USDA On Bees

USDA On Bees. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

By now you have heard a lot about the bee situation. USDA researchers are working to help people learn about bees while trying to figure out why some bee colonies are disappearing. Bart Smith, USDA Entomologist explains the importance of bees.

SMITH: Honeybees are needed in order to set fruit on squash, cucumbers, apples, cherries, blueberries, almonds - a host of other crops in the U.S.

Then a number of years ago bees began disappearing or simply dying off.

SMITH: For the last 5 or 6 years beekeepers have been losing between 20 and 30% of their bees each winter. That is, entire colonies dying and that’s unsustainable. It’s a phenomena called colony collapse disorder but we don’t know exactly what is causing that. Probably pesticides are involved. Probably loss of bee forage and habitat is involved. We know that some pathogens in pests and parasites are involved.

You can help by supporting local beekeepers, using less pesticides and by planting bee friendly flowers and gardens.

SMITH: There’s about 2 1/2 million honeybee colonies in the U.S. probably over half of them are owned by commercial beekeepers and they’re rented by growers of close to 100 crops all across the U.S. for pollination of those crops.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.