Those hard-working honeybees so vital to the success of Maryland's $80 million-a-year fruit and vegetable industry are faring better here than in other parts of the country.
Commercial beekeepers across the nation reported that they lost 36.1 percent of their honeybees over the winter, according to a recent survey by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
A large portion of those losses -- about a third -- are due to a phenomenon scientists call colony collapse disorder, or CCD, in which the adult bees leave a hive and die.
"We normally lose about 25 percent of our honeybee population over the winter," said Kim Kaplan, a representative of the Agricultural Research Service Center in Beltsville. "This year, we lost about 10 percent more than usual."
The loss is a major concern for bee researchers at the Beltsville center.
Honeybees are critical for agricultural pollination. They add more than $15 billion a year to about 130 crops -- especially high-value specialty crops such as berries, nuts, fruits and vegetables.
In general, honeybee colony health has been declining in the U.S. and other countries since the 1980s, with the introduction of new pathogens and pests, according to the USDA.
At the same time, the demand for hives to supply pollination to farms has continued to climb.
This means that bee colonies have to be trucked farther and more often than before, which also stresses the bees.
Colony collapse has been blamed for the deaths of billions of bees in 35 states. Scientists think it caused the destruction of about 38 percent of the nation's 2.4 million bee colonies last year, according to an Apiary Inspectors of America study published by the American Bee Journal.
But Maryland farmers have not suffered because of the outbreak of colony collapse disorder.
"We have never had a case of CCD in Maryland," said Jerry Fischer, the apiary inspector with the state Department of Agriculture. "We have not lost one colony due to CCD."
Fischer said Maryland has only three commercial beekeepers and that they are used primarily to pollinate fruit trees in Virginia and West Virginia and for large cucumber fields in Delaware.
Fischer said most of the pollination services in Maryland are handled by what he called "backyard beekeepers or hobbyists."
Before 1987, he said, state farmers did not rent bees to pollinate their crops. "They relied on feral colonies," hives of bees living in the wild and not managed by anyone.
