Putting a bee in legislators' bonnets.

• Position: On First Reading

Trucks carrying 400 to 500 hives of honeybees travel up Interstate 95 from Florida and other southern states to Maine each year to help the blueberry crop.

These colonies are often moved from state to state, making goldenrod honey in New York state and pollinating orange blossoms in Florida, blueberries and wild raspberries in Maine, cranberries on Cape Cod and cucumbers in Michigan.

Why are these bees impersonating door-to-door traveling salesmen?

Because officials in several states, including Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin, have reported a decline in their honeybee populations.

Since a third of all our fruits and vegetables would not exist without these busy insects to fertilize the plants, state governments and nonprofit associations are trying to lend a hand.

Bees are attacked on several fronts--urban sprawl that destroys nesting and feeding grounds, natural disasters, drought, cold weather and pesticides. But the greatest damage has been wrought by varroa and tracheal mites, foreign parasites that attack native bees.

Relaxing of honeybee import laws in the 1980s allowed the mites to hitchhike into the country from Europe (tracheal) and Thailand (varroa) in 1986 and reach the 48 contiguous states. The parasites destroyed about 60 percent of the nation's bees in 1996.

New York has passed legislation directing the commissioner of agriculture to do something about bee parasites. "New York state's No. 1 industry is agriculture. The importance of a healthy bee population to pollinate our plants cannot be overstated. The...