Twenty-seven U.S. states have been affected, reporting losses of up to 90 per cent, and the ailment seems to be moving north, Clay said.

New Brunswick has lost about 85 per cent of its bee colonies. Ontario beekeepers have lost about one-third, and Quebec 40 per cent so far.

And nobody is sure why.

Christian Macle stands amid a cloud of bees and carefully lifts the lid off one of his hives.

Lower down on the hive, honeybees heavy with bright yellow pollen from the surrounding orchard stagger in. Macle pulls out the hanging honeycombs one by one.

"This is the queen," he says, pointing out the boss as she trudges across a swarming mass hard at work.

Tucked in the rolling hills of farm country north of Montreal, Macle's Intermiel Inc. is making out better this year than many other apiaries.

A massive die-off of bees is underway in the United States. It's turned up in Europe and may have already landed in Canada.

The ailment, dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder, is so far a mystery.

"We don't know what's wrong," said Heather Clay, national co-ordinator for the Canadian Honey Council.

Twenty-seven U.S. states have been affected, reporting losses of up to 90 per cent, and the ailment seems to be moving north, Clay said.

New Brunswick has lost about 85 per cent of its bee colonies. Ontario beekeepers have lost about one-third, and Quebec 40 per cent so far.

And nobody is sure why.

Large-scale die-offs have occurred before. Most recently, the arrival of the Varroa mite in Canada in 1989 had devastating effects. Just last year Macle lost 80 per cent of his colonies to Varroa.

But in previous cases bees were found dead in their hives, the culprit identifiable. With Colony Collapse Disorder, they're just not found at all.

"It's a very mysterious disease," says Dr. Maria Perrone, senior staff veterinarian at the animal health division of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency in Ottawa. "Nobody knows the cause of it yet.

"It's characterized by the bees just disappearing from the hive.... There's no evidence of any adult bees anywhere around the hive and nobody knows what happened to them."

Perrone said the situation is being monitored but there is no conclusive evidence that the disease has spread north.

"All of the provinces are aware of the problem in the United States," Perrone says.

"There have been some heavy losses in some areas of Canada but they haven't been attributed to CCD because there are a lot of other possible causes for why these bees would die."

Some blame pesticide or a new parasite, others climate change. There is even one theory that cellphone radiation is responsible.

Macle believes pesticides are to blame but he remains hopeful.

"I don't want to be apocalyptic," he says. "We still hope to bring the situation under control."

An emergency meeting is planned next month of "pretty much anyone who's involved" in the industry.

First, they want to figure out what is killing the bees and to stop it. Failing that, they need a strategy for the fallout, which could be swift and severe.

"One-third of every mouthful of food people eat is bee-pollinated," Clay said.

The term "busy as a bee" is not for naught.

Blueberries, apples, canola, wheat, squash, cucumber and broccoli. The list of foods reliant on those busy little bees goes on and on.

The Canadian honey industry alone is worth $200 million. In Canada, bees are responsible for pollinating an estimated $1 billion in agricultural produce, while it's an estimated $14 billion in the United States, Canada's largest agricultural trading partner.

There are 8,000 beekeepers across Canada with about 600,000 colonies and without them the average Canadian dinner plate would look a lot different. At the very least, the cost of food would increase.

Quebec beekeeper Jean-Francois Doyon says the effect could be devastating.

It's not just a few dead bees in a colony, he says. The whole colony dies off, and it can happen in just a week.

"It's a very serious problem," says Doyon, who has 2,000 beehives that he rents out to pollinate fruit crops throughout the province. About 500 of his have died off.

He's appealed for an organized effort to stop the ailment at the border or, at least, to help apiaries hit with CCD.

"For this year, I think it's too late."