. Cranberries; : the national cranberry magazine. Cranberries. f If you don't have enough worries, try fretting about BEES. Joseph M. Winski Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Remember the old saying about how a horse and rider were lost because somebody neglected to tend to a small matter like a missing horseshoe nail? Some scientists and agriculturists are worried that the same sort of ballooning consequences may stem from what many people probably consider to be a minor irrelevancy: The nation's honeybees slowly but steadily are being exterminated. Not on purpose, of course. But as t
. Cranberries; : the national cranberry magazine. Cranberries. f If you don't have enough worries, try fretting about BEES. Joseph M. Winski Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Remember the old saying about how a horse and rider were lost because somebody neglected to tend to a small matter like a missing horseshoe nail? Some scientists and agriculturists are worried that the same sort of ballooning consequences may stem from what many people probably consider to be a minor irrelevancy: The nation's honeybees slowly but steadily are being exterminated. Not on purpose, of course. But as the honeybees forage for pollen and nectar they increasingly are gathering poison also—pesticides that farmers apply to protect their crops from destructive insects. So there are 20% fewer honebee colonies in the today than there were 10 years ago-about four million versus five million. (A colony contains between 25,000 and 60,000 bees.) In California, the leading bee state, as much as 20% of the state's honeybees have been killed in some recent years—a mortality rate double that of the early 1960s. "All the indications are that it's going to get a lot worse," says Ward Stanger, an apiculturist at the University of California at Davis. "It's a serious situation," Mr. Stanger says-so serious that he's seeking to have the honeybee declared an endangered species. Bee Benefits It is even more serious in another respect: Nearly 100 crops with a farm value of $1 billion annually depend on honeybees for pollination; another $3 billion worth benefit from bee pollination in terms of higher and better- quality yields. Among these crops are apples, cherries, plums, broc- coli, cucumbers, cabbage, melons— indeed, virtually all fruits and berries, as well as many vegetables and even some livestock-forage crops such as alfalfa. Thus, at a time when boosting food production is becoming a global priority, the fate of honey- bees takes on some of the signifi- cance
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