Billions od commercially employed honeybees - vital to the production of nearly 100 food crops across North America -- have buzz off.
Beekeepers say their industrious workers have been vanishing mysteriously from stores, their developing offspring and a forlorn queen and her attendants.
There have been other such "colony collapses," or "dwindles," in past decades, experts say. But this one appears to be the most serious - in the number of abandoned hives, their coast-to-coast geography and their duration.
"Apparently, a lot of these beekeepers have lost between 30 percent to as high as 80 to 90 percent of their colonies," said University of Maryland entomologist Mike Raupp. "This is pretty serious business. It's a big deal."
Although big commercial bee operations have been hit hardest by what's been dubbed "Colony Collapse Disorder," or CCD, smaller players and hobbyists are not immune.
"Last fall, I noticed it," said A. Dean Burroughs, 69, who contracts out 150 hives to eight farms near Salisbury on Maryland's Eastern Shore. "I was bringing my bees in for the winter from the farms ... and I go into the hive and there are no bees there."
In fact, five of his 150 hives were empty.
Hive losses have become common since the arrival of invasive mites and viruses in the 1980s and 1990s, he said. "But usually, when they die out from a virus or an insecticide kill, the bees are clumped in front of the hive, dead," Burroughs explained.
This time, they simply vanished.
Bigger operators, who truck hives by the thousands from citrus groves in Florida to berry farms in Maine, have been alarmed by losses of up to 90 percent. These beekeepers play a critical role in the nation's agricultural productivity. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says a third of the nation's diet depends on insect pollinators.
By itself, California's $2 billion almond industry requires 1.3 million commercial bee colonies every year. That's about half the country's commercial bee supply. Bees are also vital to forage crops - the alfalfa, clover and other pasture grasses that grazing animals require.
Pollination fees are already increasing sharply because of rising demand, and significant bee losses could reduce crop yields and increase food prices.
Responding to the alarm, scientists from academia, state and federal agricultural agencies, private companies and even the Department of Defense have formed the Colony Collapse Working Group. After conferences last week in Beltsville, their investigators fanned out to tackle the scientific puzzle.
