>> the crisis of the bees, mass death, threats to agriculture has gone so far that the slowing down of the decline is framed as good news. what is happening to the bees? that's the inside story. >> hello, i'm ray suarez. honeybees have lived closely with human beings for thousands

of years. it's hard work, corporation, and selflessness. the bee is more honored than other animals not because she labors but because she labor more than others. you probably don't think about bees working for you, but they do. the today the shelves of supermarkets piled high with produce depend heavily on the work of bees. fruits and vegetables grown from seed fertilized by bees. and the bees are dying by the hundreds of millions. there are theories. there are suspected culprits, but the tragedy for the insects themselves may also be a disaster for us.

>> well, this area is really a paradise for bees, the huge amount of plant diversity . >> for several years now, tibor has watched large stocks of his beloved honeybees die off. >> bees just sitting on plant leaves, hundreds of bees running around in the grass not coming home, twitching and spas spasmin fronts of the hive, a good population of the colony has disappeared. >> reporter: the flight is part of a crisis among the colonies. according to a report by the federally federal government said the healthy loss hovers around 15%. but in the winter between 2010

and 2011 the loss of managed honeybee colonies on average was 30%, well over the acceptable range. the following year, 22%, then the death rate rocketed back up to 31% in the winter of 2012-2013. and this past season at 23%. the u.s. department of agriculture has been closely watching high losses . over researchers see a range of other lethal factors such as viruses, parasites, environmental changes and pesticides. >> we'll reach a threshold where it's not going to be worth it for a bee keep for maintain a colony only to see 40% of his colonies die every year. >> reporter: bees are highly evolved socially and they protect each other from diseases so they have less individual

immunity than other insects. ten years ago they seemed to be bulletproof, invulnerable to any of the diseases. now we are all seeing that they are getting sick or dying. >> dees and the plants they pollen nate form a symbiotic relationship that comes together to the american dinner table to the tune of one of three mouthfuls. an estimated $15 billion in value is added to u.s. crops by bees. >> if we lose bees we'll lose a significant part of our food supply. that's it. without bees we don't get fruits. we don't get a lot of animal feeds that are dependent on bee pollination. there are many things we'll lose. >> and this week's report may have the u.s. listening closely to our buzzing buddies.

>> virus in colonies, an immune system up presse suppressed , pesticides applied to crops. there are a lot of ideas about what is killing bees. joining us on inside story here in washington our guests. tiffany, this is being presented as a good year. is 23% a sustainable amount of winter death for bees? >> no,, it's not. bees pollinate $15 billion of

the food crop we eat every year. if we continue to see numbers at this rate its extremely unsustainable for our u.s. farmers, for consumers and for the economy. what we saw from this study is that it glossed over the--one of the leading causes contributing to this client which is pesticide. pesticide, a specific class of pesticide has been implicated as one of the key factors in the global bee die off. last year the european union placed a two-year moratorium on these pesticides and harvard university came out with a new study saying that this is most likely the main culprit of colony collapse disorder. not only are we seeing it being applied in agriculture, we're also seeing them being applied in our backyard. so many homeowners are going to

garden retailers ready to plant pollinator friendly gardens because they heard about the loss of bees across this country and global by. without knowing it they're purchasing plants that have been labeled bee friendly, but it's been treated. >> what does it do to an insect to make their life miserable? >> there is a fairly new class of chemistry brought forward from our member companies, discovered as an alternative and older insecticide products. and they work in a refined and targeted way.

