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| James Lawson, Rhode Island’s state apiary inspector, routinely checks honeybee hives, such as this one at Rhode Island College in Providence, for mites. (Frank Carini/ecoRI News) |
A number of factors, many manmade, have conspired to reduce the
population of honeybees and other pollinators
By
FRANK CARINI/ecoRI News staff
Vaguely
understood colony collapse disorder gets all the headlines, but here in
southern New England, where commercial bees aren’t trucked in to pollinate
acres and acres of almonds and apples, the biggest threat to the region’s
honeybee population are a pair of tiny pests.
Varroa
mites and tracheal mites, imported accidentally from Asia in the 1980s, attack
honeybees in all stages of life, from larvae to adulthood, according to Rhode
Island’s state apiary inspector.
“They
feed on the blood of the bees,” said James Lawson, speaking about varroa mites,
the most harmful pest to honeybees. These external parasites are just big
enough to be seen with the naked eye, and look like mini-horseshoe crabs
without the tail, he said.
Microscopic
tracheal mites clog the breathing tubes of adult bees, blocking oxygen flow and
eventually suffocating them. Crawling bees outside of a hive unable to fly are
likely suffering from acarine disease.
Ed
Lafferty, president of the R.I. Beekeepers Association, said these pests, most
notably the varroa mites, are killing feral colonies. “In the 1960s and ‘70s we
had a good population of bees in the wild,” he said. “You can still find them
but they won’t persist. They have no staying power. The mites are wiping them
out.”
Honeybees
didn’t even exist in America until early European settlers introduced them.
Native Americans, Lafferty said, called them the “white man’s fly.”
However,
of the thousands of species worldwide, honeybees are hardly the only bees that
provide pollination services free of charge — they just happen to be the most
prolific because they exist in large colonies and can be easily managed.
Locally,
for example, bumblebees, sweat bees and mason bees are just as capable, but do
much of their work as solitary pollinators. In fact, bumblebees are such
excellent pollinators that they are typically the bee of choice for pollinating
greenhouses.
But,
like the honeybee, the numbers of these pollinators are in decline, according
to Mencucci.
“Native
pollinators just aren’t around as much anymore,” the Rhode
Island Bee School instructor said. “Their habitat is slowly being
destroyed by parking lots and development, and from the mowing and plowing of
fields.”
Natural
pollinators, such as bees, birds, butterflies, beetles, bats and even the
common housefly, are responsible for nearly a third of the food we eat.
Pollinators transfer pollen and seeds from one flower to another, fertilizing
the plant so it can grow and produce, say, watermelons or pumpkins. Without our
winged friends, most notably honeybees, to spread seeds, many plants and some
100 key food crops would die off.
This
essential relationship between people and pollinators makes the decline in
their numbers, particularly those of honeybees, concerning. In the United
States alone, more than 25 percent of the managed honeybee population has
disappeared since 1990, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council
(NRDC).
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| A healthy honeybee hive houses 40,000 to 50,000 bees, according to Rhode Island’s state apiary inspector. (Frank Carini/ecoRI News) |
Empty calories
The
world’s top pollinator is under attack on all fronts. Besides dealing with
life-sucking parasites and the nasty pesticides specifically manufactured to
kill them, many commercial honeybees spend the winter dining on high-fructose
corn syrup — not on their own nutrient-rich honey.
Commercial
beekeeping practices involve harvesting honey both in the fall and spring,
which requires beekeepers to substitute sugary syrup for honey, the bee’s
natural food source. It’s a practice that began in the 1970s.
If
the cheap, government-subsidized corn syrup that fills soda cans and is the staple
of processed junk food is good enough for humans, we may as well feed it to
bees. But it’s not healthy for either of us.
Backyard
beekeeper Chris Combs, founder of the organization Giving
Bees A Chance!, said it doesn’t make sense to introduce an inferior
substance to the hive. He describes this sugary corn syrup as the “bee
equivalent to McDonald’s.”
