That the 2007 honey crop has been disappointing won't surprise anyone who has picked up the newspaper in recent months. Since early spring, colony collapse disorder (CCD), a disease that causeshoneybees to suddenly, mysteriously disappear from their hives, has made headlines around the world. Without honeybees to pollinate, experts warn that one-third of the food supply -- from apples and peaches to cucumbers and squash -- is at risk.
It's a frightening prospect. And though signs of CCD were first reported in the United States and most cases have been reported here, European beekeepers have recently observed a similar phenomenon, and possible cases have been reported in Taiwan.
Scientists and beekeepers have floated a variety of theories for the collapses -- from stress caused when commercial beekeepers move their hives long distances to disorientation caused by cellphone radiation. Last week, the journal Science published a report that found a new virus, Israeli acute paralysis virus, appeared to be associated with CCD.
But some experts say the more likely reason for this year's weak honey crop, which the NationalHoney Board says is on track to be smaller than last year's below-par 155 million pounds, is something much more obvious: the weather. In the South, drought and wildfires have prevented flowers from blooming. In the Midwest, a late freeze brought nectar flows in many areas almost to a halt. And in California, the country's No. 2 honey producer, coastal beekeepers reported that there were almost no flowering plants in July. The bees were fed sugar water to keep them from starving.
"It's more weather than CCD," said Ted Dennard, president of the Savannah Bee Company, which sells specialty honeys. "The reports I'm getting is that everywhere is under-producing. Tupelo was somewhere between 25 percent and 50 percent of normal production, and there's not a drop of star thistle in Idaho."
Extreme weather is becoming increasingly common across the globe, numerous studies suggest. That's why new research by Wayne Esaias, a Maryland biological oceanographer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center who keeps bees as a hobby, has piqued enormous interest among bee experts and honey lovers. By taking simple measurements on when his bees started and stopped collecting nectar near his home in Highland, Esaias has shown that flowers there are blooming three weeks earlier than they did in 1992 and a month before they did in 1970. (The research, which has not yet been published, is posted at http://honeybeenet.gsfc.nasa.gov/Sites/regional_map.htm.)
Even with a limited data set, it's a potentially significant climate shift. If backyard beekeepers collected similar data at sites across the country, the results could offer clues about how to manage bee colonies to maximize honey production and, potentially, help keep bees healthy enough to resist diseases, such as the mysterious CCD.
"What this has demonstrated is that with simple measurements, you can bring all the information together and get a sense of the bigger picture," said Dewey Caron, a professor of entomology and wildlife ecology at the University of Delaware. "I'm kind of ashamed I didn't think of it first."
Esaias, though, is the first to admit that it took him a long time -- 15 years -- to see that there might be a useful connection between his professional knowledge of weather and climate and his after-work beekeeping hobby.
It all started in 1991 when, without asking permission, his 12-year-old son offered to make a home for the hives of his Boy Scout troop leader, who was leaving the area. Along with the hives, the Esaias family inherited an old platform scale. At the troop leader's instruction, Esaias placed the hives on the scale in the back yard.
Each night in honey season, they would record the hives' weight. The heavier the hive, the more nectar had been collected. "I'd never kept bees before, so it was a good management tool," Esaias remembered. "It helped you figure out when to get ready for the honey and when to take the honey off."
His two children became avid beekeepers, keeping records for their 4-H club and selling honey out the back door. Over the years, Esaias, who today has 17 hives, noticed that the bees behaved differently during El Ni?o years, when the winter is milder and the summers are wetter.
In early 2006, Esaias decided to look for patterns. He dug up spotty records from 1922, 1923 and 1957 on when flowers first bloomed in the Washington area, and good, consistent ones from the Smithsonian beginning in 1970. His analysis showed that the plants were blooming a full month earlier now than they had been in 1970. There had been no apparent change between 1922 and 1970.
Esaias stresses that real climate analysis requires long, continuous records, so it's possible this is normal weather variability. But his hypothesis is that the change is the result of the area's rapid urbanization. As more buildings and roads are built, the temperature climbs and plants bloom earlier.
This spring, he enlisted the help of 15 other beekeepers in Washington and in the Maryland suburbs. Initial results show a 15-day gap between nectar production in Chevy Chase and 20 miles away in Highland.
"There's a lot of variability within the natural system. The scary part is the long-term trend and the implications of that change," Esaias said.
To find out what that might be, Esaias has applied for NASA funding that would allow him to overlay his data with information from NASA satellites that chart weather and vegetation patterns.
"Bees are such great environmental samplers. When they go out and forage, they go almost two miles away from the hive. That's a very large area, about 2,500 acres, and the same size as the grid elements of a lot of climate ecosystem models," Esaias said. "I'm wondering if there's a way we could look at when the plants produce nectar, and use the satellite data and ecosystem models so we're in a better position to understand how climate change will affect pollination."
So are other entomologists, such as Eric Mussen, an apiculturist at the University of California at Davis. Mussen believes the reason bees got "whacked" by CCD is malnutrition, which is directly connected to the weather. If honeybees cannot collect enough nectar to feed themselves, they won't have the strength to resist disease.
"If we're headed into rougher weather, as it appears we are, we'll have more difficulties with our bees," Mussen said. "It won't matter if you're a backyard beekeeper or someone with 10,000 colonies."
Both types of beekeepers will have the opportunity to contribute if Esaias's research moves forward.
"This is a perfect example of how citizen science can work," said the University of Delaware's Caron. "Lots of people can come in and contribute small amounts of data. You get immediate feedback on your bees and the satisfaction that you are contributing to a larger picture."
