Lately it seems that bees have been continually besieged by any number of fatal importunances - fungi, mites, pesticides, fertilizers, multi-factorial colony collapse disorder, you name it, it’s apparently killing bees.
I’ve seen lots of speculation on ultimate causes, but everyone seems to be in agreement that bees in the aggregate are indeed dying in large numbers, and this is a problem because they pollinate some huge fraction of worldwide food supplies.
However, this mass bee-pocalypse has been being talked about for years now, and it doesn’t seem to be reflected in food or honey prices at all. Why is this?
Have beekeepers mitigated exposure to the worst of it? Have scientists bred nigh-immortal superbees that can stand up to all the punishment? Have entrepreneurs packed their garages and basements to the rafters with bee-breeding operations to cash in?
What’s been going on on this front such that we’ve seen basically no end-consumer effect from the mass bee deaths?
Well, with regards to honey prices at least, is it true that there’s a grey market in which some real honey is diluted with (Chinese-made?) sugar water to produce grey market “honey”? So if real honey prices fall too hard they could be supported by fake honey prices?
I was under the impression that many people stepped up, sheltered hives, and farm raised bees have rebounded, at least mostly, if not completely.
I have to ask, which, specific foods are most impacted by loss of these particular pollinators. I know almond trees need to be pollinated by bees, and likely other members of similar species: peaches, nectarines, plums. I know pears need bees, because according to a Nova special on bee colony collapse, China utterly exterminated all honeybees in a certain area, and with no way to get them back, had to hand pollinate all pear trees. So those are the areas to focus on with regard to costs and shortages.
Unless you accepted at face value the often repeated pundit, usually attributed to Albert Einstein, which said the human race has no options but to starve when bees are gone. 'Case they’re not gone. And not all foods are bee pollinated. And don’t ask a physicist about botany. No matter how impressive his hairstyle is.
It looks like there were a couple big price spikes in honey (retail prices)
Looking briefly at just January prices (not perfect, but the links are below, so feel free to investigate further) it looks like there were large spikes in honey prices over and above CPI 2009-2010 and again 2012-2014 - not sure if that’s related to colony collapse disorder or not)
(Year)… (Retail Honey Price in January)… (% increase)… (% CPI increase)
The price has been rising. I only have anectdotal evidence but for one (major) retailer I have data for, honey (store brand, clover honey, 8oz) has almost exactly doubled in price in the last decade, while food overall is only up about 30%.
I suspect some food processors are using less honey and more corn syrup in response to the price rise. But I haven’t looked into this, I’m just guessing.
It’s encouraging that you and Slate have pronounced that the problem is solved, but around here in the mid Ohio Valley, the bees are not alright. My colonies, as well as other beekeepers in the area, have continued to experience devastating losses.
To the OP, your answer lies in (mostly Chinese) imports.
Prices of quality honey have gone through the roof. Only a few years ago a jar of Manuka honey cost around $9. It now costs $25. I don’t know how much of this change is due to decreased supply, and how much is due to increased demand.
There was a report recently that fungicides, supposedly safe for bees, actually can cause serious problems for them.
I don’t know how much testing you do for insecticides in an area before bringing your bees into it, but perhaps you better add fungicide testing as well.
While spikes in honeybee losses in recent years have been a problem regionally, it seems that overall bee populations have been relatively stable:
And contrary to the Slate article, firm conclusions about causes of honeybee die-off still haven’t been reached by most scientists.
Lately, Facebook has been buzzing about certain bee species in Hawaii going on the endangered list, which means Monsanto-Bayer Bee-Pocalypse II, or some such.
On a very local level, I try to minimize use of all pesticides (many are quite toxic to bees). All bets are off though when it comes to &*% yellow jackets and &(W*($!! hornets.
Seitz et al clearly report 305 beekeepers has colonies destroyed by CCD in the 2014-2015 data collection period, yet the infographic linked from the Genetic Literacy Project claims:
Since the infographic runs up to 2015, it was published recently and within a year of the publication of the Seitz et al. paper.
It cites a person - Sam Droege, rather than a research source to say wild bees are doing “just fine.”
I’d rather go to the literature for a source rather than a single quote from an individual.
While the infographic might be an attempt to halt hysteria around bees ("all the beez are dying and we’ll looz our crops!!!eleventy!!1) - the Genetic Literacy Project probably should seek a middle ground between deceptive practices against hysteria and giving in to hysteria.
