REASON TO BEE CONCERNED COLONY DISORDER THREATENS HIVES.

Byline: ALEX DOBUZINSKIS

Staff Writer

SAUGUS -- From their launching pad of wooden box hives, Jim Lindsay's honeybees fly past barren brown hillsides and toward the lush landscaping of the city below.

So far, Lindsay's 80 bee colonies have been untouched by colony collapse disorder, a mysterious problem killing droves of bees nationwide.

Another threat to Lindsay and other Santa Clarita Valley beekeepers is more plainly visible -- a lack of rain has robbed mountains of plants the bees normally feed on.

But it's the less visible threat Lindsay calls CCD that has him and other beekeepers scratching their heads. Despite the fancy name, no one knows exactly what colony collapse disorder is, or how it kills bees.

"If the researchers that are working on it don't get a cure soon, if people are losing 70 percent of their hives now, it doesn't take long before there's no more bees," Lindsay said.

Lindsay, 37, keeps hives at his remote Saugus home and does beekeeping as a side job from his career as a mechanic.

He drives as far away as Fresno to bring his bees to farmers for crop pollination, starting with California's massive almond crop in February and moving on to apples and cherries. Farmers who rent hives from beekeepers also are worried about the mysterious colony collapse disorder, since dozens of crops depend on bees.

Nationwide, about 40 percent to 60 percent of the honeybee population has been hurt in some way by colony collapse disorder, said Richard Adee of the American Honey Producers Association, who testified earlier this year about the problem before a U.S. House subcommittee.

In hives hit hard by the problem, bees just disappear and beekeepers open their hives to find them empty. Beekeepers in 38 states have reported problems.

"We've never seen this problem of this magnitude in the past," Adee said. "We've had colony collapse in the past but it was more regional."

California becomes a magnet for honeybees in February and March, when beekeepers bring hives into the state to pollinate almond crops.

During that time, the number of domesticated bee colonies in the state goes from 475,000 to 1.3 million, said Orin Johnson, president of the California State Beekeepers Association.

Despite the loss of bees from colony collapse disorder, this was a good year for almond pollination, because in excellent weather the bees touched down on more plants, Johnson said.

But as the year has worn on, and beekeepers have moved on from almond orchards to apple, cherry, blueberry and other crops, they continue to worry about colony collapse disorder.

Scientists are far from agreeing on what is causing the bees to disappear. They say certain pesticides -- especially those containing a nicotine-based component -- could be decimating bee colonies, and many beekeepers ascribe to that view.

But in addition to nicotinoid insecticides, researchers have found other possible suspects, including pathogens, such as fungus and bacteria, certain viruses and poor nutrition.

Instead of a single culprit, the problem could be a combination of factors, said Eric Mussen, a honeybee expert at the University of California, Davis.

"This is not a new phenomenon, it happens periodically," Mussen said. "We've never been able to explain why up until this period in time, so I don't know if we're going to do a whole lot better this time."

Massive bee deaths happened in the 1890s, and reoccurred occasionally in recent decades, he said.

One difference is no one had cell phones back then, and some speculate that the most recent disappearance of bees has been caused by cell phone signals resonating in bees' tiny brains, making them lose their way.

To prove that, scientists would need to put electrodes into the brains of bees, and no one has bothered to do that, Mussen said.

Dry conditions are a more obvious factor jeopardizing the health of bee colonies, because less plant moisture means fewer plants, and less food for foraging bees, experts say.

Barring drought, the Santa Clarita Valley has always been a prime area for honey bees because of ample supplies of sage, buckwheat, sugar bush and other plants, said retired beekeeper John Goit, 65.

"Probably every mountaintop in Santa Clarita has a stack of bees on it," Goit said.

Unlike bee colonies that are moved from farm to farm, bees that stay in the valley are more healthy because their food source is varied and untainted by pesticides, Goit said.

But bees do need to be moved from farm to farm, because honey production is less important than it once was.

Cheap honey imports from China have hurt U.S. honey producers in the past 20 years. Instead of making honey, most beekeepers focus on renting out their hives to farmers for crop pollination.

Nowadays, about half the beekeeping business in the Santa Clarita Valley is for honey production, and the rest is dedicated to agricultural pollination, Goit said.

Goit, who lives in the Antelope Valley, used to have 240 bee colonies, with many of them in the Santa Clarita Valley. But he recently sold almost all of them and retired.

Along with the disappearance of bees, the disappearance of beekeepers like Goit also worries Johnson, of the California State Beekeepers Association.

And beekeepers who lost most of their hives to colony collapse disorder may go under, he said. Already, beekeepers are an older set, with the average age being 60.

"Most beekepers are second or third generation," Johnson said.

But even as veteran beekeepers are leaving the business because of dying bees, beekeeping novices like Lance Atkinson want in. Atkinson, 51, is getting into beekeeping from an unusual background -- his Burbank-based business called Bee Experts exterminates bee hives for homeowners.

He goes out with full-length overalls and a hat with a veil, and beehives are no match for him, even though the Africanized honeybees -- knows as killer bees for their aggressive nature -- always attack the exposed parts around his ankles.

Driven by a desire to do more than just kill bees, Atkinson said he wants to move problem beehives from the city up to a 20-acre rural property in Kern County, where he will use the bees for pollination.

So despite the mysterious ailment killing bees, there are bees to be found, Atkinson said.

"I think with all these wild bees that are invading the homes," he said, "it's possible we have something very positive going on here."

alex.dobuzinskis(at)dailynews.com

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CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Beekeeper Jim Lindsay checks his hives. Lindsay, 37, keeps hives at his remote Saugus home and does beekeeping as a side job from his career as a mechanic. He drives as far away as Fresno to bring his bees to farmers for crop pollination.

(2) The hives of beekeeper Jim Lindsay. Nationwide, about 40 percent to 60 percent of the honeybee population has been hurt in some way by colony collapse disorder, though Lindsey's bees have been spared.

(3) One of the bees of beekeeper Jim Lindsay. Bees around the country have been disappearing due to a mysterious ailment, yet Lindsay's bees have not been affected.

David Crane/Staff Photographer