A Bee Mogul Confronts the Crisis in His Field

Mr. Adee (pronounced Ay-Dee) is America’s largest beekeeper, and this is his busy season. Some 92,000 hives had to be deployed before those buds burst into blossom so that his bees could get to the crucial work of pollination.  But it is notable that he has a business at all. For the last decade, a mysterious plague has killed billions of bees every year. Pollination services, as the bees’ work is known in the industry, has risen this year to between $180 to $200 a hive from an average of $154 a hive in 2006, Mr. Curtis said. James Frazier, a bee expert at Pennsylvania State University, agreed. The bee shortage has to do with the overall health of bees, and not one or two specific things. Bees are exposed to a variety of pesticides, all of which can affect their immune systems, he said. That in turn makes them less resistant to diseases and parasites carried by the varroa mite and enables the spread of viruses.  “It’s more complicated than trying to cure cancer,” Dr. Frazier said, “because bees are outside, where you have all these uncontrollable things working on them. Bees from one keeper are mixing with those from other populations as their numbers fall. That may aid in the spread of diseases and parasites, said Ann Bartuska, the acting under secretary for research, education and economics at the Agriculture Department. “There is no smoking gun,” Dr. Bartuska said. “We still are trying to tease out what combination of factors really leads to beehive health declines.”