“Bees
thrive on their own high-quality, self-produced food, and having access to
honey during the winter increases the well-being of the hive,” said Combs, who
has been managing hives for the past eight years. “Bees live off pollen and
honey, and a good, strong hive is resilient and can fight off disease. I take
what I need. It’s their honey, not mine.”
The
Blackstone, Mass., resident has six hives — one at his home, one at a friend’s
house in Little Compton and four at Blackbird Farm in Smithfield. He harvests
surplus honey available in the spring — about 100 pounds from each hive.
Combs’
concerns about fast food for bees is shared by some researchers. A team of
entomologists from the University of Illinois has found a possible link between the practice of
feeding commercial honeybees high-fructose corn syrup and the collapse of
honeybee colonies.
The
researchers haven’t suggested that this processed corn syrup is itself toxic to
bees. They say their findings indicate that by eating this substitute instead
of honey, bees aren’t being exposed to nutrients that help them fight off
toxins, such as those found in pesticides.
Brain damage
Bayer,
Syngenta and Monsanto make millions annually from the sale of neonicotinoids —
pesticides that research has claimed are killing bees. (EcoWatch)When we’re not
force-feeding the insects that pollinate a significant portion of the crops
that feed us with empty calories, we’re spraying a pesticide that could be
playing a major role in their declining health. Researchers have found that the
widely used pesticide class called neonicotinoids act as a neurotoxin to bees
and other insects.
This
class of pesticide’s primary chemical can act like a nerve agent, compromising
a bee’s ability to feed and make its way back to the hive. A French study has
claimed that neonicotinoids can fog honeybee brains and alter behavior. A
British study on bumblebees has reported that neonicotinoids keep the bees from
supplying their hives with enough food for queen production.
Neonicotinoids,
the most widely used insecticides in the world today, were introduced in the
1990s as a replacement for more damaging chemicals. While neonicotinoids don’t
accumulate in human or animal tissue in the way that DDT once did, these modern
pesticides are more lethal, about 6,000 times as toxic compared to the older
spray, according to the International
Union for Conservation of Nature.
And
unlike traditional pesticides that are typically applied to the surface of
plants, neonicotinoids are systemic — meaning they are absorbed and then spread
throughout the entire plant, according to the Center for Food Safety (CFS). One way
honeybees and other pollinators are exposed to these pesticides is through what
they feed on — pollen and nectar.
Last
June, in Oregon, after a landscaping company sprayed linden trees in a Target
parking lot with a neonicotinoid to control aphids, some 50,000 bees died,
according to the Oregon Department of Agriculture. Oregon has since suspended
the use of two neonics linked to massive bee losses, and Eugene, Ore., has
become the first U.S. city to ban the use of neonics on city property.
In
Iowa, nearly 70 percent of the state’s bees were too sick — poisoned by toxic
agricultural pesticides, according to the Sierra Club — to survive this past
winter. Iowa beekeepers have called it one of the worst winters they have seen
for honeybees.
Last
December, the European Union began its two-year moratorium on three of the
worst neonicotinoid pesticides to protect bees and other pollinators.
From
blueberries to cucumbers, bees help produce more than 30 percent of the world’s
food. In fact, according to Michigan State University researchers, bees are
responsible for one out of every three bites of food we eat. The economic value
of pollination services by bees is $365 billion annually and affects 50 percent
to 80 percent of the world’s food supply, according to the researchers.
The
Sierra Club calls the worldwide decline of honeybees a “catastrophe.” The
organization has noted that U.S. beekeepers lost an average of 45 percent of
their colonies between the end of 2012 and the end of 2013, and that, thanks in
part to neonicotinoids, hives are producing 85 percent fewer queens.
In
fact, concern about the decline of bee populations during the past decade, and
its related impact on businesses and local economies, has grabbed the attention
of the Obama administration. Late last month the president created a task force
to study the problem.
In
the memorandum announcing the Pollinator
Health Task Force, Obama called on the participating scientists to develop a
strategy within 180 day for addressing the decline of pollinators. The
memorandum also specifically calls on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
to research the role neonicotinoids are playing.
