Buzz on bees: not so bad.

Byline: Diane Dietz The Register-Guard

You might have heard: Something spooky is happening to the honeybees.

Whole hives are dying of the mysterious "colony collapse disorder," according to a succession of recent news reports.

It's a "Silent Spring" and - without the buzz of honeybees pollinating crops - there'll soon be nothing to eat except maybe the Soylent Green of B-grade science fiction fame. Right?

But wait: Oregon honeybees, it turns out, are more robust this year than they have been in years or even decades, local beekeepers say.

Generous spring rains in California brought brimming almond blossoms, and Oregon honeybees that were trucked there in February to pollinate the nut trees grew stout and plentiful.

Honeybees brought to California from across the nation to service the Golden State's 580,000 acres of almond crops also commanded record fees for their services.

Oregon's 35 to 40 migrant commercial beekeepers brought home about $5.6 million for almond pollination alone - and that doesn't count the Northwest pear, cherry, apple and blueberry pollination still to come.

"To tell you the truth, our bees look absolutely fabulous right now. This has been a really good year for us," said Chuck Sowers, president of the Oregon State Beekeepers Association.

So what happened to the "Silent Spring," the colony collapse and the tragedy of the disappearing honeybees?

The U.S. House Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture conducted hearings last month on the subject. Alarmed bee tenders have appeared in national news stories warning of doom.

The stakes are high. As expert pollinators, honeybees increase the value of U.S. crops by $15 billion a year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

About one-third of commercial food crops rely on honeybees for pollination.

So it was disconcerting when beekeepers in Florida in November began discovering eerily empty hives. Adult bees simply vanished, sometimes leaving the queen and often leaving the honey. Unlike other causes of hive death, there were no bee bodies in or near the hive.

"It was like the bees absconded, like they had all gone out," Eugene beekeeper Judy Scher said.

Farmers in 21 states reported similar instances - catching the attention of university researchers and the concern of Congress.

Many beekeepers are skeptical of the reports or at least how they're adding up. For 100 years, beekeepers have logged periodic reports of sudden and inexplicable bee die-offs.

People refer the latest die-off by its initials "CCD," but one Georgia beekeeper instead calls it the "SSDD" crisis for "Same Stuff, Different Day."

"People have lost bees from the beginning of time," Sowers said.

Oregon has experienced scattered reports of bee die-offs in recent months. A Eugene man told the Lane County Beekeepers Association about losing half of his 20 hives. A Medford area man told The Oregonian he lost 1,000 of his 1,400 colonies.

Kenny Williams, past president of the Oregon State Beekeepers Association, lost a few hives earlier this year at his farm near Blodgett, west of Corvallis. "We equalized the population with stronger hives," he said. "They seemed to outrun the problem, at least for now."

In a normal year, Oregon beekeepers say, they expect to lose 25 percent to 30 percent of their bees - and they don't know how the so-called collapse is related to these usual trials and tribulations.

For example, a parasitic mite invaded hives in the mid-1980s and also wiped out a large percentage of wild honeybee nests in trees and other places.

Some speculate that this spring's colony collapse is the result of mite activity, which introduces viruses and compromises the insects' immune systems. On the other hand, that's not new this year.

"Most hives have the mite problems. We deal with it," Scher said.

Most empty hives have been discovered at large, commercial migrating bee farms - and that has led some beekeepers to theorize that it's the stress of being trucked cross-country that's killing the bees.

"The (bee's) instinct is to go out and collect pollen and nectar, and that's what they do. When they can't get out of the hive, it puts them under stress. They need to go to the bathroom on a regular basis, but they won't go in their hive," said Ken Ograin, an Elmira beekeeper.

On the other hand, beekeepers have been trucking their charges for decades. The destination is warm, and bees grow and reproduce faster than they would have at home. Farmers used to truck the bees south without pay just to beef up their bees and get a jump on the season.

Some people blame the high-fructose corn syrup that beekeepers feed the bees in the large-scale operations.

"People think that's not the best thing to feed them. There's a lot of argument about that," Scher said.

Finally, beehives simply die. Scattered reports of large-scale mortality date from 1915, 1960 and 1987. Scientists don't always know why.

"This may be a repeat of that situation where we simply don't figure it out," said Morris Ostrofsky, president of the Lane County Beekeepers Association.

In fact, some farmers say they are puzzled about the dire news stories appearing in local, state and national media in the past several weeks.

"It's not new this year," Williams said. "If you know what I mean."

Underneath, there's a new commercial dimension to the story.

The wild popularity of almonds in the past few years has driven California farmers to tear up other crops and plant orchard after orchard of nut trees.

The almonds have a two-week window in February for pollination, and the farmers need 1.3 million hives to get the job done. Half come from out of state. About 40,000 hives come from Oregon.

In coming years, several hundred thousand more trees already planted will be ready to bear nuts, but there are no additional roving hives to service them, Williams said.

"It's anybody's guess where they are going to come from; there's a crunch in the making," Williams said.

Already, the imbalance between supply of almond blossoms and bees to pollinate them has driven the price of beehive rentals up - from $45 in 2004 to $80 in 2005 to as much as $140 to $150 per hive in 2006, according to the American Bee Journal.

Oregon bee operations truck as many as 1,000 to 10,000 hives each - and they return within a month with $150,000 to $1.5 million each.