Pest decimating honeybee colonies

A tiny pest is decimating honeybee colonies across the country, worrying beekeepers and farmers who depend on the insects to pollinate their crops.

Pollinating almond orchards is the immediate worry in California's agriculture industry, but the mites' devastation of the honeybee supply is causing concern across the country. Honeybees pollinate about one-third of the human diet and dozens of agricultural crops.

California produces 80 percent of the world's almond supply. A $1 billion-a-year crop, the nuts have become the state's top agricultural export, ahead of wine and cotton.

Because almonds are the first crop to flower, the state's growers are the first to suffer from the bee shortage. Bees are used to pollinate the orchards from mid-February to early March.

"It's simple. We can't produce almonds without bees," said Scott Hunter, an almond farmer near Merced who's getting ready to lay 2,500 hives among the bare branches of his Butte and Padre trees.

While their work starts in California's 550,000 acres of almonds, the hives then move to apple orchards, cherry groves and melon patches before