By Emily Alpert Staff Writer
Hollister
– When honeybees fled Tom Presley’s hives, $200,000 vanished
with them with barely a buzz. Presley stared into thousands of
vacant hives, and decided to quit.
Hollister – When honeybees fled Tom Presley’s hives, $200,000 vanished with them with barely a buzz. Presley stared into thousands of vacant hives, and decided to quit.
“I just couldn’t afford it,” said Presley, a retired engineer who closed his 20-year-old Gilroy apiaries and moved to Georgia. “I’ll never go back into beekeeping on that scale again.”
From Florida to California, bees are dropping like flies, felled by a mysterious phenomenon called ‘colony collapse disorder.’ Roughly one-third of the nation’s honeybees have disappeared, said Jerry Hayes, president of the Apiary Inspectors of America, wounding an already ailing industry. And honey isn’t the only grocery staple at stake: Crops such as almonds, squash and cherries depend on pollinating bees rented from local apiaries. If the U.S. loses honeybees, Hayes said, it loses a third of its food along with them.
“I’m afraid to even count my hives,” said Lynne Bottazzo, who combs “better-than-organic” honey from hives in Hollister and Mount Madonna. “I’m down to an eighth of what I had.”
In Los Banos, beekeeper Charlie Baker lost half his 1,000 hives, and $50,000 with them; in Hollister, hobbyist Greg Muck lost all but one of eight hives. Big losses are sadly familiar to beekeepers: Foreign mites and frigid winters have caused similar losses in the past. But colony collapse disorder has befuddled beekeepers, who peer into hives that look perfectly normal, stocked with pollens and honey, only to find that bees have checked out. The empty hives remain untouched by other bees, who typically rob colonies killed by frost or mites.
“They didn’t starve to death. They didn’t freeze to death. I didn’t see mites, which have been a problem before,” said Kathy Niven, a Corralitos beekeeper who lost her three backyard hives. Niven estimated that her hives produced $900 in honey each year. “It was quite sudden. … Within a week, they were all dead.”
Scientists speculate that a European fungus or imbalanced pollens might be to blame. The symptoms mimic ‘disappearing disease,’ which plagued hives in the 1960s, said entomologist Eric Mussen, a University of California, Davis, researcher. This time, however, the disorder has made headlines, spreading alarm beyond the apiaries.
Though South County bees have fared better than most, suffering fewer losses than in 2004 or 2005, when varroa mites attacked local colonies, the disorder has devastated the beekeepers it has hit, said Wayne Pitts, president of the Gilroy Beekeepers Association. Concerned by disappearing bees, keepers have crowded association meetings, eager to unmask the affliction – and stop it.
“We’re all wondering what it is,” he said. “If you’re me, it’s OK. If you’re Kathy (Niven), it’s horrendous.”
Colony collapse has discouraged beekeepers such as Presley, to Hayes’ dismay. Like the bees they tend, U.S. beekeepers are a dwindling species. Undercut by cheap imported honey and beset by pests, many have quit the business. As a result, the honeybee population has dropped roughly 80 percent since 1940, and beekeepers have disappeared, too: In Hayes’ home state of Florida, the number of registered beekeepers has dropped nearly 67 percent since 1980.
“The bees keep dropping, but our (U.S.) population doesn’t,” Hayes said. “We have a huge fruit and vegetable industry that requires honeybees for pollination. Man just can’t do that.”
Thus far, the bees’ disease hasn’t affected other crops. California almonds, which demand 60 percent of the nation’s bees – 1.2 million hives – have survived by using insects from across the country, said Marsha Venable, a spokesperson for the state’s Almond Board. Other crops require far fewer bees. But beekeepers are hiking prices for hives, Pitts said. Four years ago, renting a hive might cost $50, he said. Today, it costs $150. And by shipping in bees, farmers might unwittingly ship in dangerous new pests.
“Every bee is being trucked out, and every disease they have is coming with them: small hive beetles, fire ants from Texas,” Pitts said. “That’s no pretty thing when it gets here.”
Emily Alpert covers public safety issues for the Gilroy Dispatch. She can be reached at 847-7158, or at [email protected].
