Searching for the Source of Bees’ Decline
In 2006, OnEarth published one of the first stories highlighting a mysterious condition that was causing bees to disappear across the world. Several years later, the crisis continues — and scientists still don’t know why. Bee expert Gabriela Chavarria, who directs NRDC’s Science Center and has a doctorate in evolutionary biology, talked about the latest findings and what the continuing crisis means for bees and our food supply with OnEarth . You can learn more about her work and what NRDC is doing to help bees at beesafe.org . What are some of the threats facing bees? And why should we care? Like any other animal on the planet, bees face habitat destruction. Natural green areas with flowering wild plants and trees, which provide a varied and nutritious diet to bees, are being destroyed. Some of these areas are paved over for urban development, while others are converted to monocultures — large agricultural fields that grow a single type of crop, which may not provide all of the nutrients the bees would obtain from their natural habitat. Bees are also threatened by a lack of food, pesticide use, genetically modified pollen, and climate change. These problems have left pollinators in a worldwide crisis. Without pollination, we would have no fruits, no plants, no flowers. Eighty percent of the crops we grow in this country need the services of honey bees. They affect a lot of our food, our economies, even our aesthetics. Imagine a world without flowers or fruits! What is colony collapse disorder? When a beekeeper opens a hive, sometimes all of the adult bees are gone, leaving behind a perfectly healthy hive. There are no dead bees around or any clues to why it’s been abandoned. The bees just leave, and they never come back. It’s been happening for about 10 years. We don’t really know what colony collapse disorder is. We don’t have a definition for it, or know what problems may lead to it. We know that bees are disappearing — in some areas more than others — and that they are facing many different threats. How has our understanding of colony collapse disorder changed over the past few years? Perhaps the most important change is that we now believe that CCD is likely the result of a combination of factors that may be damaging the bees’ immune and/or nervous systems, instead of having one single cause. This makes it far more complex to study the causes of CCD. The basic threats to honey bee colonies remain the same: pathogens and parasites, pesticide exposure, and nutritional deficiencies. All of these may weaken the bees’ immune systems, making them susceptible to other physical and neurological problems and affecting overall colony health. While the exact cause of CCD is not yet known, many scientists believe that a combination of pathogens and environmental factors may be behind the collapse of bee colonies. Do we have a better understanding of why or how pesticides might affect honey bees? We know more about how certain classes of pesticides affect bees’ nervous systems. We know that some classes of pesticides, called neonicotinoids, affect the bees’ grooming behavior, as well as their communication and navigation systems, which are necessary for getting rid of parasites, finding food, and returning to the hive. We are also more aware of the great number of pesticides that bees are exposed to and the many ways in which they are exposed. For example, a 2008 study by Penn State University scientists found 70 different pesticides in bees and pollen. There are also more studies documenting that systemic pesticides — those that are absorbed into the plant — make it into the pollen and nectar of flowers, which are the bees’ food source. Beekeeping is illegal in New York City. Does NRDC support beekeeping in urban areas? We would love to see beekeeping legalized in New York City. The city already has a very healthy honey bee population — many beekeepers maintain hives throughout the city — but they are not yet legal. Many large cities are very bee-friendly: San Francisco, Chicago, and Detroit have all legalized honey bee hives. A successful program in Chicago uses beekeeping to help people released from prison transition to the workforce. Chicago’s City Hall has several hundred beehives on the roof, which former inmates care for and maintain. For a year or so, they learn a new practice and build a new job record. Later they can apply for other jobs, showing that they’ve been reliable employees. It’s been very successful, and the workers are welcomed into the Chicago workforce. Do urban bees face different threats than bees in rural areas? Urban bees face similar threats, but they encounter different forms of pollution. In agricultural settings, bees are more exposed to pesticides, but in the urban setting, they face exhaust fumes from cars and buses and acid rain from the sky. We don’t really know how much smog and pesticides make it into their hives, because very little research has looked at the problem. Bees — much like us — are not totally safe anywhere. What is NRDC doing to help bees and beekeepers? We’re trying to make the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency accountable for the way they approve pesticides. We want to make sure that the pesticides they issue are not harmful to bees, and we want to make sure that federal agencies in charge of research, including the EPA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, actually have the funding to hire research staff, monitor the health status of bee colonies, conduct scientific studies on the causes of bee decline, and develop methods to better protect these essential pollinators. We are involved in outreach efforts on Capitol Hill, and our litigation team is making sure the EPA follows protocols that are necessary to determine whether certain pesticides are harmful to bees.
