At the beginning of this summer, 25,000 bees were found dead in a Target parking lot in Wilsonville, Oregon. Shortly after, local beekeepers in Elmwood, Ontario, Canada reported massive hive deaths with a total of over 37 million bees lost. One commercial beekeeper lost 200 million seemingly healthy bees in just two months. Within the past few years, both the United States and the United Kingdom have lost about a third of their bee populations. Considering the fact that one out of every three bites of food you consume is the result of bee pollination, these numbers are both astronomical and frightening.
In many situations, the hives are either abandoned, or the only bees left are the queen and very few young bees. This is called Colony Collapse Disorder, and other symptoms include not finding any other normal bee pathogens, mites, or viruses in the ruined hive. This complicates the process of figuring out what might cause CCD – there are hardly any bees to dissect. Many bees, not just those affected by CCD, have a wide variety of pesticides in their systems and, while individually the chemicals may not have negative effects, this mix of pesticides can lead to their eventual death. Older pesticides that were sprayed on crops have gradually become less common and have been replaced by systemic pesticides, which are in irrigation systems and seeds instead. Now these pesticides can be expressed in the pollen and nectar when the plant grows. The resulting medical issues include damaged digestive function, development, and navigation systems; the latter could cause traveling bees to lose their hives, away from which a bee can only live 24 hours.
At the result of massive efforts of French beekeepers several years ago, use of such systemic pesticides as Gaucho have been banned. The same has been done in Italy, Germany, and Slovenia.
Holistic and organic beekeepers are also looking to solve the bee problem, though in a slightly different way. Some holistic beekeepers, who do not rent our their bees for pollination like commercial beekeepers do, feel that the treatment of the bees could be leading to their demise. In commercial settings, honey is often taken away from the bees and replaced with artificial sugar syrup that lacks proper nutritional value; the queen bee, who can live up to five years, is instead killed after several months and replaced with a new, artificially inseminated queen; and bees are transported hundreds of miles to complete pollination contracts with large farming companies, and are thus exposed to any pesticides, insecticides, and dangerous environmental factors they encounter along the way.
Aside from the resulting lack of fruits, vegetables, nuts, coffee, and chocolate without bee pollination, another troubling point about their disappearance is that they are considered an indicator species. They act as a warning signal to species that might be more tolerant of environmental change and can therefore be used to diagnose the health of an ecosystem. An environment that is killing bees could eventually become an environment that kills other animals, including humans. In short, our food system is not proving to be sustainable – or entirely safe.
One very interesting example of flourishing hives is seen with the urban London beekeeper featured in a segment of the BBC documentary “Who Killed the Honeybee?” His hives have been experiencing increasing growth over the past few years, while others are losing millions. He suggests that it could be due to the variety of plant life that comes with living in a city, the extended pollen season that comes with that variety of plants, and the lack of pesticides and insecticides. In 2010, New York City changed legislation to allow beekeeping, following cities like Seattle and Chicago – maybe cities will hold at least a temporary solution to our bee problem.
Check out the BU Beekeepers Club at BU to get more involved!
FYSOP Environment 