Fork it Over: Ways of bee-ing

So far, small-scale, local-minded beekeepers have dodged hive collapse.

Posted by Tom Philpott at 1:30 PM on 02 May 2007

Read more about: food | agriculture | biodiversity | extinction

This post marks the launch of Fork it Over, in which I (attempt to) answer questions inspired by my Victual Reality column. Got a question about food and the politics that surround it? Fork it over, by emailing it to victuals(at)grist(dot)org.

Reader Brooklynolmec writes in to inquire: are organically managed bees faring any better these days than their industrially farmed peers?

As most readers will know, the U.S. is currently in the grip of a widespread honeybee-colony collapse. Nationwide, something like a quarter of bee colonies have succumbed to what's known as "colony collapse disorder," in which bees abandon hives en masse, for unknown reasons, never to be seen again. In some areas, the collapse rate has reached as high as 70 percent, flummoxing scientists and endangering huge mono-cropped fields that rely on domesticated-bee pollination to fruit, like California's super-sized almond groves.

But the answer to Brooklynolmec's question is a qualified "yes": Organic bee production is tricky these days -- see below -- but bees kept on a small scale, for honey to be consumed nearby, don't seem to be dropping like, well, flies.

Organic honey production is tough. For one thing, for honey to be free of pesticide and other chemical residue, bees can't forage on conventionally managed farm fields. Thus organic certification requires that hives not be placed within foraging range -- about six miles -- of conventional farms.

Than there's the vexation of mites. In 1987, U.S. hives began to be infested with varroa mites, a bee parasite native to Asia. These pests are difficult to control organically, and have gotten only more so as large industrial beekeepers have attacked them with pesticides, causing them to mutate toward ever-hardier forms.

Even before the current collapse, varroa mites had already put serious pressure on domesticated bee populations, and nearly wiped out wild bees in some areas. Unhappily, varroa mites recently appeared for the first time in Hawaii, causing fears of the "the end of certified organic honey production on the island."

Most of the small-scale beekeepers I know use formic acid (a substance produced naturally by ants to fend off parasites, but not allowed under organic code) to control mites.

Having said that, I've heard of very few cases of small-scale beekeepers experiencing the calamities now being visited upon the big guys. For the most part, colony collapse disorder has been limited to large operations that truck their hives cross country to "chase the bloom," as it's known. That is, vast mobile operations that make most of their cash not from honey but rather from for-hire pollination services in areas where mono-cropping and suburbanization have wiped out wild bees and small-scale bee keeping.

These growers tend to use high-fructose corn syrup to feed their bees while in transit -- thus confirming yet again corn's absolute centrality to industrial food production.

I've heard no convincing theory to explain the sudden collapse. All explanations so far -- cell phones, crops genetically modified to contain pesticides, stress from travel, poor diet, mites -- have been around for years, and can't explain why bees are suddenly abandoning hives. But I do find it plausible that these factors compromise bees' immune systems, making them more susceptible to whatever is causing the collapse.

Of course, the implications are enormous for industrial agriculture, a third of whose produce requires pollination. In the areas where industrial ag is most concentrated, natural pollinators have been killed off. If trucked honeybees follow suit, large-scale food production will become imperiled. Produce prices could surge.

The answer to this dire problem is delicious. Support your local foodshed -- and give extra-special love to your local honey producers.

For story: Fork it Over: Ways of bee-ing
19 Comments | Post a Comment

Tom...

Sorry about the following string of questions, but I'm having some trouble framing my overall question. I'm sure you will understand. So here it is...

Can you shed some light on how the European honeybee "herd" is managed? Given that the bees were imported and bred to serve a specific purpose, what is the extent of inbreeding among European honeybees? Are they essentially a monoculture? Are they like cheetahs, vulnerable to disease? Or has there been an effort to maintain their genetic diversity over the centuries? Are there "heirloom" varieties available for someone interested in starting a colony?

THANKS FOR THE POST!

by wiscidea at 1:45 PM on 02 May 2007

GMO not the cause

I am not a GMO lover, but I have yet to hear credible evidence that GMO food has anything to the bee-icide.

A good analysis of why GMO probably isn't a factor is described here:

http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2007/05/02/gm_honeybee2/in ...

