Last Updated: 8:46 AM, December 27, 2009 Posted: 3:24 AM,
December 27, 2009 When Dave Hackenberg jerked the lids off his
hives one bright November morning in Florida in 2006 and found
them empty, the stunned commercial beekeeper never thought that
four years later his bees and millions more across the United
State would still be mysteriously missing. Yet the man credited
with discovering colony collapse disorder, a strange phenomenon
in which workers bees suddenly desert the hive — that has wiped
out more than a third of all honeybees in the US — says this
winter could be the worst yet. “It’s got bad real fast,” he said
last week. “We had around 3,000 hives at the end of the summer,
but they started shrinking early, so when we came to truck them
to Florida there was only 2,000 of them left.” Pennsylvanian-
based Hackenberg, whose family-run apiaries provide pollination
services for farmers all over the country, moves his hives to
warmer climes before Thanksgiving each year to get them strong
and healthy for th