Is a Mike Dardis and Karin Johnson report

Greenpeace has warned that the mortality of bees during the winter has gone from 10 percent to an average of 20 percent in Europe due to the use of certain pesticides,

According to Virginia Tech Entomologist Richard Fell, the average annual winter loss from 2001 through 2012 has been more than 30 percent in the state. Virus, mites and certain pesticides could be to blame for the drastically dropping bee population. According to Fred Hollen of the Shenandoah Valley Beekeepers Association, this isn’t something new — it’s been going on since the mid-1980s.

Losses in the 40 to 50 percent range would have been the good news this year for Steve Ellis, a honey producer and commercial pollinator from Barrett. Ellis has become a public spokesman for honeybee health and a vocal critic of EPA's reluctance to address insecticide exposures he believes are driving CCD — a threat not only to his livelihood, he points out, but also to a wide range of food crops

Information provided by the National Pollinator Defense Fund

This is a Dan Rather report

Article written by Kim Flottum

Honeybee deaths are on the rise across the world, and researchers are working to find the cause. With as many as 40 or 50 percent of commercial U.S. bee hives lost to colony collapse disorder, scientists are eyeing a relatively new class of pesticides as a likely culprit. Neonicotinoids, which are chemically similar to nicotine, have already been shown to interfere with bees' capacity to learn scents, hampering their efforts to collect food.

A mysterious malady that has been killing honeybees en masse for several years appears to have expanded drastically in the last year, commercial beekeepers say, wiping out 40 percent or even 50 percent of the hives needed to pollinate many of the nation’s fruits and vegetables

An Oregon beekeeper says he has found success using a combination of natural ingredients to maintain his bees' health. Jeff LeFore, 44, is part of LeFore's Farm-Fresh Honey, with locations in Milton-Freewater, Ore., Big Timber, Mont., Rappelje, Mont., and Lodgegrass, Mont. LeFore developed a combination of 14 all-natural ingredients that he uses to keep his hives going. "It's not extremely scientific, but all I know is what we developed works," he said.