August 8, 2012
Here comes the dry post!
I am going to try to explain why we are so worried about what is going on with the bees. Please keep in mind that not only am I a Novice Beekeeper, I am also not a scientist. I do feel that the honey bee is like the canary in the coal mine and the stress bees are experiencing cannot be ignored.
I know that you are aware of the losses of huge numbers of bees across the world. The honey bee populations in England declined drastically over the last few years and they are just coming out of the crisis. North America has dealt with its own crisis. This decline in honey bees is very scary since honey bees pollinate so many of our agricultural crops. They are an important part of our agricultural economy. As they decline so do the crops. Look in your fridge and take out all the vegetables, fruits, nuts, juices etc. Without honey bees we would end up eating solely grains and meats or very expensive fruits and vegetables pollinated by humans with tiny brushes. Imagine the energy involved touching every flower with a brush! There are already places in Japan where the precious pears are pollinated by hand because of loss of honey bee populations. We do have other native pollinators such as bumble bees, butterflies and other native bees but none of them are as efficient or as single minded as the honey bee. Honey bees go to the same flowers until they are all done and then move on to another crop. It is due to this behaviour that hives are moved around the countryside to pollinate specific crops throughout the growing season.
So what is going on? Why are the bees suffering? Beekeepers have found their hives empty of adult bees with no evidence of dead bees around the hive and this is called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). No one really knows exactly what is causing CCD but the scientific community is starting to think that it is a result of the many stresses that honey bees have been under for many years. Some of these stresses include Pesticides used in farming, Pests that have come into the hives from other countries, Pest Treatments that have been used to eradicate the pests, Poor Nutrition and Predators.
Pesticides: It probably doesn't come as a surprise to you that the spraying of the crops is not very good for the bees. Over the years the farmers have learned when it is safe to spray so as not to adversely affect the bees but it was not fool-proof. The chemical giants take pesticides off the market in reaction to concerns only to replace them with new and improved pesticides. With each new product come new instructions for use and each time bees die until the farmers learn to use the new product. This year, the dominating bee story in the media was the effect of a new family of pesticides; Neonicotinoide Insecticides on bees. These insecticides are integrated into the seeds of corn and soy so that they stay with the plant throughout its entire life time. In our modern, technological world, seeds can be sown by shooting them into the soil. We have had very little rain this year, so when the seeds were sown they caused clouds of dust laced with the insecticide to float into the air. The honey bees would fly through these clouds of chemicals and bring it back to the hive. The chemicals also landed on the dandelions which are the first flowers that the bees visit for pollen and nectar. The honey bees would take in the poison and bring it back to the hive. The beekeepers started to find piles of dead bees in front of the hives. The bees were dying, but not before depositing the poisoned nectar and pollen into the honey comb which the next generations of bees would be fed from. The wax was also poisoned and theoretically, humans will ingest this honey some time in the future.
Beekeepers in Northern United States raised the alarm first and then the alarm was raised in SW Ontario. Samples of the bees were sent to labs for testing with results showing poisoning. Beekeepers are a quiet lot but the samples kept coming for for testing until they could not be ignored. After many complaints to the Ministry of Agriculture in Canada through the Provincial Apiarists, Health Canada's Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) made the decision to initiate a re-evaluation of this family of insecticides. Let us hope that the PMRA is not slated for redundancy under Bill 38, the infamous Omnibus Bill that is decimating our environmental watch dogs.
This family of insecticides comes from Bayer, the German chemical giant. Bayer had to take these insecticides off the market in Europe due the mass deaths of bees and the militancy of the beekeepers there, particularly in France. They continued to sell them in North America and in true corporate fashion opened a manufacturing plant in America where they would not be under so much scrutiny. Even more questionable; they have set up a bee research unit to study the effects of their chemicals on honey bees for the government. Many bee scientists have been wooed to this research unit. How can the findings from this unit not be suspect? This is indeed an example of the fox guarding the chickens!
Pests: A bee hive can have many pests and a variety of viruses in it. One of the worst pests to hit the honey bee in recent years is the Varrao Mite. This mite was first seen in 1987 and had come from Asia. Since then it has covered the entire world except Australia. This is a nasty tiny red mite that invades the cell of a new larva just as it gets capped. It will happily procreate in there while feeding on the larva. When the cell is uncapped, the mites come out and continue to invade other cells or attach themselves to adult bees and feed off of them. The larva are weakened and then are open to viruses. They can have deformed wings which makes them incapable of flying. The hive becomes weakened as the mite population grows and then the hive becomes incapable of fighting off other diseases and predators. Unless the hives are completely isolated from other colonies, they will get Varrao mites. That is a reality of modern beekeeping. Drones visit many hives and bees bearing pollen or nectar will move from hive to hive. Robbing bees may also bring the mites with them. All my hives have mites. I have seen the deformed wings and I have seen the mites on the bottom boards.