Originally posted here:
Searching for the Source of Bees’ Decline
Fruitless Fall
At the very beginning of Fruitless Fall , Rowan Jacobsen invites his reader to meet the most likable murder victim of the year: the honeybee, with its waggle dance, industrious nature, and communal wisdom. In 2007 some 30 billion bees vanished, fully one-third of all bees bred by beekeepers in the United States. Presumably, mysteriously, they met their death while out foraging. Without the honeybee, the future of agriculture didn’t look so good. The shocking news grabbed the attention of mainstream media outlets across the country and spread around the globe; it seemed that with every passing day another headline identified a new culprit. Even so, by early 2008 a smoking gun had yet to be found. For Jacobsen, a food writer, the disappearance of the honeybee is the ultimate whodunit. In Fruitless Fall he gathers the evidence presented over the past several years and retells the story of the honeybee colony collapse murder-mystery style. One by one, promising suspects are proved innocent and new suspects introduced. Had an exotic parasite from Asia — an exceptionally destructive mite — killed the bees? Could electromagnetic radiation from cell phones have impaired the bees’ navigational system? And what about genetically modified crops — how did they affect bees? Were the insects dying from an imported virus? From too much low-level pesticide in the environment? Or perhaps too much of one particular pesticide? What about the antibiotics fed to bees to prevent digestive disease? With cheap honey imported from China, as well as even cheaper honey substitutes, beekeepers in America make their money mostly by renting out bees as migrant farmworkers, trucking the insects thousands of miles to pollinate almonds in California, apples in Washington, blueberries in Maine. Were the colony collapses related to the stress of excessive transportation? Or were bees actually malnourished from feeding on crops that failed to provide them with enough protein-rich pollen? As Jacobsen sees it, honeybees were overstressed for too many reasons and in too many different ways, creating the potential for a general breakdown. That breakdown may be the first of many. If beekeeping fails as a business and rent-a-bees are no longer available as pollinators, we will lose some important crops. But perhaps honeybees are the canary in the coal mine. Perhaps populations of other natural pollinators are crashing due to a perfect storm of chemicals in the environment, parasites and diseases, and habitat loss — and we just haven’t noticed. According to Jacobsen’s sources, that may well be the case. Around the world, researchers are documenting a decline in the number of native bees, wasps, butterflies, moths, hummingbirds, and bats. Their loss could affect even more agricultural crops as well as natural ecosystems: approximately three-quarters of the world’s 250,000 plant species depend on pollinators for their survival. Moreover, what if the collapse of the domesticated honeybee foretells the fate of other domesticated animals? As we do with honeybees, we breed our cows, chickens, pigs, and sheep to accommodate our needs, not for the resilience required for these species to survive. We crowd them into feedlots and factory farms and dose them with chemicals. Jacobsen argues that the collapse of the honeybee "is a symptom of a larger disease — a disease of fossil fuels and chemical shortcuts, of billion-bee slums, and the speed of the modern world. An imbalance in the system." The idea that the overuse of pesticides and insecticides could create springs without birds may not be new, but a fall without any fruit? The demise not only of bees but also of our food supply? Agriculture is not just a business; it’s a contract with nature. It’s about time for some communal wisdom of our own.
Read the rest here:
Fruitless Fall