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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Colony Collapse Disorder has killed off more than one-third of the bees in the United States.

Beekeepers know that when there isn’t nectar readily available to their hives, as in the winter months, some turn to supplements. Traditionally it was (guess what) honey. But that’s what you want to harvest, so many turn to cheaper substitutions. Cane or beet sugar, mixed with water, was seen as acceptable as long as you removed the part of the comb containing the sugar once bees started producing again. It was important to keep the bees fed so they’d keep brooding and ready to produce honey.

Except it hasn’t only been the occasional sugar-water substitution. We’ve substituted the substitute. People have also turned to high fructose corn syrup.

And once again, it seems our need for convenience and affordability has cost us: a new study shows that a contaminant from heat-exposed HFCS may be killing off the bees.

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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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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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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

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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Abandoned land mines have been called “the worst form of pollution on earth.”  They kill up to 20,000 people every year, and according to one recent study it will take 450 years to find and clear all of them.  That estimate might be too optimistic, because new mines can be laid as fast as the old ones are cleared.  Ridding the world of land mines sounds like a Sisyphean task of epic proportions.  Or is it?  Enter DARPA (the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency) and the humble bee.

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Honey bees are disappearing. The story has been in the news on and off since 2006, but for one reason or another, most people have paid little attention. And the situation is significantly dire.

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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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Since 2006 an epidemic has been traveling across America, and it’s not swine flu. So called White Nose Syndrome was first identified in caves near Albany, New York, three years ago.  Since then it has spread across the northeast United States and has recently been identified in six more caves in Virginia.

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Last week 140,000 protesters from the British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) marched on Whitehall demanding $8-million in emergency funding from the Department for Environment to tackle alarming rates of bee decline. The decline has cost the UK economy about $54-million in the past year alone.

But British scientist Francis Ratnieks — and the UK’s only professor of apiculture –  is pioneering research that he hopes will assuage the hardship beekeepers have been experiencing with colony collapse disorder.

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During Honey Week on our sister site, Meridith Melnick wrote:

“One-third of the food we consume comes from pollinators. Bees are responsible for pollinating almonds, apples, soft fruit, and berries among other crops. Without them, we will lose more than honey (a tragedy in its own right!), we will lose a large portion of the biodiversity we now enjoy on our plates.”

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Via:  Organic Consumers Association

Image: peasap on Flickr under a Creative Commons License

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?

1. 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.
2. The apple crop in just New York requires about 30,000 hives.
3. 50,000 hives each year are needed for Maine’s blueberry crop.
4. 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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Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user Abrahami.