In particular, it is in extremely bad form if people keep blaming GMO for faulty reasons. That's no better than global warming deniers.

That being said, however, if anyone knows of any credible evidence that GMO is a partial cause, please let me know.

Andrew Eisenberg
The gateway project is wrong---http://www.livableregion.ca

by Werdna at 2:30 PM on 02 May 2007

Data please

Skimming this story it sounds like "someone told my friend downtown that, like, some organic bees, were like living and all, and not like the corporate bees that are all, you know, like dying and stuff".

Is that about it, Grist?

Texeme.Construct(function(x)=Participation(x))

by jabailo at 2:48 PM on 02 May 2007

Honeybees

Of far greater concern is the spread of various parasites from tended colonies to wild populations which are far more productive in terms of pollenating food crops.

Part of this is reportedly due to indigenous wild bees particular genome which apparently has little resistance to disease built in. The worldwide trade in honey bees may be responsible for introducing these pests into a vulnerable population.

Alas far too many of the "new complaints" moving into farming areas place far more emphasis upon a "perfect lawn" than upon the eco-system which supports their life-style as noted by regular visits by professional insect eradicators to their homes and lawns. >MW

millwright

by millwright at 4:44 PM on 02 May 2007

Good comments

Even Jabailo made sense this time. Yes, my conclusions are sketchy, not based on much data. There isn't much info out there. Anecdotally, much evidence points to the big apiaries having a much tougher go than small, localized ones. I talked to two small-scale beekeeper in my area, and a few around the country. None reported problems. One of them had attended a national beekeeper meeting. He said that there, the two common traits among folks who suffered big losses were transport and large size. Moreover, many sources have statements like this one, from a Mid-Atalntic ag extension document (PDF):

As of February 2007, many of the beekeepers reporting heavy losses associated with CCD are large commercial migratory beekeepers, some of who have lost 50-90% of their colonies. ...However, late in February some larger non- migratory beekeepers, particularly from the mid-Atlantic region and the Pacific Northeast have reported significant losses of >50%.

So the losses do appear skewed towards larger operations.

So while I don't think the stress of travel--or the diet of high-fructose corn syrup fed industrial bees when there's no forage --has caused the collapse, I do believe (speculatively) that it might make bees more vulnerable to threats.

Ditto GM crops, to address Werdna's complaint. I never blamed the collapse on Bt corn. But plantings of it have been increasing for years. Might millions of acres of Bt corn have something do? (Interestingly, bees are also ingesting modified though HFCS, though its hard to imagine the Bt bacteria surviving the manufacturing process.) The Der Spiegel article cited a scientist who saw evidence for a Bt corn link, but didn't have the funding to keep going with the study. I don't think the Salon article you cite definitively refuted it.

Wiscidea, your questions are excellent -- and I don't know the answer to them. From beekeeper friends, I've heard tell of three available breeds originally brought from Europe: Italians, Caucasians, and Carniolans. Now the USDA is introducing Russian bees because they resist varroa mites. But I don't know much about this stuff. I'll return to this question.

Finally, i'll leave you with a bit from a great AP article that came out just today, under the bracing title, "Bee collapse threatens food supply."

Recently, scientists have begun to wonder if mankind is too dependent on honeybees. The scientific warning signs came in two reports last October.
First, the National Academy of Sciences said pollinators, especially America's honeybee, were under threat of collapse because of a variety of factors. Captive colonies in the United States shrank from 5.9 million in 1947 to 2.4 million in 2005.
Then, scientists finished mapping the honeybee genome and found that the insect did not have the normal complement of genes that take poisons out of their systems or many immune-disease-fighting genes. A fruitfly or a mosquito has twice the number of genes to fight toxins, University of Illinois entomologist May Berenbaum.
What the genome mapping revealed was "that honeybees may be peculiarly vulnerable to disease and toxins," Berenbaum said.

Victual Reality

by Tom Philpott at 5:25 PM on 02 May 2007

those moving to rural areas

millwright wrote...

"Alas far too many of the "new complaints" moving into farming areas place far more emphasis upon a "perfect lawn" than upon the eco-system which supports their life-style as noted by regular visits by professional insect eradicators to their homes and lawns."