More
than a year before Obama's June 24 announcement, in March 2013, CFS and a
coalition of four beekeepers and five environmental and consumer groups filed a lawsuit against the EPA for its
failure to protect pollinators from dangerous pesticides. The lawsuit is
seeking the suspension of the neonicotinoids that have repeatedly been
identified as highly toxic to honeybees.
Those
concerned about the future of the world’s pollinators point to the rise of
large-scale monoculture crops that decrease agricultural biodiversity and to
the heavy use of pesticides.
“We’re
still learning the problem of colony collapse disorder,” said Lawson, Rhode
Island’s apiary inspector. “It’s a complex issue. There are many factors we
just don’t understand yet. You can deal with mites by being vigilant, but I’m
concerned for commercial bees.”
What triggers a colony collapse?
U.S.
beekeepers first noticed the problem in 2006: seemingly healthy bees were
abandoning their hives en masse. The phenomenon was quickly dubbed colony
collapse disorder. In the past eight years, nearly a third of all honeybee
colonies in the United States have vanished, and the number of hives is at its
lowest point in five decades, according to the NRDC.
Besides
parasites, pathogens and the overuse of pesticides, there are a few other
factors to consider when discussing what brought about colony collapse
disorder, according to scientists and many beekeepers:
•
A warming climate is causing flowers to bloom earlier or later than usual. When
pollinators come out of hibernation, some of the flowers that provide the food
they need have already bloomed.
•
Habitat, such as grasslands, farmlands and shrublands, loss to development,
growing crops without leaving habitat for native wildlife, and planting gardens
with flowers that aren’t friendly to pollinators.
None
of this bodes well for the complex organism that is a honeybee. If the lives of
a hive’s honeybees are reduced by even just a few days, the colony won’t thrive
or reach its potential. It will collapse.
Since
1947, the number of managed honeybee colonies in the United States has declined
from 6 million to 2.5 million, according to a White House fact sheet. Given the heavy dependence of
certain crops on commercial pollination, reduced honeybee populations pose a
real threat to domestic agriculture, according to the Obama administration.
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| In North America, honeybees pollinate nearly 95 kinds of fruits such as almonds, avocados, cranberries and apples. And to do so, colonies are trucked from one orchard to another. (Pesticide Action Network North America) |
For rent
Honeybees
are the most economically valuable pollinator in the world, and many high-value
crops such as broccoli and almonds are entirely reliant upon pollination
services by commercial beekeepers.
Commercial
pollination is a big business, and it involves putting several million honeybees
on a truck and criss-crossing the United States. It’s been estimated that the
number of honeybee colonies rented annually for almond pollination ranges
between 1.3 million and 1.5 million. The number of colonies rented annually for
apple crop pollination is estimated to be more than 275,000.
It
costs about $200 to rent a hive, according to Lafferty.
While
this industry provides a vital service and helps keep America fed, there are
some, such as Combs and Lafferty, who believe trucking bees around the country
is a contributing factor to colony collapse disorder. Combs said the practice
puts stress on a colony. Lafferty noted that the mixing of all these touring
colonies has greater potential to spread parasites and disease.
“The
business of beekeeping creates real problems. The bees aren’t properly cared
for,” Combs said. “Colonies want to stay put, not shipped around the country.
They’re feeding on almond pollen in California for a month, then it’s oranges
in Florida and then blueberries in Maine. A healthy bee colony could live
forever in a diversified habitat. But it’s cheaper and easier to truck bees in
then it is to take care of them.”
To
better protect the U.S. bee population, the NRDC says farmers must be rewarded
for practices that help wild bee populations thrive, such as leaving habitat
for bees in their surrounding fields, alternating crops so bees have food
year-round and not using harmful pesticides. Assistance also should be provided
to farmers who plan to support a wider variety of pollinators beyond just bees.
“Bees
are hardy and will adapt — they’ve been surviving longer than we have — but we
must do a better job caring for them by minimizing threats,” Combs said.
“Honeybee hives are excellent indicators of what is good and bad in our
environment.”