Bees have been much in the news as apocalyptic reports of Colony Collapse Disorder, an umbrella term encompassing a myriad of apian woes, have appeared in the press. With the Western Honeybee reigning as the dominant pollinator of crops in the United States and Europe, the alarming disappearance of these bees is causing fears about the future production of food and the economies that underlie that production.
Of the 100 crop species that provide 90 percent of food worldwide, 71 are dependent on bee pollination, according to U.N. estimates. Even in tiny Connecticut, the bee is a key player in the $3.5 billion agrarian industry.
“That figure is for all of Connecticut’s agriculture, but it is still a big number,” said Mark Creighton, state apiary inspector for the Connecticut Agriculture Experimental Station in New Haven. “Just vegetable-type crops are an $80 million industry, so agriculture is still pretty important in Connecticut—and certainly bees are a main contributor through pollination.”
He noted that growers of apples, pears, blueberries and the like are very dependent on bee pollination and that it is a labor-intensive process for the tiny field workers.
“Many orchards hire managed bee colonies to pollinate the fruit,” Creighton said. “A bee may have to visit an apple blossom 10 times to get an apple with perfect size and form.”
At its very best, Connecticut is not the land of milk and honey for bees, though. “
Honey plants are not as available as in Connecticut as other states,” said Al Avitabile of Bethlehem, professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University Of Connecticut in Waterbury. He read a passage from “Honey Plants of North America, published in 1926 by John H, Lovell: “It is the opinion of veteran Connecticut beekeepers that this state cannot be considered a good location for beekeeping and should not be ranked more than third rate when compared to New York State.”
“That is probably still accurate,” Avitabile said. “We’re too green.”
There are a lot of challenges out there, Creighton agreed. “A lot of the floral sources bees like are considered to be weeds, such as golden rod and dandelion. We want to put chemicals on them and destroy that habitat. When talk about issues in honeybees, they are all colliding at the same time.”
Rain was another factor that lowered honey production this year.
“South Kent was white with black locust in flower this spring,” he said, “but then it rained for a week. Many plants may yield heavily one year and not the next. It’s hard to predict the nectar flow from one year to the next. In the 1970s one year all conditions were 100 percent and beekeepers ran out of boxes, but we haven’t seen a year like it since.”
Creighton said there are about a half-dozen commercial beekeepers in Connecticut—including Rollin Hannan of Southbury—but that most of the bees managed in the state are kept by backyard beekeepers. It is an activity that has reached a new peak of popularity across the nation, perhaps as a result of the growing bee crisis and the awareness of its implication for all mankind.
“Historically, beekeeping was on the decline for many years,” he said. “A lot of people got out of beekeeping as agricultural practices changed and it became more difficult and more costly. It’s been a challenge of late to keep bees with the health issues facing bees. Some beekeepers have been losing a third of their bees each year. If you stand a chance of losing 33 percent of your crop every year that’s a hard business model—if you are a farmer and lose a third of your livestock, you are probably out of business. But now there is a resurgence of interest—everyone wants to go back to their roots and everyone wants a hive in the backyard.”
He said there are “just shy of 6,ooo hives” registered in Connecticut by some 750 beekeepers. “Our best guess is the number is under-reported by up to 40 percent,” he added.
Honeybee hives have to be registered with office of the state etymologist.
“Honeybees play such an important role in agriculture they have to be inspected before they are transported and must be accompanied by a certificate of health,” Creighton said. “One brood could be so contagious they could wipe out the entire [bee] population in Connecticut. That’s the reason why we got into inspection—but there is only me and my two hands.”
Which brought up the issue of colony collapse disorder.
Creighton sniffed derisively. “We’ve never had a colony collapse,” he said. “No one can even give a definition of colony collapse. It’s another of those terms the media likes, like killer bees. There is no such thing as a killer bee—they are identical to other bees, but their behavior is different. They are more aggressive.”
While hive abandonment has been noted through the ages, and never explained, Creighton said bee problems can be ascribed to a wide variety of factors, ranging from pesticides, herbicides and fungicides to malnutrition and mites. Even electromagnetic waves created by cellular devices have been blamed.
“It’s a perfect bee storm environment,” he said. “We have been having health problems in bees, there’s climate change, there are so many chemicals in the environment and we don’t know their interactions—even benign chemicals can create problems in combination—and there are sub-lethal levels of chemicals once thought to be harmless that appear to weaken the bees. Mites are the number-one killers of bees, but we also have small hive beetles from Africa that are making their presence known in Connecticut, the wax moth, bears and new agricultural practices. Nationwide we have some 700 million acres of corn, which is wind pollinated, so bees are also losing habitat.”
Then there is man’s direct intervention in bees’ lives. The Western honeybee, which is not native to the Americas, has been imported and used to pollinate crops but are only really necessary for agricultural/ornamental plants as no native plants require honeybee pollination. Because it produces the desirable by-product of honey, it is a popular addition to the country’s ecology but has greatly displaced native pollinators, such as the bumblebee.
Bumblebees are efficient pollinators, but cannot be used as easily or as effectively as honeybees—in many instances they will not visit the plants at all. Honeybees are also useful where concentrated monoculture have been planted—where the pollination need is so great at bloom time that it is beyond the capacity of native bees.
