By David Sweeney

April 16, 2007 | For the moment, anyway, colony collapse disorder has spared the Beehive State, but Utah bees and keepers still have plenty to worry about.

Every spring, Cache Valley beekeeper Darren Cox returns some 4,000 hives from California, where he rents his honeybees to almond growers from November through April. Each year, upon returning to Logan, the co-owner of Cox Honey must make up for roughly one-third of his swarms -- a typical winter loss, he says, that pales in comparison to those of the Californian beekeepers he resupplies.

In 24 states, including many throughout the Midwest and East Coast, beekeepers have endured losses of up to 70 percent in a mysterious epidemic that has sent innumerable hordes of honeybees packing, and then left them to die.

The outbreak is dubbed a disorder because researchers have yet to identify any disease-causing agents. Similarly, research has ruled out fall dwindle disease, which acts like colony collapse on a smaller, more autumnal scale, because colony collapse happens year-round.

Instead, colony collapse has scientists scratching their heads and beekeepers fearing for their hives and their welfare.

The problem is far from narrowly focused on beekeepers.

"Every third bite we consume in our diet is dependent on a honeybee to pollinate that food," Zac Browning, vice president of the American Beekeeping Federation, told the New York Times in a February story. Furthermore, the California almond crop, one of many harvests dependent on and threatened by the vanishing hymenoptera, is "one of the nation's most profitable."

Though his bees recently passed their first inspection, Cox said he's concerned about them because they're more likely to contract colony collapse when rented to keepers in areas with reported occurrences. However, he said, the risks inherent to lending are offset by a universal demand that has "continued to skyrocket, just like the price of fuel."

And though he knows of no infected swarms in Utah, anxiety runs rampant in the global beekeeping community, Cox said. Beekeepers are "wondering if the bees they've paid for are alive or dead, healthy or not," he said. If it is thriving, he said, a "strong, vibrant colony" is still susceptible to collapse, and can be "completely wiped out in two weeks."

"Bees that have escaped fly off individually, but not in mass" and are less likely to return, Cox said of afflicted apiaries. Alone and abroad, they're more vulnerable to mites, pesticides and cold. Additionally, shorter off-seasons may affect overworked bees' immunity to infection, opening the door for a universal virus on par with AIDS. Other theories highlight global climate change as a contributing factor.

Some bees have lost the will to work altogether, Cox said, and "won't even go out and bring honey to their hives." In other cases, colony collapse causes the queen to abort her egg-laying cycle.

In a 112-page congressional report released March 19, Cox said, facts are hard to come by, though scientists have pinpointed insecticides as partially to blame. Cox is reluctant to send the report to the Salt Lake City news media for fear of causing more undue "panic and speculation."

Since colony collapse saps the bee industry of precious research dollars, he said, the bee industry needs the financial aid of the scientific community.

"It's hard to put your finger on it," Cox said of identifying the source of colony collapse, "when we're not getting the money for research.

"Beekeeping in the United States is in desperate need of funding to figure out these problems. This is where science needs to step in."

On the other side of the coin, says Darren's father, Duane, corporate profit is ultimately to blame. Herbicides such as Roundup -- "No root. No weed. No problem." -- belie their slogans.

But, "When you can make that good of a chemical," Duane Cox said, "it's not going to go off the market."

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