With Fingers Crossed, Michigan Beekeepers Look To 2008 Season

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SCHOOLCRAFT -- Another season is under way for the nation's commercial beekeepers, and the threat of mysterious colony collapse disorder is still looming.

``Whether there will be an ample supply of bees to pollinate Michigan's fruits and vegetables this year is as much a guess as it was last year at this time,'' said Mike Hansen, state apiarist with the Michigan Department of Agriculture. ``It just seems like every year instead of getting answers on how to handle stuff we just keep getting more problems,'' said Schoolcraft beekeeper Scott Barnes, owner of St. Joe Valley Apiaries.

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Early research suggests, for instance, that good nutrition can help colonies withstand the threat. So Barnes has quit feeding his bees corn syrup supplements and instead pays more for a sucrose-based product that is more digestible to the insects. Barnes said he tries to assure, too, that the bees are able to visit many types of flowering plants, not just those in farm fields of one crop, so that the pollen they gather will offer nutritional diversity. In addition, this fall Barnes treated his hives for three new fungal diseases. Protecting against, and recovering from, such losses has added to the cost of beekeeping, at a rate of about $40 to $50 a hive, Barnes said.

In spite of stepped-up efforts to maintain bee health, Barnes said beekeepers are losing ground. These days beekeepers may easily lose 30 to 40 percent of their bees every year, when back in the 1980s, he said, 5 percent loss was the norm and ``at 10 percent you started to ask `what happened?' What used to be a horrendous loss is now a normal fact of life.''

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