The Honeybee Crisis

The honey bee is in severe decline. Honeybees are dying off. Without honeybees plants would be in a terrible predicament. So would humans. These creatures are the world's pollinators, quietly nuzzling and probing flowers for nectar and in the process, transferring DNA-bearing pollen from stamen to stigma. Without their work we wouldn't have healthy fruit and vegetables or viable seeds. We depend on this free service for 90% of our staple crops.

During the honeybee heyday after World War II, the U.S. had nearly 6 million hives. Now there are less than half that many, and mites continue to plague the remaining colonies. "We are working desperately to produce resistant bee stocks," says Tom Linderer, who directs a honeybee breeding and genetics lab in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for the Agriculture Department. "But we have only glimmers of success."

In Europe and North America, the number of honeybee colonies has plummeted and most wild bee colonies have been lost. Poor pollination leads to poor fruit development. According to the USDA we are facing an “impending pollination crisis.” No pollination. No harvest. “We’re losing between 40 and 60 percent of our bee population annually in this country,” says Gordon Wardell, an entomologist based in Tucson. “The bee industry is right on the edge.”

Bees pollinate alfalfa, fruit trees and gardens. California alone depends upon bees to pollinate billions of dollars worth of crops. Crops that require bees for pollination include apples, avocados, blueberries, cherries, cranberries, oranges, grapefruit, sunflowers, tangerines and watermelon. In addition, the production of most beef and dairy products depends on alfalfa, clover and other plants that require pollination.

Two types of mites are killing honeybees. The more deadly, known as the Varroa mite, attacks when bees are most vulnerable: in their pupal stage. As the pearly white pupae develop within the wax-capped confines of a comb's hexagonal cell, the mites feed. "They just suck so much blood that the bee comes out not very well developed, or even deformed," Stanghellini said.

Another common parasite, the tracheal mite -- which is native to European honeybees -- lodges itself inside the honeybee's air passages, debilitating it with congestion and eventually piercing its insides.

It is humbling to realize that entire civilizations have been put to the sword, not by force of arms, but by microbes.