Does the Genetic Literacy Project have any entomologists on staff? Where do they go for their information on bees?
Reports I’ve read suggest that most supermarket honey in the USA is fake, partially fake, or not entirely non-fake. Since it is (illegally) ultra-filtered, you can’t tell the difference between honey made by bees and “honey” made by mixing water, sugers, and “honey flavour”.
Commercial beekeepers make a significant income from pollination. They will truck hives into orchards and the like and get paid by the farmers. Almonds are perhaps the most critical product, but there are many others. The balance between pollination and honey as income probably varies, and AFAIK honey has usually been the dominant income, but this probably varies from place to place.
Here in Oz there has been recent talk of commercial apiarists moving to a dominantly pollination driven income. This comes on the back of significantly increased demand from new orchards. However in the last few years poor hive strenght has resulted in a shortfall of bees available for pollination of the local almond crop, something that required some significant logistical work to address.
CCD and other issues (varroa mite especially) are always going to be a problem. Here in Oz we are currently varroa free. Although there was a (hopefully contained) outbreak found in some bees that came into the country in a shipping container.
A happy hive with lots of food can grow in size dramatically, and will swarm that season. If all is going well an apiarist can double the number of bees they have in a year. Going badly entire hives will fail.
No doubt, fake honey is an issue. Buying generic honey is not a good start. Buy from local apiarists or small local companies that are known to source their honey locally. You will be astounded at how much nicer it tastes too. (And you can get into the whole question of what flowers the bees collected from and so on.)
Wheat, corn and I guess rice don’t need bees and these 3 things are the primary food sources of people, excluding meat. Man won’t die without bees. You will lose lot of fruit though. And I’ve been unsure of this, but is the loss just honeybees or all bees. I would also assume some other insects would fill the niche if bees died.
Losses seem to affect many bee species. The reasons for losses are many, and you see other bee species affected by some of them. Nicitinoid pesticides are bad all round, not all bees are affected by varroa, but many are, and so on. The lack of genetic diversity amongst honeybees is an issue.
Sure, if the honeybees vanish, another insect, or bird, or something, will evolve or colonise to take up the niche. However such things happen at a pace that may not quite suit us. Don’t expect it in your lifetime. Not without active human intervention to find it. Left to itself nature co-evolves, and the fruit trees my evolve to be fertilised by a different insect. Again, don’t hold your breath on this. Given many commercial fruit trees are clones (and many sterile) don’t expect nature to sort things out for you in a manner that is helpful.
My part of the Netherlands had a 30% bee-hives death in 2014, less so in 2015. The difference is mainly due to bad, or good weather.
However, when in spring the beekeeper notices his hive is full of dead bees, he just takes a queen from one of his other hives and lets her raise a new hive, powered by sugar water. A normal hove always has a surplus of queens. So there still are enough hives fro honey and for pollinating commercial fruit gardens.
So the situation is comparable to that of a pig farmer, who finds a third of his pigs dead in the stable every winter due to environmental issues. But it is still easy to raise a couple more piglets into sows, so pork production can stay pretty much the same.
Wild bees are a different problem. They pollinate about 40 % of commercial fruit trees. But there is little research into how bad their numbers are affected, and what that will mean for fruit trees. The numbers we do have are alarming. At my job there is a project that tries to improve circumstances for wild pollinators around commercial open-air fruit gardens.
A good hive will have one queen, and so long as she stays strong there will be no others. When she becomes old or otherwise weak, the brood’s emission of queen suppressing pheromones will diminish, and the hive workers will start to build new queen cells. The queen will lay into them and the workers will rear new queens with royal jelly. Once a new queen emerges she will kill any rival queens that are still in their cells and the workers will kill the old queen.
A very strong hive will swarm. Initially queens cells are built, the queen will lay eggs into them, and then she will stop laying, slim down (so that she is light enough to fly) and then leave the hive with a substantial number of the workers, and set up a new hive. The queen cells in left in the hive will grow, and the first queen to leave her cell will kill the other queens.
Any new queen will do the mating flight, become impregnated and take over the role of hive queen.
Apiarists can use this understanding of queen bee life cycle to raise queen bees. Hives do not naturally contain more than one queen. But by managing the cycle properly and in particular mechanically preventing emerging queens from reaching one another, many queens can be reared.
A weak queen can mean a weak hive, and apiarists may decide to replace a queen pro-actively.
