Every spring, beekeeper Tony Bachelder loads up a truck with dozens of his honeybee hives and heads to Massachusetts to pollinate apple orchards.

He doesn’t like the drive.

“That’s when I become a truck driver instead of a beekeeper,” said the Buckfield man, who’s been keeping bees since 1975.

It’s also the reason he’s the lone Maine commercial beekeeper who doesn’t winter his bees in the South, preferring instead to wrap his 700 hives with tar paper to help the bees stay warm through the winter.

Saturday, he and his son, Tom, were unwrapping 30 hives off Summer Street in Auburn. If the warm weather holds, it’ll take about a week to unwrap them all. But it’s a chore he prefers over moving the bees out of state to a warmer climate.

It’s also a choice that helps his bees stay healthy as waves of honeybees are dying across the country due to a mysterious condition called Colony Collapse Disorder. The resulting shortage of bees has spiked the cost of renting a hive from $60 to $90.

The condition, in which 90 percent of a bee colony dies off, has affected 26 states. With CCD, all the worker bees die off, leaving just the queen and few drones. No dead bees are found near the hives and there are no clues as to what causes the disappearance.

The good news is no cases of CCD have been identified in Maine, according to Tony Jadczak, the state bee inspector. The bad news is, if unchecked, CCD could threaten the $14 billion in U.S. farm production that relies on bees to pollinate crops, according to U.S. Sen. Susan Collins. On Wednesday, she and two other senators asked the federal Department of Agriculture to identify its strategy for combating CCD.

“CCD has the possibility of damaging many farms in Maine and throughout the nation,” she wrote in a bipartisan letter. “USDA needs to make this problem a priority.”

The essence of the problem is that no one has been able to identify exactly what CCD is or what causes it. Jadczak said the media frenzy surrounding the issue only feeds speculation about CCD, rather than prompting scientific research for answers.

“Yesterday, the British papers were blaming cell phones for it; a couple of days ago the Germans were blaming (genetically modified) corn,” Jadczak said. He said CCD is likely a new manifestation of mites that have periodically infested honey bee colonies for the past two decades. In Maine, they were responsible for decreasing the number of managed bee colonies from 4.5 million in the mid-1980s to 2.3 million now.

Bachelder agrees with Jadczak’s assessment. And he’s no stranger to mites.

Every fall, Bachelder smokes his hives with an all-natural menthol crystal that kills tracheal mites, a varmint that will kill a colony if untreated. He’s already had several hives inspected this spring to make sure they’re healthy.

“I was concerned because I lost four hives in one beeyard,” he said. “They all tested negative (for tracheal mites) except one.”

He also tries to prevent his bees from fraternizing with untreated bees so they’ll stay healthy. It’s another reason he prefers to keep his bees close to home and not join the multi-state bee circuit that lures other beekeepers.

Several Maine beekeepers winter their hives in the South and follow the crop pollination cycle that starts with almonds in California, then citrus orchards in Florida, and up the East Coast for apples and cherries.

In California, where almond growers rely on about one million hives in February to pollinate their crops, the price of a hive rental has gone from about $60 per hive to $150.

In Maine, the crop that relies the most on honey bees is blueberries. Every year between 50,000 and 60,000 hives are brought in from out of state to augment the 8,000 native hives needed to pollinate the fields. Blueberries are a more difficult crop to pollinate because each blossom must be visited six times by a bee versus one time for apple blossoms.

“Bees are essential for pollinating blueberries,” said Dave Yarborough, a professor of horticulture and a blueberry specialist with the University of Maine Extension Service. “Growers are going to invest in them, whatever the cost.”

He expects the price will be around $90 per hive this year, although he’s heard some out-of-state beekeepers are offering them at $115.

The increase in hive rentals won’t have a significant bearing on the price the consumer pays at the market, Yarborough said. That’s because blueberries are enjoying a huge surge in popularity, due to their antioxidant qualities. Last year, berries rose from 60 cents per pound to $1, averaging around 80 cents per pound.

What will set blueberry prices this year will be supply.

“If blueberries are scarce, the price will go up,” he said. “If the price goes down, it’s because the market is flooded. It’s a classic supply-and-demand situation.”

The hive rental increases aren’t considered significant for apple growers, either.

About a month ago, Pete Wallingford began to hear rumblings about a shortage of honey bees. He and other members of the executive board of Maine’s Pomological Society were worried.

“All of us went home and called our beekeepers to make sure we had bees,” said Wallingford, who grows apples on 45 acres in Auburn. “We were concerned enough to do that.”

Thankfully, his beekeeper has 900 healthy hives in Poland. There should be no problem getting the 12 to 16 hives Wallingford needs for his orchard when his trees blossom in mid May. But he can expect to pay more for the rentals.

“It’ll probably be a 30 to 50 percent increase from last year,” he said.

Compared to other escalating production costs such as fuel, fertilizer and chemicals, it’s barely a blip.

“It will be a factor, but overall, it’s a minute cost,” Wallingford said. “My chemical bill will likely go from $25,000 to $35,000 … now that’s the kind of increase we have to pass on.”