A Penn State professor testified before Congress yesterday about the increasing severity of an enormous honeybee die-off that could lead to less fresh fruit for local consumers.

In an unexplainable trend, large commercial migratory beekeepers have reported losses of 50 to 90 percent of their colonies, and non-migratory beekeepers have reported losses as well, according to the Web site for the Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium, maarec.cas.psu.edu.

Since pollination by the bees is needed to create fruits and vegetables, a lack of bees -- in a worst-case scenario -- could mean empty space on grocery store shelves, entomology Senior Extension Associate Maryann T. Frazier said.

In November, the first example of what experts are now calling "Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)" was reported by a Pennsylvania beekeeper wintering in Florida.

Worker bees are "disappearing," depleting colonies that were once 15,000-strong, entomology Professor Nancy Ostiguy said. While the bodies of both the dead and surviving bees at these colonies are being examined, she said researchers simply cannot account for many of the lost bees. Additionally, other colonies and pests that would normally ransack the resources of these abandoned colonies are mysteriously staying away.

"It's very bizarre," Ostiguy said.

Entomology Professor Diana Cox-Foster trekked to Washington, D.C., yesterday in an attempt to raise awareness about CCD and ask for emergency funding. She is part of a group of Penn State professors that has joined forces with experts at the University of Montana, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Pennsylvania and Florida departments of agriculture.

Four months since the group's inception, it has a lot of leads and very few answers.

"We basically have many of the leading experts on bees and bee biology involved, but we do not know why the bees are dying yet," Cox-Foster said.

Frazier said a test of the disorder's effect on in-state beekeepers could come as early as next month. Pennsylvania, one of the biggest apple producers in the eastern U.S., has an apple pollination season that typically runs from the last week of April to the first week of May, she said.

"We'll be waiting to see if we have enough bees," Frazier said.

While there may be enough bees to create a sufficient supply, consumers should also be concerned about the potential for a lot of bad apples. Fruits like apples require several pollinations to become fully formed, meaning an insufficient amount of pollination results in deformed fruit, Cox-Foster said.

Frazier said researchers are examining whether a known or unknown pathogen is causing the problem, or if the bees are suffering from a lack of nutrition -- possibly attributable to the effects of global warming on their traditional nectar sources.

Also, Frazier said they are also looking into the possibility that the bees may be succumbing to the stress they face over time.

Because of their necessity in plant growth, the honeybees are transported to farms around the country in accordance with the pollination seasons of different crops. This year, beekeepers are scrambling to fill each other's orders, she said.

Asked for a hunch as to what might be at the root of the problem, Frazier said a host of factors were still on the table, and there is probably more than one culprit.

"It's most likely a combination of things; it's hard for us to believe it's one sole cause," she said.