populations have declined in recent years, bee rental has become a sizeable industry. Keepers make $46million annually renting their charges to farmers, who rely on bees to produce an estimated $9.7billion worth of crops.
Bees are on the defensive because of two kinds of mites, one visible only by microscope. That parasite, known as the tracheal mite, crawls into the breathing tubes of adult honeybees to suck their blood.
But it's the larger, tick-sized varroa mite that really puts bees in a bind. It attacks both adults and developing eggs by attaching to them from the outside.
``The mites get onto the adult bees and live off their blood,'' Shimanuki said.
But what they do to young bees is much worse. If infested eggs hatch at all, the young can emerge disfigured, often lacking a wing or a leg. And because ``the honeybee colony does not tolerate anybody who is physically disfigured,'' Shimanuki said, worker bees usually devour the crippled insects as soon as they're born.
The two types of mites, which appeared in the United States in the 1980s, have devastated bees around the country. Agriculture Department researcher Gerald Loper, who has monitored bees in the Oracle, Ariz., area since 1988, has seen them dwindle from 215 colonies in 1993 to 12 in March.
``I think they may well have seen their low point this spring,'' Loper said.
This year has been worse than most, especially in the Northeast, because of the weather. Cold winters wipe out beehives simply because the bees' body heat can't keep the hives warm enough. So if a hive's population is already reduced by mite infestation, it's that much more susceptible to the cold.
``You don't have the critical mass to keep the hive warm,'' Shimanuki said.
Cool, rainy weather this spring just made matters worse by delaying the blooming of plants, he added. No blooms meant no nectar, so bees had to live on honey for a few weeks longer than they normally would. Many hives probably just ran out, Shimunaki said.
Remaining colonies will probably bounce back, Loper said, but many won't be the same. In the colonies that he's studied, Africanized bees, also known as killer bees, have shown more resistance to the mites than their honeybee counterparts. The colonies that pull through will be those that have mated with the invaders from the south, becoming more aggressive.
Bee experts said that they can't predict how the decline in the wild bee population will affect wild plants and the animals that eat them. But they guessed that in places such as New York and New Jersey, which may have no wild honeybees left, there aren't going to be too many wild berries this year.
LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP 1. So many wild bee colonies have died out thatby CNBgrowers who don't hire beekeepers might see their crops suffer,
experts say. color. 2. AP. Life cycle of the tracheal mite and the
varroa mite.