Green Options » Bees

Global Honey Bee Population Increasing, Despite Local Losses

Michael Ricciardi — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:34:52 +0000

Foragers coming in loaded with pollen on the hive landing board.

In 2007, large commercial beekeepers started reporting big drop-offs in their bee colony populations. By 2008, estimated colony losses of between 30 and 70% were being reported, as a flurry of bad news about bees made the media rounds.

The loss since then of over 40% of the nation’s commercial honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies–most seemingly due to so-called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD; caused most likely by the IAPV virus)–ushered in predictions of dire consequences for valuable crops around the world due to a lack of pollinators.

But a recent analysis of global honey bee populations (by Aizen and Harder*) shows a 45% increase in total numbers since 1961. The data for this analysis came from a global database of managed honeybees. The same researchers note, however, that the global stock of honey bees is growing slower than the global demand for them–which comes primarily from the cultivation of “luxury” crops like fruits and nuts. The the year round demand for items like cherries, mangoes, almonds and pistachios is far out-pacing world-wide production, leading to the perception of a shortage of pollinators.

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Greening Your Garden: Make it a Bee Sanctuary

Becky Striepe — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 03:30:55 +0000

We need bees. There’s really no way to get around it. Here in the US, bees are responsible for pollinating 1/3 of our food supply, and that doesn’t just apply to fruits and veggies. Without bees, feed for livestock would be more scarce, causing higher prices for meat and dairy, as well.

Over the past several years, the world’s bee population has been in decline. Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has claimed around 30% of the bee population each year both in the UK and the US. In the UK, beekepers held protests to raise awareness about the problem. While this year has seen some break-throughs in research to help save the waning bee population, like gene therapy and a vaccine to help prevent CCD, the bees still need our help! Here are some resources to get you started:

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Beehaus and Eglu Promote Urban Agriculture in Europe - Very Local Food!

Dave Harcourt — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 11:00:21 +0000

The scratching chickens that are found in and around many rural households provides cheap food at practically no cost - now its also happening in city and town houses in Europe and more recently the USA.

Bringing production to the household has no economy of scale but inputs including labour and part of the feed are essentially free. The reduction in transport and packaging cost have financial and environmental benefits.

Eggs from the Eglu

The Eglu is based on a plastic, waterproof box, where the hens shelter and lay their eggs. The box is attached to an enclosed run which can be placed on a lawn allowing the chickens to scratch for insects and grass. The run has a door to allow the hens a free range in the garden when its safe.

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Pollinators Hampered by Air Pollutants

Michael Ricciardi — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 22:50:16 +0000

A syrphid fly (Eristalinus taeniops) pollinating a Common Hawkweed

Pollinators, such as bees, flies and wasps, depend on sensing the minute by steady stream of hydro-carbon molecules emitted by flowering plants to lead them to their target destination. There, the insects gather pollen (as a food source) and inadvertently transfer this genetic packet from the male anther to the female stigma, enabling fertilization (known as syngamy, the joining of germ cells).

This ancient, mutually beneficial arrangement insures each new generation of the flowering plant. It has probably been going since shortly after the first flowering plants (angiosperms) appeared on earth some 250 million years ago. Industrial air pollution is now hampering this ancient relationship.

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UK Bee Failure Both Environmental and Political

Kay Sexton — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 16:07:15 +0000

While you may never have heard of it, in Britain the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) carries a big stick. The Government of the day takes notice of its reports and individual ministers are called to account over failures in their departments if the PAC points them out. This month the PAC has applied its big stick to the British government’s initiatives in addressing the collapse of bee colonies and basically it said that the government’s failure was as catastrophic as the collapses it was meant to resolve.

Despite public awareness and media attention to the problem, less than half Britain’s beekeepers are registered for regular inspection. Furthermore, the research funding meant to help solve the problem is not having the expected effect because the way the funding stream was set up means it has to be shared with other research projects into other insects.