I'm shocked by the audacity of people who move to rural areas and then complain about the environment they moved into. I've read that newcomers start to ask for laws restricting farm machinery noise, laws restriciting the spreading of manure, et cetera. A caller to a local radio program actually had the nerve to complain about tractors on the road! She said they should move from field to field on special parallel roads on their own land!!! It is appalling. My personal complaint regarding this odd group of whiners is that they try to drive on a curving rural highway as though it was an interstate, passing where they shouldn't and following so close that they will collide with the car in front of them if it slows down to avoid wildlife or someone crossing the road to get their mail.

It seems the desire for a perfect lawn is along the same lines as this. If the use of pesticides on new rural lawns starts to affect agriculture, it is time to enact laws designed to preserve the farming environment. It is sort of ironic that one reason people move to rural areas is because they are perceived as healthier place to live... and then they introduce the same toxic chemicals that saturate urban and suburban landscapes.

by wiscidea at 10:45 AM on 03 May 2007
[ Parent ]

organic bees...

I'm an "organic" beekeeper and have been following the info about CCD with great interest. I'm just a backyard beekeeper, and am not certified. However, the original writer (Tom) should know that there is a large group (about 1200 and counting) of beekeepers that don't use ANY chemicals (including formic acid) in their hives. I suppose it could be called "biological beekeeping", because we try to keep our hives in the way that bees would do it in the wild. What's it called? It's called "small cell beekeeping." You can read more about it here from the folks that pioneered the method: http://www.beesource.com/pov/lusby/index.htm

Lusby's (actually, just Dee now, as Ed passed away late last year) are commercial beekeepers and have nearly a 1,000 hives.

And not a single one of us have experienced CCD either, for what it's worth. There is speculation that it's due to many factors, not just one, and there is also a theory (unproven) that perhaps there was something that contaminated the HFCS that the commercial beeks were feeding their bees, similar to the pet food recalls. I guess we may find out in time, or we may never find out! In the meantime, I'll continue to keep my bees without the use of any chemicals, thank you very much...

Julia, somewhere in far Northern California

by jlg7001 at 11:17 AM on 03 May 2007

Thanks, Julia!

Thanks for the info, and for the great link on Dee Lusby I've heard of small-cell beekeeping. The idea is that bees have been bred to be quite big, and the large cell size lets mites into the colony that wouldn't otherwise be able to fit in. Slimming down the bees gradually to so that smaller cells work sounds like a brilliant idea.

Victual Reality

by Tom Philpott at 11:28 AM on 03 May 2007

BT?

To those who don't think GMO may have anything to do with CCD, what about bacillus thuringiensis genes?

BT is a potent bacterial natural insect control, and Monsanto has spliced the appropriate genes into various monoculture crops so that corn and soybeans now produce the BT toxin. BT chimeras have spread into the wild, with one rather bizarre result that Monsanto sued a farmer for "passively" using their creation, merely because wind-blown pollen had caused his seed to have the BT toxin gene.

How do honeybees react to BT toxins? And if they don't fare well, how can anyone possibly claim that GMO can have nothing to do with CCD?

:::: Jan Steinman, EcoReality. ::::

by Bytesmiths at 2:55 PM on 03 May 2007

Honeybees Don't Do Squat

Natural or not -- honeybees are eclipsed in the amount of pollination they perform by other species of bees: Pollen bees.

These pollen bees are not affected by colony collapse.

http://www.ebeehoney.com/Pollination.html

Often, growers don't realize the amount of pollination that is performed by native bees, and signs of inadequate pollination are often misinterpreted as weather problems or disease. Dr. Suzanne Batra of the USDA's Bee Research Lab in Beltsville, Maryland conducted a three-year study to discover the natural mix of bees in a West Virginia forest (3). She found that, of the 1700 bees trapped in the first year of the study, only 34 were honeybees. This means that pollen bees were performing almost all pollination.

Sounds to me like beekeepers have been conning the farmers for years...

Texeme.Construct(function(x)=Participation(x))

by jabailo at 3:24 PM on 03 May 2007

Nice one, Jabailo

But in the areas where farmers are paying to bring in beekeepers, there are no natural pollinators. Moncropping, insecticides, and creeping suburbanization have wiped them out. Unlike in, say, the West Virginia forest you direct us to.

