Glen Fischer has spent much of his 61 years surrounded by bees. He grew up helping out with his father’s beekeeping business in Fullerton then started his own when he moved to Camarillo in 1978.

Business had been good until three years ago, when a mysterious condition known as colony collapse disorder hit Fischer’s bee hives, as it did colonies across the country. He estimates he’s lost about 800 hives or colonies, two-thirds of his operation, to the disorder.

It “drastically hurt” business, Fischer said.

Colony collapse disorder is characterized by the disappearance of adult bees from an apparently thriving hive that has a queen and is teeming with young.

Researchers know little more about the disorder except that more than one agent is at work, said Kim Kaplan, spokesperson for Agriculture Research Services, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. No single pathogen, parasite, incidence of pesticide exposure or combination thereof shows up in every manifestation of the disorder, making it difficult to determine the cause, she said.

Adding to the mystery, colony collapse hits some managed honeybee colonies and skips others.

“That’s one of the greatest puzzles about CCD,” Kaplan said.

One study found in some cases of the disorder that various pathogens—viruses, bacteria, fungi—were present, Kaplan said. But the same agents were not present in every case, and scientists were quick to point out that this does not imply they’ve discovered a cause for the disorder. It simply means they’ve uncovered an area that warrants further research, Kaplan said.

Diseases and parasites have always killed off some of the managed bee population. A loss of 17 percent had been considered normal. Beekeepers nationwide reported colony losses of nearly 34 percent earlier this year, about the average loss for the past few years, Kaplan said.

The need for bees

Honeybees pollinate about 100 different crops, including nuts and berries. In Ventura County, bees pollinate citrus, squash and pumpkins.

Managed bee colonies make it possible for growers to have an entire crop pollinated in a short period of time. That means a large crop will ripen at about the same time, saving growers the expense of harvesting smaller crops several times throughout the season. Not enough bees exist in the wild to do the job in the same amount of time.

Bee pollination adds about $15 billion a year to the value of U.S. produce, Kaplan said, adding that the latest survey was taken about 10 years ago, so the value of bee pollination has probably increased.

The disappearance of bee colonies doesn’t mean the nation will starve, Kaplan said. Bee pollination isn’t needed to grow the country’s major crops, such as rice, wheat and corn. Also, other pollinators are available.

The disorder is not wiping out all honeybees, but it is taking such a toll on some managed colonies that it’s become economically unsound for some beekeepers to stay in business, Kaplan said.

Red Bennett, a beekeeper who owns a retail honey store in Fillmore, said he’s heard of some beekeepers leaving the industry because the disorder decimated their colonies. But he said the industry is fairly stable now.

Bennett lost half of his 400 colonies last fall due to the disorder. One colony can have as many as 40,000 bees.

Bennett said he’s suffered greater and fewer losses before.

“There doesn’t seem to be any good rhyme or reason to it,” he said. “We’re just spending a lot more money and a lot more time to keep the bees healthy. Sometimes it seems to work and sometimes it doesn’t.”

Henry Gonzales, Ventura County’s agricultural commissioner, said that because the bee industry is largely unregulated he can’t say for certain if the disorder is causing beekeepers to leave the business, nor can he estimate combined colony losses.

Prices, production climb

If the latest figures from the agricultural commission are any indication, the beekeeping industry in Ventura County is in an upswing. But Gonzales said he’s hesitant to conclude that the county has seen the worst of the disorder because no scientific study or survey exists to support it.

His department tracks the commodities bees produce, which are honey, wax and pollination services, all known as apiary products. Such commodities hit a three-year low in 2008, generating $463,000. Those products generated 38 percent more money the year before and 51 percent more in 2009, Gonzales said.

With indirect financial contributions from the bee industry, the so-called multiplier effect, he said, the value of apiary products to the county’s economy could be three to five times that amount.

“(Bees are) very important, very important to us,” Gonzales said.

Honey production also saw a dip in 2008. Ventura County bees produced 67,000 pounds of honey that year, compared to 211,000 pounds in 2007 and 121,000 pounds in 2009.

Fischer said it’s in part because of the disorder that he’s paying more to purchase bees, although he hasn’t raised his pollination rates commensurately. Before the disorder struck, he paid $10 for the equivalent of a pound of bees but now pays about $25—a 150 percent increase. Fischer has raised his fees only 10 percent to 15 percent because he’s afraid he’ll lose clients if he increases his rates too much.

Bennett, who leases his bees to pollinate almond orchards, said he, too, has had to raise his fees, primarily because of the disorder. He charges $125 to $200 per hive, up from the $60 to $100 a hive before 2006.

During that same time, honey prices have also risen, going from $1 per pound to as much as $1.60 a pound, Bennett said.

The disorder is also changing what beekeepers perceive as a significant loss. Before the disorder, a 10 percent colony loss was considered a major blow, but now a 40 percent loss is deemed acceptable, Fischer said. He said he’s heard of beekeepers losing 80 percent or more of their bee colonies.

Fischer said it’ll cost him about $100 per hive to replace his colonies, but he loses twice that if he doesn’t have enough bees to pollinate the almonds, watermelons, avocados and other crops of clients from as far away as King City and Bakersfield. He could charge as much as $200 a hive at the peak of the pollination season.

It’ll take a couple of years for Fischer to build his business up. He’ll take the profits from pollination contracts and money from his job as a supervisor at a food processor plant to buy more bees.