Oregon and Washington growers, beekeepers to ask OSU to research bee die-off

Oregon and Washington growers, beekeepers to ask OSU to research bee die-off
As the colony collapse disorder spreads to the Pacific Northwest, farmers worry their crops won't get pollinated
Sunday, March 30, 2008
MICHAEL MILSTEIN
The Oregonian Staff

Oregon farmers nervous that they, their crops and the public will feel the sting from suddenly declining bee populations are pressing for improved research into what's troubling a key link in the food supply.

Bees are vital to pollinate Oregon's high value crops from pears near Hood River to cranberries on the coast, not to mention the roses and other flowers in Portland-area backyards.

But commercial bee colonies that travel around the country to pollinate crops have been hammered in the past few years by a mysterious malady loosely known as colony collapse disorder. In many cases, beekeepers have found their hives suddenly empty, the bees gone and presumed dead.

The disorder has been linked to a virus that can be transmitted by a tiny mite that infests bees. But its dynamics are still fuzzy.

Robert Whannell, who cultivates 25 acres of cranberries south of Astoria, said the beekeeper from Washington who usually brings bees to pollinate his crop lost 4,000 hives' worth of bees this winter out of 13,000 total hives.

"His message to us was, 'If we can't get ahead of this problem, I'm going to be out of business,' " Whannell said. "If it continues to escalate, we're all going to be in trouble."

Without the extra bees to pollinate his cranberries, Whannell said his production would probably drop 70 percent to 80 percent. The bees ferry pollen from flower to flower, fertilizing blossoms so they ripen into plump fruit.

Oregon State University, the state's land grant university that supports agriculture, no longer has a full-time professor focused on bee research. Some farmers are hoping to change that and have an April 8 meeting planned with OSU administrators in Corvallis.

Although the Pacific Northwest had seemed to escape bee die-offs as severe as those seen in other parts of the country, there are signs that the die-off is spreading to this region, too.

Whannell's beekeeper, based in Yakima told Whannell he'd make it to the cranberries this year, but cannot promise that he will next year.

There's increasing unease among farmers about what will happen if beekeepers they depend upon no longer have enough bees to bring.

Growers, beekeepers and others around the state and in Washington will attend the meeting in Corvallis to discuss the need for increased research into honey bee health and pollinators in Oregon.

"We're hoping this is going to be a wake-up call that we need to be focused on this issue that affects the whole food chain," Whannell said.

Oregon State cut back faculty positions as state funding decreased early in this decade, said Stella Coakley, associate dean in OSU's College of Agricultural Sciences. College officials recognize the rising concern about the health of bees -- and the fallout for Oregon agriculture -- if they disappear.

"It does now appear that there are some problems in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest," she said. "Suddenly, it has the attention of the Pacific Northwest in a way it did not before, and correctly so."

She said OSU located some funding so its extension service could expand the services of its insect identification laboratory. The lab is now available to screen bees for diseases including colony collapse disorder or related problems. The lab also surveys Oregon beekeepers to better gauge the health of their bees.

"We're hoping to identify who's having problems and what's causing them," Coakley said.

She said the College of Agricultural Sciences and extension service has a much smaller staff than it did five or six years ago. The main way OSU has been able to expand its research positions is through endowments created with the help of private donors and supportive industries.

For example, the hazelnut industry in Oregon created an endowed professorship focused on hazelnut research.

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Strange illness makes beekeeping a challenge
Sunday, March 30, 2008
By Jessica Harding (Contact)
Gazette Reporter

ALBANY — John Griffith of Fultonville said Saturday that keeping honeybees is more difficult now than when he started 30 years ago.

At one time, Griffith, one of about 200 attending the Southern Adirondack Beekeepers Association’s annual spring seminar, said he had about 50 hives.

Now trying to tend five in semi-retirement, he predicted that this season he’ll only have two survive from last year and they are not likely to be strong.

“Bees were much healthier back then. We didn’t have to worry about these serious health issues. Now, we have to worry about things like mites, beetles and colony collapse,” he said.

Various pests have been threatening the survival of honeybees over the years, including the varroa mite, which began attacking honeybees in the 1980s and was described as “public enemy No. 1 in the beekeeping world” by Shane Gebauer of Brushing Mountain Bee Farm in North Carolina.

But in the past year, a new, unexplainable phenomenon has emerged to vex honeybee populations, called Colony Collapse Disorder.

After a year of research, scientists have not been able to come up with a cause for CCD, which killed millions of honeybees last year, according to Dennis vanEngelsdorp, a researcher at Pennsylvania State University.

“No one thing yet can account for CCD,” vanEngelsdorp said. “It is probably a lot of things working together.”

VanEngelsdorp updated participants at the beekeepers seminar held at the University at Albany about ongoing research to find a cause of CCD.

VanEngelsdorp talked about his research, offered possible causes of CCD and gave the beekeepers advice about how to keep honeybees healthy.

Researchers from across the country are helping to study CCD, including those from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Penn State and the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. The public became aware of CCD in fall 2006, but vanEngelsdorp said the phenomenon probably started a couple years before that but was dismissed as varroa mites.

“Clearly, varroa mites can’t explain these loses,” vanEngelsdorp said.

VanEngelsdorp said the symptoms of CCD are the appearance of the queen honeybee, dead bees are not present, the remaining bees appear young and there are an insufficient amount of bees to care for the eggs.

Many believe that CCD is due to stress on the honeybees when they are moved, especially in commercial beekeeping operations that have thousands of hives.

VanEngelsdorp said he doesn’t believe the disorder is caused by stress from movement because beekeepers have been moving honeybees for hundreds of years. He said CCD is probably due to a bacteria or virus.

“It is increasingly likely that we are dealing with the bee flu,” he said. “Like the flu in humans it is worse some years than others.”

He said the researchers are currently gathering data to see how bad the CCD problem was this year. He said anecdotal evidence shows that it was about 80 percent as bad as the previous year.

Until a cause is found, vanEngelsdorp encouraged beekeepers to control varroa mites in their colonies, eradicate or don’t use equipment where a colony has completely died, and use protein supplements when necessary to keep bees strong.

“I do think there is hope. I don’t think we can keep the bees healthy,” he said.

The health of honeybee colonies is not only important to the production of honey, but to the agriculture industry that relies on honeybees to pollinate crops. Most flowering plans rely on pollinators to bear fruit.

VanEngelsdorp said the current honeybee population is just enough to meet the pollination demands of the country’s farmers.

“All of our extra bees are gone, and there are a limited number of bees left to meet the pollination demands,” he said.

Griffith said he is not convinced that his bee colonies had died due to CCD. Rather, it seemed as if starvation was the biggest contributor, he said. Nevertheless, Griffith said he’ll give beekeeping one more season before giving up.

“I just bought five more hives that I’ll release in April,” he said. “If they don’t make it, I’ll give up.”