BEEKEEPERS GET SOME HELP

Beekeepers find themselves fighting an ongoing battle against colony collapse disorder, but in this round of fights, keepers are getting some financial assistance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Two grants that will help fund colony collapse research, totaling almost $3.4 million, have been awarded to the Empire State Honey Producers Association and to five research organizations, including Cornell University, Ithaca.

Colony collapse disorder decimated the honeybee population from 2002 to 2005. Jefferson County dropped from the top to the number four county for honey production in the state, from nearly half a million pounds in 2002 to 135,000 pounds in 2007, when the disorder hit bees around the county.

Bee population has been on the rise since then, Alexandria Bay beekeeper Theodore P. Elk said, but this season, despite good conditions for the bees, he saw nearly half of his colony die off.

“Colony collapse is still rearing its ugly head,” he said. “I saw a 40 percent loss of bees. I've been trying some new stuff to see how that works on them.”

There is no known cure for the disorder, but Mr. Elk said he and other beekeepers discuss various techniques for keeping bees healthy. This season he tried a mix of cinnamon, lemon juice and powdered sugar.

“It's too early to know if it will have an effect on the bees, but some of the hives I've cracked open seem to be taking it well,” he said.

A three-year, $59,000 matching grant awarded to the Honey Producers Association will help train beekeepers to prevent, diagnose and treat honeybee die-off. The grant also will help educate beekeeper hobbyists.

Workshops will be held at several locations and will focus on successful beekeeping and the retention of beginning beekeepers.

In June, Kelly E. Reinhardt, Sackets Harbor, started her own backyard hive.

“I heard about colony collapse and I figured I would do my part to help,” she said. “My goal is to have more pollination in my garden and to help on a global scale. Right now they are busy building up their colony.”

Ms. Reinhardt said she started with one queen and 12,000 honeybees. She said her hive has more than tripled.

“I'd say there are about 45,000 bees in the hive now,” she said.

The second grant, also from the USDA, will use $3.3 million to help Northeast researchers find ways to maintain a diverse community of wild bees. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst will work with more than a dozen scientists from Cornell University, the University of Maine, the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station and the University of Tennessee.

Researchers will study how the bees' diversity is affected by factors such as landscapes, farm size and pesticide use, areas that Mr. Elk said could be a waste.

“Pesticide use? We know what pesticide use does. It kills them,” he said. “Cornell hasn't done anything tangible for New York beekeepers in at least 10 years. We've become the poor relative of the ag industry. We could probably do our own research and have better results.”

And results are what is needed.

“It's a critical fear, that so many of our crops are pollinated by honeybees; if not honeybees, then what? But there is not another what to fall back on,” said Jay M. Matteson, agricultural coordinator for Jefferson County. “Honeybees are something that we should have a pretty tremendous focus on and yet we are only throwing nickels and dimes. If we can't get our crops pollinated, where will our food come from?”