GROWING DILEMMA TINY MITE DECIMATING BEE COLONIES.

Byline: Brent Hopkins Staff Writer

Mites no bigger than grains of salt have cost beekeepers thousands of dollars and could lead to another challenging season for farmers across the state.

Killer varroa mites have munched their way into California beehives, destroying more than half of the colonies keepers need to make honey and pollinate crops. With the pests bringing disease and killing off the striped pollinators, an otherwise promising honey season looks disappointing and growers are paying double for the bees that help bring their crops to life.

Once the mites get in the hives and attach themselves to bee larvae, draining blood and producing sickly bees, it can quickly be curtains for an otherwise healthy colony.

``The bees get so confused, they abandon the hive and get out of there,'' said Red Bennett, who works several thousand colonies near Fillmore. ``You can have very strong bees, come back two weeks later and they're gone. You'd think it was just a little mite, but they sure cause a whole host of problems.''

He's been air-freighting ringers from Australia, paying $100 per buzzing 4-pound box. Normally, they'd cost $25 a box for Northern California bees, but those have already been snapped up or killed off. Several pallets sit humming in his Telegraph Road honey factory, ready to repopulate the hives that he'll rent out to farmers for the almond and upcoming avocado season.

``I've been getting calls for weeks saying 'I can't get any bees, my beekeeper won't supply me, there's no bees around here,'' said Ben Faber, a farm adviser with the University of California Cooperative Extension. ``It's a desperate situation in some respects.''

The dearth of bees is already playing havoc with almond production in the Central Valley, which relies most heavily on their pollinating talents. Next up, this month's avocado bloom, then seed crop production in the late spring. Though growers expressed hope that hives will bounce back soon, farmer David Cain of Big T Honey & Bee said his dead bees could lead to higher prices in fruit, almonds and squash.

``Beekeepers aren't out of business, but we're taking some very hard hits,'' he said. ``If you eliminated honeybees from this country, one third of all the crops you buy in the supermarket would disappear.''

He had 50 hives teeming with tens of thousands of bees last year, knocked down to nine this season. To stay in business, the Tujunga-based Cain bought out another keeper looking to get out of the business, bringing him 100 hives, and has began experimenting with natural oils and black walnut leaf smoke to subdue the mites. He also hiked his rental fee from $65 a hive to $125.

There used to be enough feral bees roaming the hillsides to pollinate crops, but mites killed them off years ago, necessitating keepers like Cain and Bennett. Ed McFadden planned on ordering up some hives for his 300 acres of avocados on Rancho Simpatica in Fillmore, but worries about the added price.

``If there's a shortage, it'd definitely be a problem for us,'' McFadden said. ``Raising prices for avocados isn't something we can do - we'd love to, but instead, we'll just have to bear the costs.''

While Bennett expects his remaining bees will produce a strong honey crop, thanks to plentiful sagebrush after recent rains, he's not happy to be paying thousands of dollars for the Australian imports. The mites have become resistant to all the legal pesticides, so he can only hope his new bees will be hardy enough to make it through the season.

``In agriculture, it's feast or famine,'' said Bennett, who traded a job at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for beekeeping 27 years ago. ``Either honey prices are in the dump or the bees are dying. It'd be nice if it all came together the right way, but I've never seen it.''

Brent Hopkins, [phone]

brent.hopkins(at)dailynews.com

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2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Red Bennett, owner of Bennett's Honey Farm in Fillmore, supplies bee colonies for local farmers who produce honey.

(2 -- color) A devastating mite infection has forced Red Bennett to import bees from Australia at four times his normal cost.

John Lazar/Staff Photographer