A mystery phenomenon killing bees could wreak havoc on Italian farming and human health, Italy's leading farmers' union warned Monday.
Coldiretti said hundreds of thousands of beehives now lay empty across northern Italy after bees dropped dead.
It said the "massacre" threatened Italy's entire population of 50 billion bees and one million hives - with "unimaginable" effects on human health.
The epidemic has hit countries ranging from France, Germany and Britain to Brazil, Australia, Canada and the United States, where the state of Montana has lost 75% of its hives and scientists have come up with a name for the phenomenon: Colony Collapse Disorder.
The cause of the plague has not yet been pinned down, Coldiretti said.
In California, researchers used bacterial warfare equipment to detect a virus they think worked via a parasite to fell many of the state's bees.
"Unknown bugs could be acting in combination with pesticides to make bees sick," Coldiretti said, urging the government to emulate France in banning a suspected ingredient in a fertiliser.
It also called on the government to revoke recent accords to test nine crops created with genetically modified organisms (GMOs), including new olive, tomato and grape strains.
Coldiretti admitted, however, that GMO contamination and pesticide poisoning "were not enough" to explain the bee deaths.
A recent British study has implicated cellphone transmission waves, it noted, while climate change could be playing a role.
"The worrying rise in reports of sudden bee swarms in cities because of high temperatures could be an indication of the effect of global warming".
Given the uncertainty, it called on the government to order "immediate testing of all possible risk factors".
A third of all farming produce depends on insect pollination, it pointed out - 80% of which is carried out by bees.
If bees were to disappear it would have a "drastic" effect on Italy's 25-million-euro honey industry as well as "wiping out" most fruit crops including apples, pears, peaches, apricots, cherries, plums, melons, kiwi fruit and citrus fruit.
Other, lesser-known beneficiaries of bees' work include almonds, chestnuts, zucchini, tomatoes, soya, sunflowers, garlic, carrots, cabbages and onions, Coldiretti said.
Bees are also useful in meat production, it said, because they pollinate many of the forage crops beef cows feed off.
The environmental effects of the current emergency could be "disastrous", Coldiretti said, quoting a purported warning from Albert Einstein:
"If the bee disappears off the surface of the Earth, Man would have no more than four years to live".
(This widely used quote has been called into question by many, including the Urban Legend website which says there is no trace of it in Einstein's writings.
("This looks like a classic case of a useful quote being invented and put into the mouth of a famous person for political purposes," it says.)