Indeed, the need for bees often exceeds anything nature could conjure up in this day of industrial farming. Beehives are frequently moved from crop to crop as plants bloom, sometimes traversing the country. They are particularly important to the almond growers in California.
“Eighty percent of the world’s supply of almonds comes from California,” reported Creighton. “Honeybees are used to pollinate the crops and last year and growers struggled to get the numbers of bees needed. That’s why there are groups of folks who load up bees and go across the country with them, but that also affects bee health. While they are in transit and while they are kept in a holding area there are not many food sources. Then they get to dine on almond blossoms three times a day for four or five weeks. It’s like eating at McDonald’s every day.”
Researchers are concerned that trucking colonies around the country to pollinate crops, where they intermingle with other bees from all over, helps spread viruses and mites among colonies. Additionally, such continuous movement and resettlement is considered by some a strain and disruption for the entire hive, possibly rendering it less resistant to all sorts of systemic disorders. Hence, Connecticut’s insistence on registration.
“There is a great demand for pollinators,” agreed John Baker of Litchfield, of Eastern Apiculture “Here they start early with apples, then blueberries, then pumpkins and squash. Pumpkins are difficult to pollinate because of the shape of the flower. They don’t self-pollinate and the flowers close around 11 a.m. or noon, so it is tough.”
Creating monocultures also takes its toll, Creighton said.
“We grow so much corn, which is wind-pollinated, and takes so much take away other pollination sources. Then, we treat corn today with neonicotinoid pesticides such as thiamethoxam, clothianidin and imidacloprid. These are systemic pesticides that leach out in the pollen and nectar and into the ground and water. Some countries in Europe have forbidden their use.
Avitabile said that neonicotinoids are even found in beeswax. “When we analyze beeswax we find 100 different pesticides in the wax,” he said. “When bees come in with pesticides on them, it ends up being absorbed into the wax comb.”
While this sounds alarming, he said the honey does not absorb the pesticides.
Even with all these problems, bees are the new craze among homeowners. “I think we fare better in Connecticut than in some other places because we have three bee clubs in the state—The Eastern Connecticut Beekeepers, a group in central Connecticut, and the Backyard Beekeepers in Weston—each with about 350 members,” said Creighton. “Some bee clubs are pretty proactive and offer meetings where new beekeepers can learn a lot. Each club offers a bee school. Before you think of buying bees, take a course. Join one of bee clubs and find a mentor. Let them guide that process. Typically a hive is about $350 for a minimal setup with bees.”
So, if bees are disappearing and dying, why not just breed replacements? In fact, large bee farms exist in the South for just that purpose, but intensive breeding may be contributing to less hardy bees.
“They have a lot of pressures and demands and are doing their darnedest,” reported Creighton, “but the queens are not as reliable. They are looking at genetics in the queens and drones to try to pinpoint the decline.”
Beekeepers also want bees that can endure being transported from the milder South to a harsh New England climate. “In our collective memory, this year was the first time we had to bring in hives in from another state to pollinate,” Creighton said. “The bigger providers had such losses over the winter.”
He noted that there are only a half-dozen farmers in the country that raise breeder bees that queen stock originates from and that the genetic stock from commercial breeders might not be what is needed in backyard hives. “If we can raise bees locally with queens that have survived our winters, we might have more luck,” he said.
Bees, who literally work themselves to death during the growing season, typically live 45 to 48 days.
“In spring, summer and fall, the bee life cycle is not that long,” said Creighton. “It is the ones from September to October who live into spring.”
Creighton said that most wild bees did not survive the introduction of a mite infestation in the 1980s. Avitabile agrees that colony collapse is an overall umbrella term for all bee problems. “Probably the major problem we have in Connecticut is keeping them healthy,” he said.
He explained that the varroa mite, first found in the U.S. in 1987, spread rapidly. “It had been in Europe before it came here and it is now probably everywhere bees are kept today, except Australia,” he said. “It is a tough predator on the Western honeybee. Research shows that if you do not treat colonies with some miticide, a colony will die within three years.”
He said the mite does not kill the bee but passes germs and parasites to the bee larva or pupa while sucking its fluids.
“What you get is not a healthy, wholesome bee that will live in summer a good six weeks,” he said, adding that the bee’s memory also seems to be affected. “Treating them reduces but does not eliminate the mite. Even in a mite-free colony, bees drift, so it is only a short time before it will be infected. If you have hives in a row, just a small breeze will push bees to other hives.”
Weakened hives will also be visited by “robber bees” who take honey—and mites—back to their home hives.
Baker said the mites are hard to get off bees. “Bees groom themselves and each other and the mites come off, but they can get back on,” he said. Many beekeepers use a screen “bottom board” for the hives that dislodged mites fall through and can’t reattach to the bees. “But that’s not enough,” he continued. “You have to use powdered sugar about every 10 days. It’s so fine it gets in the mite’s feet and helps the bees to them get off. It’s not a silver bullet, but one way to checking mite levels. You take a sticky board and slip it in and the mites fall down and stick on it. After three days you count the mites, and that gives an indication of their number.”
Do the bees mind being powdered? “They look like flying ghosts when they come out and they don’t like it at all,” he said. It is just the last in the perils of being a bee in the 21st century.