It's been 16 months since Dave Hackenberg of Dade City became the first beekeeper in the country to say publicly that something was terribly wrong with his insects.

In the intervening time following the identification of the malady now known as Colony Collapse Disorder, things haven't gotten any better for the nation's bees, which pollinate about one-third of U.S. crops — some $15 billion worth.

In fact, things have gotten much worse. Their numbers are continuing to dwindle from the disorder.

A survey of 22 apiarists from 10 states who took their bees to California to help get out the almond crop estimates about 37 percent of the 230,500 colonies managed by those beekeepers have been lost, said Jeff Pettis, a research entomologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's bee research lab in Beltsville, Md.

A year ago, a similar survey put bee losses at just 30 percent.

"There is a significant crisis going on here," Dave Mendes, a beekeeper based in Fort Myers and Dartmouth, Mass., said last week from California.

Hackenberg — who also keeps bees in Lewisburg, Pa., and was one of 30 Florida beekeepers to cart their critters to California — said Colony Collapse Disorder hit some of his compatriots hard.

"It was like a train wreck," he said. "There were a lot of beekeepers who had severe losses, people that had never seen this happen before."

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