Every morning Tom McCormack strides into a swarm of bees, armed with little more than a can of smoke.
Mr. McCormack, 62, of Aliquippa, has been a beekeeper since 1977. He owns and manages McCormack Apiaries with his wife, Linda; he works his hives daily, rain or shine.
Previously an aircraft mechanic, he retired in 2000, a decision that has enabled him to nurture two passions. The first, of course, is bees. The second is more unusual: Mr. McCormack runs a foundation that supplies breast prostheses to women who have undergone mastectomies in Panama, where he now spends five months of the year.
Despite his dedication to his bees, his honey yields are dwindling. At their peak, his hives produced 31,000 pounds of honey in a year. This year he expects 7,000 to 10,000 pounds.
Even worse, nearly all of the $5,000 worth of bees he bought two years ago have died.
Mr. McCormack is not the only beekeeper to experience such a shock. Bees, and beekeepers, are in trouble nationwide. Pennsylvania lost 47 percent of its bee colonies from September 2006 to March 2007 and another 26 percent from September 2007 to March.
"If that was cows or chickens you'd have the National Guard in here," said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, acting apiarist for the state of Pennsylvania. "Those are unsustainably high losses."
Bees have been in decline since the 1980s, when parasitic mites spread to the United States, said Mr. vanEngelsdorp. Viruses and erratic weather also have taken a toll.
Now, a new dilemma has arisen: Entire colonies are vanishing without a trace, a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder. Afflicted bees leave hives full of honey and eggs and never return. Entomologists have researched a number of causes, from pesticides to viruses, but, so far, no single explanation has been found.
David Hackenberg, a beekeeper based in Lewisburg, Union County, is credited with the earliest discovery of colony collapse. In 2006, when he checked on 400 colonies he had left for just three weeks, he found empty box after empty box.
"There were probably only 30 left that had bees in them," said Mr. Hackenberg. "I crawled around on my hands and knees looking for bees."
If losses continue at current rates, Mr. vanEngelsdorp worries migratory beekeepers who offer traveling pollination services will have to close shop. Pollination was a $78 million business in Pennsylvania last year, and agriculture hangs heavily on the industry -- one-third of the human diet is composed of plants pollinated by insects. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates 80 percent of insect crop pollination in the United States is provided by honeybees.
Mr. vanEngelsdorp urged those who wish to help bees to plant a garden, reduce insecticide use and buy honey from local producers like Mr. McCormack.
Mr. McCormack has not yet noticed anything akin to colony collapse in his bees. His biggest fights are against mites and viruses, and while he uses a miticide, the mites quickly develop a resistance to it, he said. Because his hives rest on two flatbed trailers at the edge of an open field, he also worries about bears.
His concern belies a deep affection for his bees; his wife bears the pet name "Queen Bee," and his home is decked in honeybee paraphernalia. His heart, though, lies in Panama, where he used to teach beekeeping and now teaches English in the city of David.
It was in David that he met a woman who had had a mastectomy and habitually walked with her arm covering her chest. He soon founded the Thomas L. & Linda J. McCormack Foundation, which, in addition to breast prostheses, donates medical equipment to public hospitals, clothing to the needy and wigs to women who have undergone chemotherapy.
"Almost every woman in Panama knows a woman who has had breast cancer," said Mr. McCormack. While honey is his livelihood, the foundation has become a large part of his life.
Without his honey income, Mr. McCormack would not have been able to spend $5,000 out of pocket last year to ship a container with 175 walkers, 175 pairs of crutches, 84 boxes of clothing, 53 wheelchairs and five anesthesia machines to Panama. He expects a similar shipment to cost $8,000 this year.
"Plata para mi," he said recently as he examined a frame of comb filled with honey, slipping into a Spanish phrase that translates as "money for me" but means money for the foundation.
In past years, Mr. McCormack has come across an increasing number of dead hives, but he has not lost any sleep over colony collapse disorder.
"You worry about what you can help," he said.
"All we can do is try to start over in the spring."
After 31 years, he is not about to give up.
First Published: June 30, 2008, 8:00 a.m.
