ST. LOUIS — One of every three bites of food we consume depends on pollination by honeybees, but these overlooked contributors to our food system are continuing to die in stubbornly perplexing ways.
Beekeeping groups have held exhaustive conferences. Researchers have organized task forces. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has contributed some of its stretched resources to tracking down the cause of the mysterious deaths, and in a report issued last month, delivered a frustratingly complex answer: Many factors might be responsible, from stress to pesticides.
Now agricultural and chemical heavyweights are getting into the mix. Missouri-based Monsanto Co., which two years ago bought an Israeli bee-research company, hosts an industry conference on bee health at its headquarters in Creve Coeur, Mo., this month. Bayer CropScience is building a 5,500-square-foot “bee health center” in North Carolina and, with fellow chemical giant, Syngenta, has developed a “comprehensive action plan” for bee health.
Bees pollinate up to
$20 billion in American agricultural crops, a number that gets the attention of the industry. Monsanto, for one, owns Seminis, the country’s largest fruit- and vegetable- seed producer — and many of those seeds depend on bees. Beyond that, Monsanto and its rivals have a financial interest in developing a marketable cure that has so far remained elusive.
In 2006, beekeepers started noticing that bees were abandoning their hives, a phenomenon scientists dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder. Since then, the American bee population has dropped by an average of 30 percent every year, sending researchers, beekeepers and farmers into a head-scratching frenzy to figure out the cause.
Specifically and somewhat narrowly, the disorder is being blamed on mites and viruses. More broadly, researchers say, it’s a symptom of an agricultural system that relies too heavily on chemicals and monocultures, including the vast swaths of corn and soybeans in the Midwest.