Distributed by The Associated Press

The ramifications are so great that "colony collapse disorder" has moved from a concern among beekeepers to a wide swath of agricultural interests and, ultimately, the consumers of American-grown fruits and nuts and even beef.

The problem tests the wisdom and patience of the most experienced beekeepers and the most diligent scientists. Whole hives of bees are flying off in search of pollen and not returning, leaving beekeepers with a perplexing set of questions.

"This is totally new and no one knows what the cause is," said veteran beekeeper and retired Indiana University biologist George Hegeman. "The bees just disappear from the hive, leaving behind all of their stores, the nectar, the pollen and the baby bees.

"In the past, we've had problems but we've had dead bees," he said. "This is completely different. The bees just disappear. We don't know where they went or why they didn't come back."

Nationally, the impact of CCD could be staggering. Some statistics put the value of honeybee pollination of agricultural products at about $14 billion a year.

"They say every third bite of food you take requires a honeybee," said Tracy Hunter, a third-generation beekeeper from Morgan County. "It's not only the fruits and nuts we eat, but it goes down to the alfalfa and the clovers required to raise beef. Bees play a huge role in the pollination of the crops we depend upon."

"They're pollinators par excellence for agricultural crops," said an admiring Hegeman. "They're so interesting because they're flower-faithful. They start out on a field and they work one type of flower diligently."

In fact, honeybees long ago surpassed their value as honey- producers to take on the role as migrant pollinators, temporary workers and understudies to indigenous bee populations. As spring moves across the southern states to the northern ones, many beekeepers travel with the pollination season like carnival troupes, ensuring farmers that the bees will be on hand to pollinate their crops at what is often a short and critical time for optimal agricultural production.

"The people who really work the circuit go citrus in the south during January and February and then work up through Georgia for peaches and right through Indiana for apples and strawberries and up to Michigan for blueberries and cherries," Hegeman said.

The migrant crops, Hegeman and Hunter agree, are the ones most affected by CCD.

"We're not seeing it here," said Hunter, whose Hunter's Honey Farm encompasses about 50 hives annually, provides pollination services to several Indiana constituencies and produces honey varieties sold at retail locations throughout south-central Indiana.

Hunter said he took a hit during the winter of 2006-2007 but that's nothing new. "For the last 20 years, parasitic mites have been a problem here and we've seen losses on the average of 50 percent a year," he said.

"It's always something. This winter we had the cold snap and the hard ice, and that makes it tough for a colony to survive. They need to move around within the hive and cleanse themselves and they couldn't get out to feed on stored honey or take care of themselves. So they died."

Hunter believes that CCD may have something to do with the stress put on migratory bee populations. They're constantly relocated and it makes some sense that they'd have a hard time continually finding their way back to their hive and queen.

Hegeman said he thinks a pesticide aimed at bee predators such as mites might play a role in the problem.

"It's a nicotine-based pesticide that is primarily used in the areas where the most migrant pollinators are used -- which incidentally is where the greatest losses are being seen," he said. "It seems to make the bees disoriented and would account for them not finding their way back to the hives.

"That's all conjecture," he added. "I think once the real problem can be isolated, the resources are available to attack the source."

Hunter has already taken steps to replenish his depleted hives. A couple of weeks ago, he took several down to the Ohio River area, which is as much as 10 days ahead of the Bloomington-Martinsville area in favorable spring weather. He hopes to build his bee populations up to his normal levels.

Hunter hires out bees for numerous Indiana crops, beginning with apples later this month to pears, blueberries, strawberries, cucumbers, watermelons, cantaloupes and pumpkins.

The Morgan County beekeeper and schoolteacher is a third-generation beekeeper, carrying on a family tradition started around 1910. "Beekeeping is not as easy as it used to be," he said.

"Beekeeping is a lot less fun than it was when I arrived in Bloomington in 1972," agreed Hegeman. "We've had to become more pesticide applicators and disease managers than I'd like."

That being said, the bottom line is this: Area beekeepers have weathered mites, bad weather and other problems but they haven't had to worry about the strange phenomenon of fly-away hives yet.

And in the meantime, they're using their honeybees to pollinate important crops and make honey -- for all of them, the proverbial icing-on-the-cake.

Hegeman pines for his favorite flavors of honey, all of which are dependent on optimal blooming seasons and the efficient isolation of bees. "Oh gosh, this is a wonderful area to keep bees. The honey from the black locust and tulip poplar and summer wildflowers make for some very interesting honeys.

"There's a lot of clover honey produced north of (U.S. 40) that's sold as clover honey that may well be soybean honey. It's all similar. It's mild and light and it's good. But we have so many more interesting honeys here."

One of Hunter's favorites is the apple blossom honey produced in the spring and then the more complex goldenrod and tulip poplar honeys that follow.

"My favorite is the black locust honey. We only get on average a good batch every seven years," he said. "It's so hard to isolate and everything has to happen just right. The black locust has to bloom at just the right time and nothing else can be blooming with it.

"When it's right you know why honey has been so valued over the years."