Bees matter in a recession

The situation is economically serious as well as environmentally – the PAC estimate that British agriculture could lose £200 million of crop production if bees continue their current rate of decline. Bees, and specifically honey bees, pollinate some of Britain’s major staple foods including the glaring yellow oilseed rape that fills most fields every summer, apples, pears, beans and raspberries.

The loss of bees in the past two decades has been in part due to varroa mite: a parasite that attaches itself to the drone bees that move from hive to hive. The varroa mite was transmitted to Europe via imports of the Asian honeybee – because the European honeybee does not groom as often as its Asian counterpart, the mite has the opportunity to expand numbers rapidly once it obtains a foothold. These mites then feed off the bees, weakening them and transmitting pathogens and viruses into the bees’ bodies. Untreated colonies die out fairly swiftly unless control measures are undertaken, which is why registering beekeepers is so important. But there are other factors too: loss of habitats such as wild flower meadows, roadside verges and orchards, climate change, multiple pesticides used on pollinated crops and Colony Collapse Disorder. Around 30% of bees disappeared in the 2007/2008 winter and this year’s figures could be as bad, meaning that the UK has only a third of the bees it had four years ago.

Bee schemes don’t please old beekeepers

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has set up a National Bee Unit to provide advice to beekeepers, and created a Healthy Bees Scheme which has resulted in the registration of 1,500 beekeepers with BeeBase, the National Bee Unit’s beekeeper database. Most of these beekeepers are new converts though, rather than those already keeping bees.

There is no answer in sight to Colony Collapse Disorder which is the one cause that might bring those old school beekeepers into a registration scheme. As things currently stand, they fear government intervention and ‘meddling’, being told to move or destroy hives if they are seen as potentially infected or too old to meet current standards, and they can’t see why they should sign up for a scheme that has no discernable benefit to the beekeeper.

Rural beehive courtesy of strife at Flickr under a creative commons licence

Carbon sequestration buzz: Bees and balloons looking for leaks

Jeff Kart — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 20:21:14 +0000

You’ve heard of the canary in the coal mine as an indicator of a toxic environment.

The U.S. Department of Energy is using bees and helium balloons to make sure carbon dioxide is staying put in sequestration sites.

How? Researchers at the National Energy Technology Lab are using chemical tracers to fingerprint CO2, then comparing it to pollen collected by the bees.

“Researchers will determine if pollen collected by bees contains measurable quantities of tracer or if bees bring back tracer from direct contact with foliage. They will use balloons to determine atmospheric variations in tracer content to assess the effectiveness of CO₂ storage sites,” the DOE reports.

The agency is working with researchers from Michigan State University, which by the way, makes its own honey.

Michigan is home to a carbon sequestration test site in Gaylord, part of a larger project called the Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership.

(Image Credit: Doug Stremel, via Flickr).

Five Things You Can Do To Help The Bees

Joe Mohr — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:13:36 +0000

Colony Collapse Disorder is still with us

…though not getting the same press it did the last couple of years. According to a joint survey conducted by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the Agricultural Research Service’s Bee Research Laboratory, 29 percent of honey bee colonies vanished between September 2008 and April 2009. That number is better than previous years…but not much.

I think it’s time to give back to the insect that has given us so much over our lifetimes (they pollinate 1/3 of our food supply). Here are 5 things you can do to help the bees:

1. Provide bees with a safe beneficial place to thrive.
Leave a patch of wildflowers and plants for bees to enjoy.

Leave the dandelions in the ground. Dandelions are probably the most beneficial flower for bees in the early spring. Check out this info from the Daily Green for a list of other plants bees love.

Make a bee post for bees to reside. Drill a variety of holes up to a half inch in diameter into the side of a thick piece of untreated timber. Attach a roof to deflect rain, smooth down the entrances to the holes thoroughly so there are no sharp splinters, and attach it to a sunny wall or fence. Keep the post in a dry, cool place in winter and bring it out in March. (Another bee house idea is shared here).
FYI, don’t build bee homes with new fence posts from home and garden centers. They are unsuitable because they have been treated with chemicals. Speaking of chemicals…

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Inspired Economist Pick of the Week

Reenita Malhotra — Sun, 31 May 2009 20:49:43 +0000

This column highlights the top economic stories of the week.