we're looking at the multiple factors with the stress on bees that are at the root of this problem. we want to know more about the modes of action of the insect sides and other products from our industry, but we also wants to help with the answers to the problems things like th the the miteicides that are used to control mites. >> do you accept the report that was just cited. they are not made to target just one insect. so if any insect ingests it,

it's going to kill them. >> modern science tells us we need to assess safety of products used like insect insecticides user based on its risk, it's toxicity to the compound itself, multiple times the exposure. when they measure the insecticide product, determine ways that our industry can develop products so the unintended exposure to non-target species can be limited to the point where they are an acceptable risk or no risk at all. >> are they such an advance to the science that it is worth risking as you call healthful risks to kill the ones your why'

trying to kill. >> it's a constant state of responsibility, to understand the effects of the environment and to human beings as well . >> i'll give a chance to respond to what you just heard, but i'll turn to randy to begin with what kind of winter it is to you. what do you estimate your loss being over this past winter. >> i'm a poster child for this year. this year i lost probably pretty close to 50% of my bees just this winter. to put that into perspective, in 2013 i shift 10,000 hives to

pollinate almonds and i was only able to send 3,000 and the remaining hives are too weak to send. >> is this a case where you can see the dead bees or do they go out to do whatever it is that bees do and simply not come back? you end up with empty hives or hives full of corpses? >> basically, basically empty hives. if you have a situation where a beehive is starved because they ran out of food, then the bees are dead right in the hive. but in some other case where it's a disease it's just a natural function of the beehive for the infected or sick bees to fly away from the hive. >> does that make it tougher to figure out what is going wrong with the insects since you can can't, in fact, them, since you can't see what it was that killed them. >> yes, most definitely.

the best way to take the approach is to have consistent monitoring. >> and so can you anticipate whether it's going to be a rough year? do your hives enter winter already showing signs of dress, signs of weakness, signs of die-off so you can guess whether it's going to be a rough winter? >> yes, to a degree you can because we're in our bees all the time, and we're constantly monitoring for things. but i could not--i just did not see this winter happening to me because do a really good job taking care of our bees. we hav we are involved in some testing.

so it really did take me by surprise this year. >> well, and in its story about the study, "the new york times" said that honeybees could be on their way back and cited this 23% loss. we'll talk about whether that was a little too optimistic after this short break. >> on techknow... >> so, this is the smart home... >> saving the environment >> the start point for energy efficiency, is to work with the sun... >> saving you money >> we harvest a lot of free energy >> and so we're completely off grid here >> how many of the appliances were almost a little too smart for us? >> techknow every saturday, go where science, meets humanity. >> this is some of the best driving i've ever done, even though i can't see. >>techknow >> we're here in the vortex... only on al jazeera america

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a new report from the u.s. department of agriculture found that after years of massive bee deaths the losses dropped nationwide. for now no one knows why the death rate dropped or why it remained so high. is there a different way of looking at acceptable levels of loss that might have us looking at the use of pesticides in a different way that we don't kill everything in a field, neither would we won't to. >> first of all the vast majority of neo- nici tood insect sides are not used where pollinators would be apracticed. corn, canola, some wheat crops. right off the bat in terms of

where our markets are for these insect controls are not the intersection with the attractive crops. but that said there are road sides and other nearby fields, so we need to continuously remind farmers and redouble their efforts at being cater how they use these and products that our industry provides. womb of the reasons we have abundant cheap food we have the integrated pest management that we have. how do you talk to americans in a different way of how we fit into the food equation, use less of these products. >> can you reimagine agriculture in this country to a sustainable

food system. one being the majority of the crops in this country are pre-treated. so 94% of 99% of corn secedes are pre-treated with neo-nici neo-nicitinoids. we need to shift away from mono cultures that are heavily dependent on the chemical industry so we shift our system to a more sustainable and organic way of practicing farming. >> and randy, before we go, can we do without your bees? we're getting to a point where this has reached crisis levels. when do we start to notice it in the check outline? when do we start to notice it in the produce section? well, we're probably noticing it pretty quick here. sustainability is key.

basically the whole midwest is turning into a green dessert which is basically corn and soybeans and our natural habitat, the clover, the legumes are being plowed up and going away. we have to look at things in the long hall and look at what is stainabl sustainable, and we have to look at the whole environment as a whole. bees are an indicator species. we're close to the tipping point right now, and it's really demoralizing if you lose over half of your outfit. do you want to reinvest in that operation again just to see it collapse next year? >> i have to cut you off there. thank you for joining us. thanks to our guest guests in washington. that brings us to the end of "inside story." in washington, i'm ray suarez.

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