State ag department forms beekeeping advisory panel

OLYMPIA — The state is forming an advisory panel of beekeepers to determine research necessary for the Washington bee industry.

The state's Department of Agriculture created the committee at the request of the industry in order to obtain advice on issues affecting them, including hobby beekeepers. The committee suggests research projects to strengthen Washington's bee and beekeeping industry.

Tim Hiatt of Ephrata-based Hiatt Honey LLC is one of the nine people appointed by department Director Valoria Loveland to serve a two-year term ending in July 2009.

Hiatt's father Sid began the family business in 1969, Tim Hiatt said, and has been pollinating tree fruit every year since then.

Tim Hiatt got involved after reading about interest in spending money the Department of Agriculture was collecting from beekeepers as registration fees. State law requires the advisory committee be formed to advise the department in order for the money to be spent. Beekeepers are interested in spending the money on research to benefit bees and beekeepers.

"Several years ago, a group of beekeepers from across the state got together to investigate a state commodity assessment program for bee hives or for honey, similar to the apple commission or the potato commission," Tim Hiatt said. "At the time, the federal Supreme Court was ruling on the constitutional aspects of these programs and found in some cases they violated the first amendment rights of some members of the groups being assessed. So our bee or honey assessment idea was put on the back burner."

Tim Hiatt expects the panel to support basic research to help beekeepers keep bees alive.

"That's getting to be a pretty tall order these days," he said. "Bees can be compared to livestock in they must be fed, medicated and sometimes transported between states. But it would be hard for a cattleman to have 25 to 45 percent loss in his herd annually. That is becoming typical for many beekeepers."

Stress, pesticides, parasites, viruses and poor nutrition are pointed to as causes for increased bee mortality, Tim Hiatt said.

"Beekeeping used to be a skill that could be passed from father to son," he said. "Now it's becoming necessary to be a parasite biologist, statistician and chemical applicator to keep the bees alive."

There's no need to worry about the supply of bees for pollination in the short term, TIm Hiatt added.

"In Washington state, there will always be enough bees, even in the peak of tree fruit pollination season, to meet demand," he said. Increasingly, out-of-state bees are meeting that demand."

In the long term, Tim Hiatt noted, pollination prices will continue to rise as the cost of keeping bees alive increases, plus the rising cost of transportation.

"If we knew exactly why bee longevity is decreasing, we could, I hope, address that directly," he said. "Until we do, we're left throwing a lot of money at symptoms."

Sid Hiatt said the panel is a very good idea.

"The beekeeping industry has always had some problems," he said. "Up until now, we've been pretty much able to handle things ourselves."

But it will take a lot of money and research to solve mite and other virus problems beekeepers face, Sid Hiatt added.

Washington State University entomology department representative Steve Sheppard, also a panel member, said the issue of honey bee health is highly visible, but it has been a pressing problem for many years.

"This has been especially true following the inadvertent importation and establishment of parasitic mites," Sheppard said. "Meanwhile, other states have lost their research positions related to honey bees, and the program at Washington State University remains as the sole state-funded research effort in the Pacific Northwest."

The panel's immediate interests are to better understand colony collapse disorder and find ways to maintain healthy colonies, Sheppard said. Other issues include the increasing difficulty for beekeepers to find locations to place bees.

The group meets with department officials as needed, with the first meeting scheduled for August.