This article is adapted from Margaret N. O'Sheas story that appears in the summer 2008 South Carolina Farmer, the magazine of the South Carolina Farm Bureau Federation.

Cliff Ward grew up in a simpler time when his father and grandfather ordered packages of honeybees from the Sears-Roebuck catalog, that page being saved before the book itself went out to the privy. Like many rural families, his kept bees to pollinate the crops that fed them, and they savored the honey collected from a handful of hives that they checked sporadically to make sure all was well. It usually was.

Back then, bees just did what they are born to do and people were simply thankful. But beekeeping has grown more complicated and labor intensive in modern times with the survival of bees threatened by pollution, progress, and new species of predators that are causing their population to decline. Some studies suggest its about half what it should be today. One indicator in the U.S. is the drop in honey production from 235 million pounds in 1987 to 145 million pounds last year.

Ward says that people who take bees for granted might take more notice if they realized what groceries would cost without them. Their role in agriculture is huge. We could live without honey if we had to, but we would have a hard time living without the bees that make it.

Entomologists say the impact of bee decline is already manifest in shortages of some nuts, fruits and vegetables, and the worst case scenario could be the ultimate disappearance of some crops from the food supply.

Thats one of the reasons Ward does all he can to keep bees abuzz, including removing swarms from places theyre not wanted, most recently from student apartments near the University of South Carolina.

South Carolina has an estimated 2,000 beekeepers who manage about 25,000 honey bee colonies. They cover a broad spectrum. Somewhere in that range is nature photographer John Riley Steedley, who keeps beehives near his blueberry bushes at Butterfly Creek in rural Lexington County. He shares their honey with friends and photographs the bees in the flower garden he plants to draw them and butterflies within range of his artistic lens.

The spectrum also includes professional pollinators who transport as many as 2,000 hives at a time to other states. South Carolina also has been for two or three decades a popular wintering over spot for bees whose hives would be covered with snow at home. Fourteen beekeepers from New York and Vermont brought 5,066 hives here last November to stay until April or May. State apiarist Fred Singleton keeps track of the numbers because his job involves inspecting the hives when they arrive and when they leave to assure the bees are healthy.

Some in-state beekeepers are concerned that South Carolina, unlike some other states, does not fund the apiarist position sufficiently to allow inspection of local hives and research into the causes of bee decline. The problems that affect bees are no different here than elsewhere around the world, but beekeepers here sometimes feel they are on their own except for advice from Clemson Extension agents and information they glean from apiculture publications and News for South Carolina Beekeepers, published by Clemson three times a year. The newsletter usually contains the latest horror stories and summaries of the latest research on threats to bees.

Theres the varroa mite, a blood-sucking parasite that attacks young and adult honey bees alike. The attacked bees often have deformed abdomens and a shortened life span. Left untreated, varroa mites can wipe out a hive.

The tracheal mite clogs the breathing tubes of adult bees, eventually suffocating them. In the interim, the tracheal mites affect a bees ability to fly, and the bee that does not fly does not spread pollen.

Both types of mites also transmit a host of deadly viruses, which enter bees through their puncture wounds.

Hives also can become infested with small hive beetles, squatters that take up valuable comb space and pilfer the honey that bees produce to get themselves through the off season.

Bees also are endangered by improperly applied suburban pesticides, which should never be used in the early morning when bees are swarming, but often are.

Apiculture literature in recent years has stressed the threat of the unknown, whatever it is that causes entire colonies of bees to die or disappear. It was called fall dwindle before it got serious enough nationwide to garner notice and a new name, Colony Collapse Disorder. Nobody has figured out yet why or how that happens, and in South Carolina opinions differ on how serious the problem might be in this state. Apiarist Singleton says thats because there have been no official reports of CDC, so officially its not a problem.

But by word of mouth and their own network, beekeepers say it is a serious problem the state should be helping them address. There have been some hive collapses, they say, and its frightening to realize that the cause remains unknown.

Archie Biering, who owns Bee City near Cottageville and heads the Low Country Beekeepers Association, says the Legislature has been shortsighted about the importance apiculture in South Carolina and thus deaf to requests for funds to preserve it.

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