Victual Reality

by Tom Philpott at 3:31 PM on 03 May 2007

Bee-ing

Natural pollenators have been on the decline too...for years due to the same things that effect honey bees, pollution, loss of habitat, climate change, pesticides, etc.
The key thing about bees is that they are very prolific and typically establish hives of 30,000 individuals or more. This allows them to outcompete other pollinators simply by the magnitude of their overwhelming numbers. They also tend to stick to one type of flower during their foraging trips which makes them ideally suited to help the industrial ag businesses cover up for the fact that they have wiped out the majority of the natural pollinators through the use of industrial ag techniques.
I tend to agree that it is likely a combination of many things that has lead to the sudden and alarming number of bee conlonies collapsing in the past year or so. The most interesting symptom is that affected hives have no older bees in them, dead or alive. This seems to point to the fact that as the older foraging bees leave the hive, they lose their way and are unable to navigate back home. Two things have been shown to affect bees in this manner...GMOs and a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids (related to nicotine). Like GMO's, neonicotinoids are systemic and kill target pests that feed on the sap (or any other part of the plant). [One correction from above: BT toxins are what have been engineered into every cell of the GMO plant, not the BT bacteria). Interestingly enough, neonicatinoids are often used to coat the seeds of corn, cotton and canola (three of the main GMO crops). My guess is that this is the last straw this is breaking the honey bee's back- after their immune systems have been weakened by an innumerable number of other insults. Beekeepers that keep their operations at a "human scale" and manage their colonies in ways that enhance the bees immunity rather than compromise it are not being affected (so far) and hold the answer to the future of the ancient craft of apiculture. I spell all this out and more in a book I am blessed to be publishing this summer through Chelsea Green called: Natural Beekeeping: Organic Approaches to Modern Apiculture. Hope you forgive this shameless act of self promotion....

Ross

by Ross at 3:55 PM on 03 May 2007

Ross,

Thanks for the comment, and the correction. So, if Bt toxins, and not the bacteria themselves, are built into Bt corn, does that mean that high-fructose corn syrup could be toxic to bees? At least half of industrial corn is GMO, and I think most of it is Bt.

Victual Reality

by Tom Philpott at 4:10 PM on 03 May 2007

HFCS

Absolutely Tom. It is my understanding that not only is all corn syrup contaminated with genetic material (even organic corn has been shown to have a small level of contamination) but the process of manufacturing HFCS itself generates a some sugar molecules that are toxic to honey bees. Apparently there are different types of HFCS and certain types impact the bee's immunity less than others. Add to this, the fact that when exposed to high temperatures HFCS degenerates and additional toxins are created by the molecules that matamorphosize in the corn syrup. Thus, while regular corn syrup can be expected to adversely impact the immune system of the bee, "bad batches" that have sat out in the hot sun too long will kill off even more hives than the HFCS feeding beekeepers normally experience as part of their "business". Large scale commercial beekeepers are well aware of this "bad batch" danger but I assume that the low cost of the syrup when compared to other sugars and the reduced laber involved with feeding hives seems to offset the risks in their minds.

Ross

by Ross at 4:29 PM on 03 May 2007
[ Parent ]

Best wishes, Ross!

Thanks for your interesting comment, and congratulations on your new book.

I was most interested in your brief comment on what is thought to have befallen the bees that fail to return to their hives. Apparently, if I follow you, some toxin that they have ingested affects their neurological processes, with the result that they can no longer find their way back home. "Mad Bee Disorder"?

The speculations about distracting electro-magnetic radiation in the bees' environment also assume that the bees' mechanism of locating their hives has been disrupted; but in that case, the source of the disruption is external, not pathological.

I was wondering if there was any evidence that bees can seem to choose voluntary exile, as it were, if they are "aware" that they are infected with some pathogenic or parasitic agent that might similarly infect the hive if they brought it back with them. It is already well known that many bee behaviors exhibit altruism and self-sacrifice, most famously stinging in defense of the hive, when in many species that involves mortally damaging the abdomen. Seeing that bees anyway evidently introduce pathogens and parasites into their hives often enough, I do not know that this is a practical suggestion, but we do not really know, do we: sometimes there are such circumstances in which bees may choose voluntary exile.

