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Steve Corniffe collects honey produced by bees in Homestead, Fla. Scientists, honey bee owners and now the big pesticide makers attempting to discern what is causing bees to succumb to the colony collapse disorder.

Monsanto is hosting a “Bee Summit.” Bayer AG is breaking ground on a “Bee  Care Center.” And Sygenta AG is funding grants for research into the  accelerating demise of honeybees in the United States, where the insects  pollinate fruits and vegetables that make up roughly a quarter of the American  diet.

The agrichemical companies are taking these initiatives at a time when their  best-selling pesticides are under fire from environmental and food activists who  say the chemicals are killing off millions of bees. The companies say their  pesticides are not the problem, but critics say science shows the opposite.

Die-offs of bee populations have accelerated over the last few years to a  rate the U.S. government calls unsustainable. Honeybees pollinate plants that  produce roughly 25 percent of the foods Americans consume, including apples,  almonds, watermelons and beans, according to government reports.

Scientists, consumer groups, beekeepers and others blame the devastating rate  of bee deaths on the growing use of pesticides sold by agrichemical companies to  boost yields of staple crops such as corn. Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer and other  agrichemical companies say other factors such as mites are killing the bees.

“This is a difficult, high stakes battle,” said Peter Jenkins, a lawyer with  the Center for Food Safety, which sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency  (EPA) in March on behalf of a group of U.S. beekeepers and environmental and  consumer groups over what they say is a lack of sound regulation of the  pesticides in question.

“They may have a lot of money. But… we’re going to win,” Jenkins said.

The uproar worries officials at Bayer and Syngenta, who make the pesticides,  as well as Monsanto, DuPont and other companies who used them as coatings for  the seed they sell.

“Everybody is concerned by it,” said Monsanto Chief Technology Officer Robert  Fraley in an interview.

Monsanto plans to host a summit in June for experts from around the country  to analyze the issue and discuss potential solutions. Bayer is breaking ground  on a facility in North Carolina to study bee health.

The European Union said this month it would ban the class of pesticides known  as neonicotinoids, or “neonics,” used for corn and other crops as well as on  home lawns and gardens. Similar constraints in the United States could cost  manufacturers millions of dollars in sales.

“We are concerned… that the science sometimes gets trumped by the  politics,” said Dave Fischer, an ecotoxicologist at Bayer CropScience who is  meeting with bee keepers and studying the bee deaths. He said critics “are  searching for a culprit.”

The companies point to a vicious insect mite as one of many factors harming  the bees.

Corn seed treatments But environmental scientists say evidence increasingly points to pesticides  coating corn seeds as the problem, not mites. In recent years, U.S. corn seed  suppliers have offered more corn seed pre-treated with types of neonic  insecticides so that as the plant grows it repels harmful pests.

A study published last year by scientists at Purdue University in Indiana  found evidence that planting the coated corn generates dust that contains very  high levels of the neonics that can move beyond the fields where the seeds are  planted. The researchers said they found the poison in the soil as well and in  pollen collected by bees as food. The neonics were present on dead bees  collected for study