WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BEES?

It was not so long ago, on a woodland walk in Riverhead’s Wildwood State Park a day after a Spring windstorm that we discovered a bee hive in a fallen oak. The wind had snapped off a major limb to expose a deep hollow where wild bees had made their home. Raccoons must have found the hive before us, since only fragments of the comb, still dripping with honey were left adhering to the hollow wall in the deep inner recesses of the tree. Someone among us had a plastic bag and we collected a few pounds of comb, which we ate greedily on our way home. As I recall, none of the sweet sticky stuff was left at the end of the trail. We sucked the wax dry and rolled the gray stuff into balls which we continued to chew like gum as a reminder of our sweet, forest repast.

In those years, honey bees were daily visitors to our garden, and to our orchard buzzing actively and unconcernedly in and out of the apple blossoms, and squirming their long way into the big yellow squash flowers. But beginning about two years ago, at least here on Long Island, or about the summer of 2008, honey bees seemed to disappear (but some say '06 was the beginning year). Instead big black and yellow bumble bees had mostly taken their place in the garden and orchard. Last year, I actually counted only eight honey bees in the flower garden all season. Only eight ! Where in years before they were as common as ants. What happened to the bees?

According to a piece in the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/02/food-fear-mystery-beehives-collapse the disturbing evidence of a decline in honey bee populations began in 2006 when “a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD) led to the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of colonies. Since then, more than three million colonies in the US and billions of honeybees worldwide have died and scientists are no nearer to knowing what is causing the catastrophic fall in numbers.” In CCD affected hives the bees seem to leave the hive, but do not return to die there, and the hive slowly decreases in size and finally reaching a critical point, collapses totally. In the US, where there are an estimated 2.4 million commercial beehives, more than a third of them have failed to survive this 2009-2010 winter. Furthermore“the number of managed honeybee colonies in the US fell by 33.8% last winter, according to the annual survey by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the US government's Agricultural Research Service (ARS).” Another third lost this year appears to signify that there is a major bee die off taking place before our eyes.

The Guardian states that “The collapse in the global honeybee population is a major threat to crops. It is estimated that a third of everything we eat depends upon honeybee pollination, which means that bees contribute some £26 billion (or nearly $40 billion dollars) to the global economy. “(op cit}

Some of the likely causes of CCD are parasites ( such as the verroa mite), viral and bacterial infections, and pesticides . Some experts cite poor nutrition as a probable cause. Lack of proper nutrition may arise from the way commercial hives are used and transported. The hives are typically trucked form one area of the country to the other and set out in vast agricultural areas often devoted to monoculture. That is huge fields where only one crop, such as rape seed, blueberries, peach farms or apple orchards are planted to the exclusion of other crops. Pesticides are often cited as a sinister cause. In the US, scientists have found 121 different pesticides in samples of bees, wax and pollen, lending credence to the notion that agricultural pesticides (many of which are insidious insecticides) are a key problem. "We believe that some subtle interactions between nutrition, pesticide-exposure and other stressors are converging to kill colonies," said Jeffery Pettis, of the ARS's bee research laboratory” (See Gurdian op cit).
On that score the Guardian piece states: “A global review of honeybee deaths by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) reported last week that there was no one single cause, but pointed the finger at the "irresponsible use" of pesticides that may damage bee health and make them more susceptible to diseases. Bernard Vallat, the OIE's director-general, warned: "Bees contribute to global food security, and their extinction would represent a terrible biological disaster."

It is important to remember that “flowering plants require insects for pollination. The most effective is the honeybee, which pollinates 90 commercial crops worldwide. As well as most fruits and vegetables – including apples, oranges, strawberries, onions and carrots – they pollinate nuts, sunflowers and oil-seed rape. Coffee, soya beans, clovers – like alfalfa, which is used for cattle feed – and even cotton are all dependent on honeybee pollination to increase yields.”

In the UK alone, honeybee pollination is valued at £200m. Mankind has been managing and transporting bees for centuries to pollinate food and produce honey, nature's natural sweetener and antiseptic. Their extinction would mean not only a colourless, meatless diet of cereals and rice, and cottonless clothes, but a landscape without orchards, allotments and meadows of wildflowers – and the collapse of the food chain that sustains wild birds and animals.” (op cit)

More on this as it develops......
rjk