earth day
‘The bees that
we have here
cannot replace
honeybees.’
TRASK BEDORTHA
Sujaya Rao —
OSU entomologist
Bees, Baby, Baby, Bees
Nonnatives make the world go round
F
our hundred years ago, give or take,
a nonnative species came to North
America. Stop it. Don’t guess white
people. It’s not that obvious. White people
just brought them and their sticky goodness.
What we’re talking about are honeybees.
Some of the striped invaders escaped
their hives and settled in the wild, but today
99 percent of honeybees live in managed
colonies, according to Oregon State
University entomologist Ramesh Sagili.
They’ve been incorporated into the United
States’ complex system of agriculture;
honeybees play an important role in the
lives of people, pollinating crops like
almonds, avocados, apples and cherries.
But since the winter of 2006, the
honeybee populations that we depend
on have dipped drastically across North
America, Europe and Asia. Die-offs of
honeybees aren’t unprecedented: In the
1980s, invasive mites reached North
America and hammered honeybee hives,
and they’re still a problem for beekeepers.
BY SHANNON FINNELL
What’s different now is that scientists can’t
identify a singular, specifi c cause of the
bees’ decline.
Usually we welcome getting rid of a
nonnative species. Not so with honeybees.
Entomologists
started
calling
the
mysterious drop in honeybee populations
“Colony Collapse Disorder,” or CCD.
Sagili says Oregon’s honeybees are doing
better than the national average, with a
26 percent winter death rate in Oregon’s
managed hives compared to 34 percent
nationally. But the typical and acceptable
winter loss is around ten percent.
While CCD is named as a single
disorder, its origin is complex. “We still
think there is no one cause that is responsible
for the decline of bees,” Sagili says.
Pests and pathogens are traditional
causes of large-scale bee death, and
this continues to be the case with CCD.
However, the USDA’s CCD steering
committee reported in June 2010 that post-
collapse hives have provided evidence of
laugh, learn
“an absence of damaging levels of the gut
parasite nosema or parasitic varroa mites,”
which are the usual bee-killing suspects.
Other pests and pathogens are still
likely contributors to CCD, but humans
are killing bees, too. Sometimes it’s hard
to avoid — like when beekeepers need
to move their hives for the winter due to
weather or nutrition needs.
Other human contributions to colony
collapse are more diffi cult for beekeepers to
manage because they’re caused by outside
factors. Malnutrition from monocultures
(big farms that grow one crop) contributes
to the problem. “We have restricted the
diet of the honeybee,” Sagili says. “Instead
of seven or eight kinds of pollen, there are
only two or three.”
Pesticides and fungicides are also killers
of these needed nonnative bees; their severity
might be increasing because the different
chemicals are mixing in what Sagili calls
a “cocktail in the hive.” One of the most
contentious pesticides is Bayer’s clothianidin,
which is sold under the name “Poncho.”
While early evaluations ruled clothianidin
safe, more recent accounts are casting doubt.
A leaked EPA memo distributed in 2010
stated, “Acute toxicity studies to honey bees
show that clothianidin is highly toxic on both
a contact and an oral basis.” The National
Honey Bee Advisory Board, the American
Beekeeping Federation and the American
Honey Producers Association all have called
for new evaluations of the chemical that
could be one of the greatest threats to their
livelihoods.
Together, the varied causes of CCD are
instigating a multi-continental die-off of
honeybees. As the specter of colony collapse
disorder hangs over the Pacifi c Northwest,
entomologists are closely watching the
rate of winter death. For now, CCD hasn’t
caused enough of a die-off to threaten the
crops, but how will those crops survive if
honeybees can’t do the job?
“The bees that we have here cannot
replace honeybees,” says OSU entomologist
Sujaya Rao, who studies native pollinators.
It isn’t that native bees are nectar snobs who
hate orchard trees. Rather, honeybees live in
much larger swarms than native bees. “The
numbers are good but not as high,” Rao
says of the native bees.
Sagili says that even though most bees
live in managed hives, “There are small
things that everyone can do.” Adding
plants like foxglove or lavender to your
garden provides both honeybees and native
pollinators with a continuous, diverse
supply of nectar and pollen. And if you’re
looking for a challenging project, backyard
beekeeping is as tough as ever. à
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