Results released last month of a survey of commercial U.S. beekeepers revealed a 36.1 percent loss of colonies since last year, representing the deaths and disappearance of bees in hundreds of thousands of hives across the United States. This compares with a 32 percent loss of bee colonies over the previous year, according to the survey commissioned by the Apiary Inspectors of America.

"For two years in a row, we've sustained a substantial loss," said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, the group's president. "That's an astonishing number. Imagine if one out of every three cows, or one out of every three chickens, were dying. That would raise a lot of alarm."

At least two of the companies dependent on honey for their products already hear the alarm bells and are trying to draw attention to colony collapse disorder, in which most bees except the queen and some young ones leave a hive for unknown reasons.

Dundee Brewing Co., based in Rochester, N.Y., uses honey in its Dundee Honey Brown lager and recently launched a program to help the bees. It pledged to donate a portion of its sales to the nonprofit Georgia-based Foundation for the Preservation of Honey Bees.

Haagen-Dazs, based in Oakland, Calif., recently introduced its Vanilla Honey Bee flavor ice cream and is donating money to research bee deaths at Pennsylvania State University and the University of California at Davis. The company uses honey in 40 percent of its flavors.

Both companies created informative, interactive Web sites about bees and their plight: www.dundeeforthebees.com and www.helpthehoneybees.com.

The bees' health is critical to California's almond industry, which requires 1.3 million bee colonies for pollination of its trees. Amazingly, this represents about half of the total commercial hives in the United States, which numbered 2.4 million last year, down from 3.5 million in 1990.

In Ohio this year, honeybees are on track to go about their business pollinating the state's more than 70 bee-dependent crops, including apples, grapes, pumpkins, peaches, strawberries, lima beans and alfalfa. In March, the state's beekeepers estimated that 85 percent of the occupants within Ohio hives weathered the winter.

That's a welcome and sharp turnaround from just one year ago, when spring inspections revealed 72 percent of Ohio's bees had died or were missing. The losses were blamed on unseasonal weather and colony collapse disorder, which has plagued bees in 35 states.

Recognizing the importance of agriculture as Ohio's largest industry, Franklin County commissioners in April took a small step to promote adequate pollination of crops. They agreed to offer $500 economic-development grants to 15 applicants chosen from dozens who want to take up beekeeping. The grants cover the cost of equipment and bees.

Raising public awareness of colony collapse has spurred an interest in beekeeping in many parts of the country. Bees' value to U.S. agriculture is about $15 billion nationally, so success is crucial for the researchers seeking a remedy and the beekeepers raising queens and colonies to fill empty hives.

Saturday, June 7, 2008