A mysterious illness that's killed off massive numbers of honey bees nationwide is affecting beekeepers here in San Diego County. KPBS Radio's Andrea Hsu has more.
Alan Mikolich is one of a dozen or so commercial beekeepers in the county. He keeps most of his bees in the Tijuana River Valley. This Friday, he'll truck his bees up to Fresno, where they'll pollinate almond crops.
But Mikolich's load of wooden beehive boxes is much lighter than it would have been just a couple months ago.
Mikolich: The colonies or hives - they were all over eight frames -all through October, November, even December. Then they started to dwindle or collapse.
Mikolich went from a total of 750 colonies, to just 300 now. He says a number of things are to blame. The Varroa mite is a perennial problem. But this year - there's a mysterious ailment killing bees. Scientists are calling it Colony Collapse Disorder.
Mikolich pries open a bee hive to show what it does:
Mikolich: Nobody home, no bees, just empty equipment.
Strange thing is - the hive right next to it is buzzing with activity.
Mikolich: This is typical of what they should look like, but we don't have the populations like they used to be.
California's almond growers need a million colonies to pollinate their crops each year.
Half the bees in the U.S. have to come to the almond orchard in order to pollinate them. Next two to three years even Higher demand for bees.
The Almond Board of California says they think they'll have enough bees for this year's crop. As for Alan Mikolich - he's gotten a second job to make up for the $50,000 he figures he'll lose this year.
For KPBS News, I'm Andrea Hsu.
