including food crops. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service

is teaching the public about bees at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall in

Washington, D.C. Honeybees are needed in order to set the fruit on squash, cucumbers, apples,

cherries, blueberries, almonds, and a host of other crops in the U.S. ARS studies bees

and threats to their health, including mysterious bee disappearances. For the last five or six

years, beekeepers have been losing between twenty and thirty percent of their bees each

winter. That is entire colonies die and that’s unsustainable. It’s a phenomenon called

colony collapse disorder, but we don’t know exactly what is causing that. Probably pesticides

are involved; probably loss of bee forage and habitat is involved. We know that some

pathogens and pests and parasites are involved. Smith says while bees are not going extinct,

he adds that trouble for beekeepers can mean trouble for farmers. There’s about two and

a half million honeybee colonies in the U.S., and probably over half of them are owned by

commercial beekeepers and they’re rented by growers of close to a hundred crops all

across the U.S. for pollination of those crops. Researchers say people can help the bee population

by supporting local beekeepers, decreasing pesticide use and planting a diversity of

flowers. In Washington, D.C. for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, I’m Bob Ellison.