How can bee deaths affect your dessert?

by Tara Smith     Department: Science & Society

For the past year, populations of honeybees in the U.S. have been mysteriously in decline in several areas. Referred to as "Colony Collapse Disorder," this has led to unprecedented losses for some bee growers.

The cause remains uncertain, although a virus appears to be a involved (in my opinion, a much more likely cause than the cell phone hypothesis). To find out what's going on, though, more people and companies are looking for the source of the collapse--including ice cream makers:

Haagen-Dazs is warning that a creature as small as a honeybee could become a big problem for the premium ice cream maker's business.

At issue are the disappearing bee colonies in the United States, a situation that continues to mystify scientists and frighten foodmakers.

That's because, according to Haagen-Dazs, one-third of the U.S. food supply - including a variety of fruits, vegetables and even nuts - depends on pollination from bees.

Haagen-Dazs, which is owned by General Mills, said bees are actually responsible for 40% of its 60 flavors - such as strawberry, toasted pecan and banana split.

As they note, this doesn't affect just Haagen-Dazs, but the entire food industry (which relies heavily on bee pollination). Haagen-Dazs has donated $250,000 to study the problem, and will release a new flavor of ice cream to raise awareness of the issue.

[Edited to add: Carl Zimmer has an excellent overview of CCD and the molecular methods we've used to investigate it over at Wired.com.]

Tags: disease, honeybees, viruses

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