There is no gold left in California. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is threatening to layoff fire, police, and teachers. All of this is certain to further increase unemployment and foreclosure rates. Schwarzenegger is now considering releasing nonviolent prisoners, shortening the school year, legalizing and taxing marijuana. Fred provides a unique perspective on the sorry state of California.

The Economist says that in America and Europe, new rules relating to the banking sector overhaul are facing stiff resistance , mostly from regulators themselves.

Tim Geithner plans to unveil a comprehensive regulatory overhaul by mid-June. The European Commission on the other hand, unveiled a blueprint for reform of financial supervision. It will create two new institutions aim to correct a fundamental flaw in European bank regulation and supervision; namely, that although banks are free to operate across borders, they are supervised only by their home countries.

And as GM, the nation’s largest automaker and for decades an icon of American manufacturing, teeters on the brink of bankruptcy and a de facto government takeover, President Obama prepares to address the nation at 11:30 a.m. ET on Monday to explain the rationale for the filing and his hopes that this is the best route for a turnaround. It’s the end of America’s great auto era.

Meanwhile on the renewable energy front, a new study from Greenpeace, the European Solar Thermal Agency, and the International Energy Agency’s SolarPACES Group has shown that concentrated solar power (CSP) could generate a quarter of the world’s energy needs by 2050–and create thousands of new jobs and prevent millions of tons of CO2 from being released. But, while basic renewable energy research is being conducted at numerous institutions around the world and much of this technology remains trapped in labs for want of commercialization know-how and funding.

So, while the worl economy continues to paint a dark picture, Bill Maher throws shares humor by highlighting his “new rules” for America covering everything from the disappearance of bees, greed and health care, to climate change, war profiteering and Ronald Reagan. Enjoy!

New Rules for America

Rhonda Winter — Sat, 30 May 2009 19:25:09 +0000

This week Bill Maher’s “new rules” for America cover everything from the mysterious disappearance of bees, greed and health care, to climate change, war profiteering and Ronald Reagan.

This post contains additional media. Click here to view the full post.

Could Britain Save the World’s Bees?

Kay Sexton — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:08:56 +0000

There are any number of reasons that we should worry about bees: not least that without them, some agronomists predict that the planet could only survive for four years, before the catastrophic failure of crop pollination led to a similarly catastrophic collapse of human civilisation. Forget tsunamis, changes in the Earth’s magnetic core, the arrival of aliens or the mutation of some native species to giant size—our biggest risk is that we lose those small, aerodynamically impossible, stripy creatures so famous for their eccentric flight, useful wax and delicious honey. It’s estimated that 35% of our crops, globally, require bees for pollination.

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Honey Bees on Cocaine Change Ideas about the Insect Brain

Gavin Hudson — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:51:38 +0000

By doping honey bees with cocaine, researchers at the University of Illinois have discovered evidence that the insect brain has a reward system.

The famous “waggle” dance of honey bees is a complex language that allows foraging bees to communicate the distance, direction and quality of a food source to the rest of the hive. The study showed that honey bees on cocaine tend to dance more, without relation to the quality of food or state of the hive. Given the effects of cocaine on people, hyperactivity may seem like a fairly obvious reaction. However, the implications of the study suggest something that has not been found before: a reward system in the insect brain.

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The Twelve Days of sustainablog: Bees, Stimulus Checks, and Biodynamic Wine

Jeff McIntire-Strasburg — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 23:21:11 +0000

2008 was a banner year for sustainablog, and we want to end it as strongly as we started. So, for the next twelve days, I’ll take a look back at some of the best and most memorable posts from the past year.

