Pity the poor pollinator. The BBC reports a collapse in honey bee colonies across the United States of unprecedented proportions. Between 30% and 70% of commercially maintained bee boxes are simply empty. The bees have gone.
"The crisis threatens numerous crops, from avocados to kiwis and California almonds - one of the most profitable in the US.
'I have never seen anything like it,' California beekeeper David Bradshaw, 50, told the New York Times.
'Box after box after box are just empty. There's nobody home...'
The investigators are exploring a range of possibilities to explain the losses, which they are calling 'colony collapse disorder'. These include viruses, a fungus and poor bee nutrition.
They are also studying pesticides banned in some European countries to see if they are affecting the bees' innate ability to navigate their way back to their hives.
In some cases, bees are being raised to survive a shorter offseason, to be ready to pollinate once the almond bloom begins in February. This could have lowered their immunity to viruses.
Mites have also damaged bee colonies, and the insecticides used to try to kill them are harming the ability of queen bees to spawn as many workers."
It is worth recalling that Western Honey Bee species found in America is actually native to Europe, Africa and Western Asia. Native pollen bees, which do not produce honey in commercial quantities, are actually better pollinators as both the males and females pollinate the crop. I have not yet seen research showing the same colony collapse disorder in the more than 3,500 native North American bee species, although many pollinating insects are under threat from pesticides and other stresses known to affect honey bees. Another wrinkle in the story is the relationship between both native and non-native bees and invasive exotic plant species, some of which (tartarian honeysuckle, purple loosestrife) are used preferentially by certain bees as forage. Some honey producers have expressed concern about efforts to control loosestrife - not that this invasive plant is in any great danger of eradication in any but the most localized and smallest of its infestations.
The economic consequences of a honey bee collapse for the production of important cash crops could be quite severe. One has to think, however, that the reliance on a single, introduced species to provide the bulk of commercial pollination services would appear to be asking for this kind of crisis. Just as monocultures of Elms fell like dominoes to Dutch Elm Disease, one can easily imagine the same thing at work with honey bees in North America.