Who cares about honeybees, anyway?

Guest Rant by Xris, the Flatbush Gardener

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has been making the news rounds for a few years now. It's old, if still current, news. Dire outcomes from the loss of honeybees have been proffered. For example, PBS recently introduced an online "ask the expert" feature with this:

Since the winter of 2006, millions of bees have vanished, leaving behind empty hives and a damaged ecosystem. [1]

Really? The ECOSYSTEM?! Did they not notice that honeybees aren't part of the ecosystem?

Honeybees are livestock. They are animals which we manage for our uses. We provide them with housing and maintenance. We even move them from field to field, just as we let cows into different pastures for grazing.

Perhaps, if CCD can neither be prevented nor cured, disaster would come to pass. However, the underlying cause would not be the loss of the honeybees but our dependence on them as a consequence of unsustainable agricultural practices.

The old ways of farming include hedgerows, uncultivated areas between fields. The biodiversity of these patches provide substantial habitat for native pollinators, as well as other beneficial insects. When even these rough “unproductive” patches of land are cleared, we set the stage for the patterns that have come to dominate agriculture: more herbicides, more pesticides, more machinery. All of these also damage the soil food webs that support both soil fertility and agricultural ecosystems. Although  manufactured inputs provide temporary relief, they reduce the ecological functions of the land, requiring more and greater inputs to achieve the same effect. This is the definition of addiction, and it’s a clear sign that this way of doing business is unsustainable.

Why do we need to ship and truck pollinators around? There are plenty of native pollinators to do the job, where we haven't decimated their habitats. There are 4,000 species of bees alone in North America. 226 species are known in New York City. Many of them visit my gardens in Flatbush, Brooklyn; some have even taken up residence [2]. Many native bees are ground-dwellers which need only some open ground in which to dig their nests. When every patch of ground is cultivated, plowed under or paved over, native pollinators disappear. Suddenly, we “need” honeybees for pollination.

I care about the honeybees. I like my honey and beeswax candles. I support efforts to legalize beekeeping in New York City. But not at the expense of the biodiversity that is all around us, even in the city, if only we care enough to look for it, value it, and nurture it.

Dig Deeper

The Great Pollinator Project

North American Pollinator Protection Campaign

Saving [Honey] Bees: What We Know Now [About CCD], [http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/02/saving-bees-what-we-know-now/], NY Times, 2009-09-02

Notes

[1] Ask “Silence of the Bees” Expert Dr. Diana Cox-Foster. [http://www.pbs.org/engage/blog/ask-%E2%80%9Csilence-bees%E2%80%9D-expert-dr-diana-cox-foster], PBS Blog

[2] “Cellophane Bees Return”, [http://flatbushgardener.blogspot.com/2009/05/cellophane-bees-return.html], Flatbush Gardener, 2009-05-02

Photo of Jade Bee by Xris.

Comments

[Baltidome]

Very interesting points on what appeared to be an uncontroversial issue. Thanks for providing a different take on the subject.

[Dee/reddirtramblings]

Well said Chris. I've thought about this a lot. I think local hives and native pollinators are both two good ways to go. Because I live in a rural area, I get a large variety of bees and wasps, along with the occasional honeybee.

The practice of moving the honeybees around all of the time isn't local (obviously) and not good for anyone. I'm thinking of becoming beekeeper myself for the honey and experience. Perhaps, next year.~~Dee

[Joseph Tychonievich]

Great post -- I've been surprised that the coverage of this issue has generally ignored the fact that honey bees are a non-native, even potentially invasive, species.

[Dr. Linda Chalker-Scott]

An intriguing post - but one important correction. Honeybees ARE part of the ecosystem. True, they are an introduced species, but they have become an intrinsic part of managed and native ecosystems alike. When they disappear locally, the immediate effect is a decrease in pollination success for those plants that require bee pollinators. Other pollinating species - including native bees - will increase in numbers due to the absence of their competitor (the introduced honeybees), pollination efficiency increases, and thus ecosystems adjust.

This works fine for natural systems and probably for your home gardens and landscapes. But it wreaks havoc on production agriculture, which, like it or not, relies on massive inputs of mobile pollinators for successful crop production because they are highly managed, monocultural systems. Traditional production agriculture is still the big money maker in many states, so colony collapse has a real and signficant impact on those communities. Why do you think the USDA funds - almost exclusively - research that focuses on food and fiber? They sure don't fund the type of research I do on sustainable urban landscapes!

[angelchrome]

Thank you Dr. Linda Chalker Scott for saying everything I wanted to say, only way more composed and readable (as opposed to the ramble-rant I had abrewin')

[Michelle]

Thank you for the great post, Xris!