Let me start off, though, by expressing my immense gratitude to all of the writers who contributed during 2008. This was our first full year as a multi-author blog, and I couldn’t have been more pleased with the way it turned out. Some of the writers I’ll mention have moved on; others on coming on board. I’m grateful for the inspiration you’ve all brought to the blog over the past year, and look forward with anticipation to what the new year brings us.

January 2008

Like New Year’s fireworks, January started off with a bang. Here are a few great posts to remember:

Jason Phillip’s post on Chicago’s bottled water tax was one of our most popular ever… it’s still getting pageviews!
Maria Surma Manka wrote a very thorough (and also very popular) review of Scientific American’s “Solar Grand Plan.”
I took a look at an innovative South African whose developed a low-cost, high-yield method of generating energy from chicken poop.

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President-Elect Obama - The Bees Need You!

Kay Sexton — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 18:20:02 +0000

Summers have been more silent in recent years because the bee population has been falling at an alarming rate – in Britain it fell by a third between last year and this, and right across Europe the decline is similar and disturbing. In Italy, bee mortality is running at nearly 50% and nobody knows quite why.

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EPA Covers-Up Pesticide’s Role in Bee Colony Collapse: NRDC Sues

Jennifer Lance — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 03:26:29 +0000

30-90 percent of bee colonies have been dying over the past two years. Europeans are banning the pesticide clothianidin to protect their bee populations from “Colony Collapse Disorder” (CCD), yet the FDA, which approved the pesticide in 2003, refuses to release public documents of studies conducted by clothianidin’s maker Bayer CropScience on the chemical’s impact on bees and the environment. Last week, the Natural Resources Defense Council filed suit against the FDA in order to release these documents and save the bees.

Via: Organic Consumers Association

Image: peasap on Flickr under a Creative Commons License

Clark’s Candles Are Not Your Average Candles!

Tiana Griego — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 14:28:56 +0000

Clark’s Honey Farm is committed to help SAVE THE PLANET.

With all the news’s going around about the disappearing of the bees, (about 70% on the East Coast) I became very intrigued to learn more about this honey farm’s passion to help save the planet.

At the current time they have over 2,000 healthy bee colonies. Their goal is to double the colonies in the next few years. Each colony has over 60,000 + bees.

They claim to provide enriching environments for their bees to thrive. “The bees are instrumental in the survival of the planet”.

They also ship their bees across the country to help farmers in need of pollination.

Bees pollinate up to one third of our food plants, and in recent months, bee colonies have been mysteriously collapsing. Up to 70% of bees on the East coast have disappeared, and about 50% in other parts of the country. One recent news account from New Hampshire says this: “The problem, called colony collapse disorder, already has hit beekeepers in 24 states, part of Canada, and several European countries. Many bees seem to disappear, with few to no bodies of dead bees found near the hives. The remaining bees, meanwhile, show mysterious symptoms. ”

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Oh, Honey. Eat. Drink. Better. Series This Week

Beth Bader — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 03:48:07 +0000

We’ve got some sweet posts for the week ahead. This week is Honey Week at Eat. Drink. Better. in tribute to bees and all they do for us, including that delicious honey. To kick it off, I want to share a cool bee fact and a recipe.

Did you know?

California’s almond orchards are the location of the largest pollination event annually. Nearly one million hives (about 50 percent) of the US honey bees are brought to the almond orchards each spring.
The apple crop in just New York requires about 30,000 hives.
50,000 hives each year are needed for Maine’s blueberry crop.
According to the USDA, one-third of our diets rely on insect-pollinated plants. 80 percent of this pollination is done by bees.

Recipe for Honey Curried Cauliflower follows the jump.

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Save the Bees … and Ice Cream

Shirley Siluk Gregory — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 18:03:28 +0000

Häagen-Dazs has given $250,000 to researchers studying colony collapse disorder, the mysterious condition causing large numbers of bees to simply disappear. The grant isn’t sheer altruism, though: Häagen-Dazs says 40 percent of its flavors depend on the bee’s specialty, pollination.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user Abrahami.