To tie this in with a favorite Gristmill topic, global warming and its effects: It seems that we are more and more aware of how the viability and ranges of many plants, and of the animals and fungi that live with them, are unmistakeably shifting northward. See for example this, which appeared just yesterday:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/03/science/03flowers.html? ...

Initially, this is good news for horticulturalists who have always struggled to grow more southerly plants in planting zones a bit too cold for them. But much more seriously, it also means well-loved local plants will now have a hard time hanging on in places where they have traditionally grown well; weeds and invasive species will thrive stronger than ever; and various animal and fungus pests will grow more abundant and move northward.

The latter point is relevant to the bee discussion. Whether it is at all likely that the current problem is being caused by the recent introduction of new animal threats -- and I do not think it is likely, actually, given the reports of "widespread honeybee-colony collapse," the operative word being "widespread" -- , little is impossible. Nevertheless, it needs to be remembered that there are new and greater challenges facing beekeepers, and everyone else involved in our food supply, all the time.

Have bee carcasses been recovered? And if so, have they been both associated with a hive, and autopsied? I suppose putting GPS signaling devices on all the bees of a colony would not be very practical ...

Again, best wishes to Ross! And the same to Julia in Northern California! I love bees, and I love honey: hang in there!

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 3:54 AM on 04 May 2007

Voluntary Abandonment

I think I can offer a couple comments in response to the questions above.

Bees have definately been known to choose voluntary exile. Such instances occur when the hive is over-run by small hive beetles (SHB) for instance. In the case of Colony Collapse Disorder however, there is typically a queen and a handfull of very young bees that is all that is found left in the collapsed colony.
There is a CCD Working Group that has been collecting dead bees, honey, pollen, and frames of wax from hives that are believed to have fallen to CCD. They have even taken healthy hives from the same bee yards to study and released a Preliminary Report back in December basically saying that there was no obvious single cause. I don´t think we know much more than that now either, which leads me to think that it is the culmination of numerous stresses to the hive`s immunity that is weakening the bees to the point where they are succumbing to something like neonicotenoids or GMOs, when they can usually tolerate these things to a better extent when they are not in a weakened state.

My suggestion to anyone who wants to keep their bees from "dissappearing" is to simply do everything you can to support the health and immune system of the hive. Very much like we need to do to take care of ourselves...eliminate the immune suppressing activities and enhance immune boosting things in order to give the bees (and ourselves) the best possible chance in life. In this way, the bees have much they can teach us.

Ross

by Ross at 3:40 PM on 04 May 2007
[ Parent ]

Way to bee, man

Couldn't resist. Thanks, Ross.

Victual Reality

by Tom Philpott at 4:39 PM on 04 May 2007

die-off of bees

I'm glad to read that at least the organic bee-keepers haven't been affected much by this problem; however, I've been wondering lately what's happened to the wild bees this year, at least where I live in the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. In fact, not just bees, but insects in general. I've always had lots of bees in my organic garden, as well as lots of insect pests. But this year I've been struck by an amazing scarcity of most kinds of flying insects. I've seen NO bees in several weeks, and only two or three before that. Also very few wasps, almost no flies, and a thriving colony of carpenter bees has vanished mysteriously. Possibly a neighbor did some spraying or put some poison out, but I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed this effect.

by jquinnofallentownpa at 12:49 PM on 19 Jun 2007

regarding die-off of bees

I too have been struck (hard) by the scarcity of insects this year. It's extremely noticeable.
I live in Southern Indiana, and my yard has always (11+ yrs I've been here) been a haven for all manner of wildlife, including bees. There has been a massive thriving colony of carpenter bees, and an infestation of ladybugs (it's an infestation when half of them hatch through the cracks INDOORS! LOL) for as long as I've lived here. This year, I saw a few carpenter bees and ladybugs in early spring, and then they all just disappeared. Not a one. It's really weird.

I've likewise had very few wasps, almost no flies, and few flying insects in general, though butterflies seem as plentiful as ever, and the japanese beetles have made their yearly visit to my wisteria. So odd.

It may or may not be significant that this spring WiFi became available in my area for the first time.

I found this site while looking to see if any organization was accepting anecdotal reports on bee disappearances. If anyone knows of one, please let me know.

by RamonaW at 4:46 PM on 24 Jul 2007

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