the bats and the bees

(image by tcatcarson via flickr)

It's time we talked about the bats and the bees. They're both dying and experts aren't sure why.

Four years ago, beekeepers across the United States noticed their bees were dying at an alarming rate. By the end of last year, the U.S. bee population shrank by 30 percent with some beekeepers losing as much as 90 percent of their colonies. The deaths are blamed on "colony collapse disorder," a mystery that has scientists scrambling to find the cause – and a cure.

Honey bees pollinate one-third of our food supply – an estimated $15 billion in crops ranging from apples to oranges, from onions to almonds. (Ice cream maker Häagen-Dazs says four out of 10 of its ice cream flavors are made possible by the work of bees.) Despite two years of intense research, scientists still don't know what is causing the collapse and worry they may not be able to prevent yet greater increases in food prices. Diana Cox Foster of Penn State University: "It is of concern, and hopefully other people will start to see it that way before it hits us in the supermarkets."

This past winter, hikers in rural New Yorker witnessed bats flying during the day. The problem: “Bats don’t fly in the daytime, and bats don’t fly in the winter,’" according to Al Hicks of New York's Environmental Conservation Department. The bats were being forced out of hibernation due to a mystery disease called "white-nose syndrome" (a white fungus appears on the noses of most infected bats) which likely drives the bats to wander out of their winter homes in a desperate – and fatal – search for nutrients.

Bats, like bees, pollinate flowers, but more importantly, they feed on insects – billions of them. Biologist Scott Darling estimates the dead and dying bats would have eaten up to two billion insects per night. Now those insects may devastate crops and plague cities in the Northeast.