Where are all the bees?

Bees are incredible. They inhabit every continent except Antarctica. They are the original communists, living in large colonies where each bee has a specific task, which he performs to the benefit of the community at large. Bees communicate through dance. Bees perfected the technology used in helicopters before humans existed. Bees are inherently and aesthetically valuable simply for their bee-ness. More importantly, humans cannot live without bees: bees are pollinators.

"There's a widely stated phrase in agriculture that you can thank a pollinator for one out of three bites of food you eat," notes Dr. Claire Kremen, an assistant professor at University of California, Berkeley's Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management. She is one author of a study estimating the value of pollination by bees in the U.S. Of 115 crops studied, 87 (75.6%) depend to some degree upon animal pollination. Bees are also important pollinators in the wild, and pollinate (and therefore propagate) over 200,000 plant species worldwide. (Testimony before congress on the value of bees here.)

This is why a new and alarming trend has many scientists and agriculturalists on edge: since 1971 approximately half the honeybee colonies in the U.S. have vanished. In Europe, the trend continues. The BBC reports that of the 19 bee species in the UK, three are already extinct and a further nine are on the critically endangered list. An article in the Telegraph reads, “In Spain, hundreds of thousands of colonies have been lost and beekeepers in northern Croatia estimated that five million bees had died in just 48 hours this week. In Poland, the Swietokrzyskie beekeeper association has estimated that up to 40 per cent of bees were wiped out last year. Greece, Switzerland, Italy and Portugal have also reported heavy losses.” The decline in bees is so drastic that scientists have created a new term, colony collapse disorder, to describe the phenomenon.

Unfortunately, the honeybee crisis worldwide is not getting the press as it deserves, considering the severe implications it has for our country and the world in terms of food security. Albert Einstein speculated that if bees were to disappear, man would follow only a few years later. In a world where food shortages are already responsible for loss of life, and where climate change and habitat loss already threaten global biodiversity, we cannot afford to lose our bees.

Honeybees and other pollinating insects offer a free and vital service to humanity. In the U.S., many agricultural communities are already feeling the pressure. Some farmers rent hives from beekeepers for a period of a week or two, to pollinate their crops, as their native bee populations have died out. One study I read estimated that in China it costs 8 times as much for humans to manually pollinate crops than to maintain beehives on farms. That is not surprising when you consider that bees from one hive can visit a million flowers within a 154 square- mile area in just one day. Furthermore, 90% of flowering plants (that’s domestic AND wild) worldwide depend on bees for pollination.

So what is responsible for the missing bees? The jury is still out, and scientists speculate that it is not just one cause but a combination of the following:

1. Disease- In several studies of American bees, several diseased organisms were discovered, but no one disease was identified as responsible.
2. Habitat loss- Before the 1970’s, most food was grown on smaller, family-farms. In small farms, farmers often left borders of trees around their fields or property lines, providing habitat for bees (and preventing erosion). Once agriculture became mechanized, smaller farms were bought up, and large factory-farms were created. As small farms were bought up, these remaining wild areas were ploughed under, and the bees had nowhere else to go.
3. Pesticide use- Widespread pesticide use can be blamed for the decline of bees as well as several other insects, such as lightning bugs and butterflies. The aforementioned article in the Telegraph reports that in France in 2004, the government banned the pesticide Fipronil after beekeepers in the south-west blamed it for huge losses of hives. On passion-fruit plantations in Brazil, pollinating must be done by hand because pesticide use has completely destroyed the bee population.
   
   So, what can you do to help save the bees? You could write to the big factory farm companies, but changing your habits of consumption is probably the most effective action. An easy change to make in your daily life is to buy more organic produce. Organic food is grown without pesticides, and therefore does not pollute the earth and harm bees. You can also buy produce from local co-ops or at farmers markets. These small farmers use less aggressive farming practices, and leave bee habitat intact, or even keep their own hives. Most importantly, you can help spread the word! Our biggest weapon in saving the environment is knowledge!