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By Randy Fabi
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Swarms of hardy Russian queen bees are to be used in a desperate battle to defeat tiny blood-sucking mites which are devastating North America's honey bee colonies.
``The situation in America is extremely serious,'' Thomas Rinderer, honey bee research leader for the U.S. Agriculture Department's Agricultural Research Service, said Friday.
``If left untreated, beekeepers would lose all of their colonies within a year,'' he told Reuters in an interview.
Though only about one-sixteenth-of-an-inch in size, varroa mites can destroy a hive of tens of thousands of bees in as little as six months. Besides producing honey, bees also pollinate an estimated $8 to $10 billion worth of farm crops including apples and zucchini.
In response to the epidemic, the Agriculture Department signed an agreement this month with bee breeder Steven Bernard of Breaux, Louisiana, to raise hundreds of Russian honey bee queens this fall and winter.
Russian honeybees are twice as resistant to attacks by varroa mites, which have torn through the domestic honey bee population.
``If this resistance proves constant, beekeepers may in some cases be able to reduce, if not eliminate, miticide treatments by relying on the Russian bees,'' Rinderer said. ``With these bees, beekeepers will be able to breathe a little bit easier.''
The bees will be available for sale to U.S. beekeepers early next year. The beekeepers will use the queens to produce more queens for populating hives with mite-resistant offspring. These offspring will be fathered by male bees, known as drones, from the American hives.
Malcolm Bullard, a 22-year beekeeper in Pensacola, Florida, with 600 hives, said although his state is one of the hardest hit by the mites, he remains optimistic that the honeybees will survive in the end.
``This is an ongoing, continuous, never-to-end problem,'' Bullard said. ``It will be controlled because if it isn't, we won't have any food on the table -- and that can never happen.''
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