Where Have All the Bees Gone- Iowa Angle

Where in the world are the bees? CNN offers this video story.

• Billions of bees have mysteriously vanished since late last year in the U.S.
• Disappearing bees have also been reported in Europe and Brazil
• One-third of the U.S. diet depends on pollination, mostly by honeybees
• Some beekeepers are losing 50 percent of their bees to "colony collapse disorder"

CNN reports

Commercial beekeepers would set their bees near a crop field as usual and come back in two or three weeks to find the hives bereft of foraging worker bees, with only the queen and the immature insects remaining. Whatever worker bees survived were often too weak to perform their tasks.

If the bees were dying of pesticide poisoning or freezing, their bodies would be expected to lie around the hive. And if they were absconding because of some threat -- which they have been known to do -- they wouldn't leave without the queen.

Since about one-third of the U.S. diet depends on pollination and most of that is performed by honeybees, this constitutes a serious problem, according to Jeff Pettis of the U.S. Agricultural Research Service.

An AP report adds, U.S. beekeepers in the past few months have lost one-quarter of their colonies _ or about five times the normal winter losses _ because of what scientists have dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder. The problem started in November and seems to have spread to 27 states, with similar collapses reported in Brazil, Canada and parts of Europe.

Honeybees don't just make honey; they pollinate more than 90 of the tastiest flowering crops we have.

Among them: apples, nuts, avocados, soybeans, asparagus, broccoli, celery, squash and cucumbers. And lots of the really sweet and tart stuff, too, including citrus fruit, peaches, kiwi, cherries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, cantaloupe and other melons.
In fact, about one-third of the human diet comes from insect-pollinated plants, and the honeybee is responsible for 80 percent of that pollination, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

According to the Iowa Honey Producers Association, "honey bees are an important part of Iowa’s agri-ecosystem. Currently, about 1500 beekeepers in Iowa keep 30,000 colonies of honey bees. Less than 100 of these beekeepers operate bees on a commercial basis with the remainder being sideline or hobbyist beekeepers. These honey bees have produced an average of 3.1 million pounds of honey annually, valued at $3.5 million for the last five years. However, beekeeping is valued much more for the pollination of important plants in Iowa than for the honey that is produced. (see table below) Field and horticultural crops, home gardens and plants eaten by wildlife are dependent on bee pollination for the production of their fruits, nuts and seeds." Below is a chart with examples of fruits and vegetables and the estimated pollination dependence on bees.

Crops	% Pollination Dependence on bees
Apples Strawberries Raspberries	90%
Melons Pumpkins Cucumbers Squash	80%
Soybeans	5%