[Dancedancekj]

Googling native/alternative pollinators showed the idea that European honeybees may not be doing the bulk of pollination anyway.

Only problem with most native pollinators is that they don't produce honey, and are solitary.

[Kandi]

Great post, There is so much wrong information floating around about CCD. Last year my granddaughter's 6th grade teacher actually told the class that cell phones were killing the bees and all the kids in the class went home and accused their parents of murdering bees.

[Jenn]

Thank you for a great photo of a bee.

Horticulture mag this month actually identifies a fly as a bee. Granted, it's one of the flies that mimics the look of a bee. But it's a fly. I get more cranky every time I get a new issue, but I hate to unsubscribe - that would pull two years of pre-order out of their system. And obviously, per their current output, that's something they can ill afford. Sigh.

[Christopher C NC]

I don't think I have ever seen a single honeybee up on this mountain. I thought that was odd. There are plenty of other bees, flies, wasps and other pollinators buzzing about, so I did not worry to much. The apples set abundant fruit with no problems. Maybe next spring I will pay attention and see who is doing it.

One of my neighbors is a retired entomology professor from Queen's College up your way Xris. He has been doing a collection specific to this place and time to be donated to NCSU. I could just ask him how many bee species he has collected so far.

[Betsylvania]

Great Pt-Honey bees are not native to new world, here New world they are primarily livestock.

[Betsylvania]

I think is hedgerows are important and wish for more small scale farming..

[Betsylvania]

Problem is, modern ag requires honeybees for adequate pollinatin. No other native comes close to the colony size required. Native bees colonies vary from a few to up tops -a couple hundred, honeybees ave 30,000 per hive

[Betsylvania]

Pollination is a very important issue to sustainable ag though and I am glad, as a naturalist Horticulturist it is being discussed, THANKS!

[Shawna Coronado]

Thanks for the great story - I had the honor of touring Chicago with the Flatbush Gardener. You're awesome! :-)

[Helen at Toronto Gardens]

I'm all for hedgerows, for all kinds of reason. The likelihood is, though, that we humans are just too numerous to rely solely on traditional agricultural methods. Finding balance is key. Thanks for your well-made points.

[Kayla]

Honey bees are non-native and we should not depend on them for pollination. Period.

[GenYgardener]

I find if frustrating that everyone is focusing on honeybees. Yes, they are vital to our agriculture, but they're aren't the only pollinators that are disappearing! Many other bees, wasps, butterflies, etc, are declining in vast numbers due to pesticide use and the decimation of their food sources and breeding habitats.

It is unfortunate that the honeybee gets the press at the expense of the other, native pollinators that are just as important to our ecosystem.

[Carolyn]

Well stated, Xris.

[Jeff in Portland]

Great discussion! The more puzzling problem is why our native bee and vespid populations are also dwindling. I think the worry about honeybees is understandable (it's often said that more ink has been spilt on honeybees than any other animal), but agree it is a bit unbalanced. Although, If it draws our attention to potentially more worrisome problems (i.e., native pollinator populations declining, treating honeybees as badly as we've conventionally tended industrial livestock, et al.), I'm pleased.

Visit the Xerxes Society for more on native pollinator population concerns at http://www.xerces.org/.

[lostlandscape (James)]

Lots of interesting issues here. My workplace had hours of controversy flying around when an outside contractor came in and poisoned off a honeybee colony that had set up household in one of the public areas. With killer bees in the county, they always drag out the possibility that the bees they killed were Africanized. It feeds into a hysteria that would kill off anything living for fear of what it might do to you--Fear of nature, even if it's nature from another continent. Anyway, the contractor that killed the bees won't be coming back.

[greg draiss]

Excellent post on yet another alarmist issue. With all the colonies collapsing where is the doomsday in fruit and vegetable production.

Leaving some percentage of land to
grow wild is a simple method to encourage beneficials. provide habitat for wildlife and prevent erosion. I believe the Mason bee is actually more responsible for pollinating than the honeybee anyway.

The TROLL

[Ginny Stibolt]

If you care about our pollinators and would like to participate in gathering data, join the great sunfloer project run by Gretchen Lebuhn at The University of San Francisco: www.greatsunflower.org

I'm pleased to say that they've used my photo of a carpenter bee on a sunflower as their signature inage.

[commonweeder]

We quickly gave up being beekeepers on our Massachusetts hill because of bears, but over the years we have seen many wild honeybees in our Linden trees and on our other plants, but last summer we saw no honey bees. There certainly are other pollinators, but we live way out in the country with lots of native habitat. We use no herbicides or pesticides so were dismayed not to see the honeybees.

[Ginny Stibolt]

Oops, I meant image.