Small hive beetles are slowly making their way north from the States and they can wreak havoc in the hive. Wax moths can cover an entire hive with cocoons and silk. Nosema is a lethal virus which loves the higher PH of sugar and can kill off an entire hive very quickly. American Foulbrood and European Foulbrood and Chalkbrood...the list goes on and on.
Pest Treatments: Seeing the mites almost made me panic and decide to treat my bees. Happily I have stated publicly (in this blog) that I would rather lose my bees than treat them so I am staying the course. I also don't want any of those chemicals in the wax contaminating the honey...which we eat. Here is what I feel about the treatments...they are all chemicals, even the ones that are supposedly organic. A hive, just like our body, is full of thousands of bacteria...mostly beneficial. The treatments don't just get rid of the target but also all the rest of the bacteria. The pests then become stronger to resist the treatments while the bees become weaker. The treatments then need to change and become stronger...not unlike the insecticides we use for agriculture. Because the bees have a very short life cycle, about 6 weeks, I feel they could become resistant if given the opportunity to develop on their own. The help that I will give them is to let them build the size of cell that is natural to them for starters. Mites like the larger cells so smaller cells should help. More importantly, my reading tells me that using the treatments eventually just stops working. I also will not treat for the Nosema virus, for some of the same reasons.
Would I have treated my children this way as they grew up? Maybe not...though I wish I had not let them have quite so many antibiotics. I should have let their bodies fight rather than look for the quick, easy fix. As we see the super bugs proliferate, we should question our use of antibiotics. As we clean our counters with Lysols and wipe our hands with anti bacterial soap, we lose the benificial bacteria that used to do such a wonderful job of protecting us. "A peck of dirt before we die" doesn't seem to apply anymore.
Poor Nutrition: Bees get their nutrition from the pollen they collect and from the nectar they turn into honey. Not all pollen is created equal. Since bees have the efficient behaviour of visiting only one kind of flower at a time, they are used to pollinate crops. Thousands of hives are moved from crop to crop. The outcome of this management is that the bees may pollinate only one crop for 3-4 weeks. This would be akin to us feeding our children only Froot Loops for a month. None of us think that is a good idea. Blueberries, for instance produce a pollen with very low nutrition. Bees are brought to the blueberry fields every year and are literally under-nourished for the entire time they are there. Diversity is what every living thing needs and the practice of moving hives to mono cultures all over North America is stressing our honey bee populations.
The urban environment offers a diversity of flowers and weeds so, ironically, my urban bees have access to better nutrition than their country cousins. They also have less trouble with insecticides since the city has been declared mostly herbicide and insecticide free. They may be attacked by a home owner with a can of Raid but the full-scale attack of the agricultural insecticides does not exist.
Often bees are fed sugar water to get them working in the spring rather then leaving them enough honey to feed off of. Honey is worth much more than sugar so this practise makes sense for a honey producer but there is sufficient research to prove that the PH of honey is much better for bees. The PH of honey also makes it more difficult for some of the viruses to survive. It is understandable that the farmer whose living depends on the honey taken from the bees, will take all the honey. It is easy for me, a hobby beekeeper, to leave enough honey for the hive to survive a winter but I have bees for a different reason.
Predators: Wasps are my worst predators. They are carnivores and happily catch the honey bees, rip their heads off and eat them. They can invade a hive to try to rob the honey. If the hive is healthy and strong they don't get past the guard bees but as the colonies weaken they become a lethal threat. I really dislike the wasps but I won't spray them anymore. I hope that the bees can take care of themselves.
Skunks can find the bottom entrance of the hive, scrabble at it and eat the bees coming out like popcorn. I mostly have top entrances to avoid this since we have four skunks living under our shed right now. Racoons love honey so if they figure out what is in the hive it is almost impossible to stop their robbing activity. I keep a brick on top of the hives and so far the honey has not been discovered. We don't have bears here in London so that is a worry I don't have. I guess humans could be considered a predator but my hives are fairly private. Hopefully, the thefts of Alberta hives will not be copy catted here!
All of the above explains some of the problems with bees. Since I have had the bees I have become extremely aware of nature as a whole. The drought that we are experiencing this summer seems more ominous to me than it would have done a few years ago. Rain was always important to me because of the garden but I now think of the wild life and the farmers in a much more informed way. I am aware of the flowers, the trees and the weeds. I watch my bees as they struggle and I hope that my little experiment will help my little patch, your little patch and through that the world around us.
So that is your dry post. Not one picture!
