Where Are the Honeybees?
Reporting from Vancouver, British Columbia
August 10, 2008

Honeybees are disappearing. They aren’t dying. No tiny corpses are found. They simply vanish, like a magician’s sleight of hand trick. When a beekeeper checks his hives in the morning all is well; when he checks again in the evening three-quarters of the bees are missing. Vanished into thin air. Never to return.
Normally honeybees collect pollen and nectar within a five mile radius of their hive, but when scientists study these strange disappearances they find no sign of vanished bees. What’s going on?

This mysterious phenomenon was first reported in the U.S. in 2002. Today it is so widespread it’s blamed for from 70 to 90% of bee losses in managed colonies. It even has a name—Colony Collapse Disorder.

Scientists suspect the bees leave the hive in the morning on their daily mission, then somehow become disoriented and can’t find their way home. If they don’t return within a day, they die. Causes of the syndrome are not understood, but climate change, habitat destruction, genetically modified seed, various viruses, electromagnetic radiation, and pesticides are being studied.

This is no small matter. Honeybees are responsible for pollination of approximately one-third of the commercial crops in the United States, including such species as almonds, peaches, soybeans, apples, pears, cherries, raspberries, blackberries, cranberries, watermelons, cantaloupes, cucumbers, and strawberries. In 2000, the total U.S. crop value that was wholly dependent on honey bee pollination was estimated to exceed $15 billion.

But it’s not just a financial problem. Without bees, plants can’t reproduce. Without plants, our food supply shrivels up. This could be catastrophic, for us as well as for bees. We aren’t there yet, but we will be if we continue to manage bees in industrial ways, according to Dr. Mark L. Winston, professor of biology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, and world authority on bees.

“Bees remind us of the interconnectedness of nature,” he told the CBC last week. “The world is a nuanced and complex place. Their disappearance is definitely a sign that something is wrong, and it’s long overdue. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened before.”

Winston believes it’s a chemical management problem. We are managing bees to the point where they are incapable of responding positively. “They’re responding by dying off,” he attests. “That’s how they are telling us our industrial farming practices are creating an imbalance.”

The agricultural situation in the United States has changed dramatically in the last decade. Beekeepers put miticides into the hives. They feed bees antibiotics. There’s an abundance of pesticides in the fields. And we don’t have the diversity of crops we used to have. Now we have acres and acres devoted to one crop, like canola. “It’s like going to the grocery store and finding just bananas,” Winston explains.

A major culprit may be a class of chemicals called neonicotinoids, “systemic” pesticides which when applied to seeds are absorbed into and through the entire plant. When a honeybee feeds on its pollen or nectar, the insect gets a dose of neurotoxin effecting its nervous and immune system. This disorients the bee which then buzzes around in a chemical fog. Such chemicals are banned in several countries, but not the U.S.

Industrial beekeeping practices are a result of short-term thinking on the part of farmers wanting the quickest and easiest response. An accumulation of short-term decisions and before we know it we have created a situation that is no longer sustainable. We need to make different choices. It requires a change in thought. Like green living, it requires mindfulness. We must start paying attention to what is going on around us. What we do as individuals makes a difference in this world. If we choose to do good things, we can change the world.

Above all, don’t use pesticides! Garden organically to nurture all species throughout the growth cycle. Learn how to plant pollinator-friendly species in your garden or landscape by checking out the website www.pollinator.org. Enter your zip code to find a list of plants attractive to honeybees, butterflies, birds, and other pollinators in your region.

Honey bees entering a beehive.

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