Here's yet another article that I used a search engine to find:
Wild Honeybees, Nature's Pollinators, Are in Trouble, Victims of Manmade
Pollution And Tiny, Destructive Mites
Bee populations aren't what they used to be. Experts estimate that
more than 90 percent of wild honeybee colonies in North America have
been wiped out over the last decade, casualties of a harsh winter,
a wet spring, overuse of pesticides and attacks by two pernicious
varieties of blood-sucking mites.
Imported from Europe in the 1600s and successfully established in
the wild throughout the Americas, honeybees have played an important
agricultural role, pollinating some 90 different crops in the U.S.,
valued at more than $9 billion per year. "Honeybees are not in danger
of extinction," says James F. Tew, an associate professor of entomology
at Ohio State University and a honeybee researcher. "Beekeepers are
still maintaining around three million colonies in the U.S. What's
much closer to extinction, however, is the wild population of honeybees.
Pesticides have been a factor, but the mites were clearly and definitively
the last straw in causing this population collapse."
The smaller of the two guilty mite species is a microscopic tracheal
mite that lives in the breathing tubes of adult honeybees and sucks
their blood, causing adult bees to become disoriented and weak, and
causing colony populations to dwindle. Beekeepers have been fighting
the tracheal mite, itself a stowaway from Europe, since the 1920s
with legislation restricting importation of honeybees, but the mite
has slowly worked its way north from Mexico in recent decades, and
is now seriously threatening bee populations in the U.S. According
to Tew, two materials specially prepared vegetable shortening "patties"
and menthol - are useful in temporarily suppressing the tracheal
mite infestations in domesticated bee colonies.
The other mite, called the varroa mite, has spread in recent years
from Asia to virtually the rest of the world. The varroa is an external
parasite, about the size of a pinhead. It attacks bees at their pupae,
larvae and adult stages, causing deformities and injuries, essentially
killing all colonies it infests. "These mites decrease the honeybee
lifespan to almost nothing," says Tew. "They're so weakened or deformed
that they're nonfunctional. They don't contribute to the output of
the colony, and the whole population crashes and dies," he says. Some
insecticidal controls are effective against the varroa mite, but eradication
of either mite is highly unlikely in the foreseeable future.
Beekeeper Vincent Kay of New Haven, Connecticut says that bee mites
"changed my whole life. Starting around eight years ago, it began
to take a huge chunk of profit out of the industry; it's become incredibly
labor-intensive." Kay says he spent $4,500 last winter on menthol
crystals (for the tracheal mite) and Apistan strips (for the varroa
mite). "That combined with the expanding use of backyard pesticides,
and the severe winter we had last year makes a real formula for disaster,
" says Kay. "And it's important because of honeybees' role in crop
pollination."
Kay, who maintains 350 colonies, with 60,000 to 100,000 bees in each,
says he is now one of only two commercial beekeepers left in Connecticut.
He's had to raise prices on his Swords Into Plowshares Honey 15 cents
per pound in the last six months. "Unless someone starts making some
progress researching bee genetics, I'm pretty discouraged," Kay says.
Professional growers are turning to renting bee colonies and having
them trucked long distances to ensure crop pollination. Small-scale
farmers and backyard gardeners in particular may see smaller yields
and smaller, lower-quality fruits and vegetables as a result of the
decimation of wild honeybees. Other pollinators, including different
bees, hummingbirds and butterflies, may pick up some of the slack
in performing pollination duties, but Tew cautions against thinking
of them as the ultimate solution to the honeybee crisis. "A honeybee
is a generalist; other types of bees are specific to certain crops,
" he says. "We can't just whimsically switch to different bees and
have that solve all the problems."
Disputing that contention, however, is Dr. Leonard Feldman of the
house and garden supplier Whatever Works, which is promoting native
Orchard Mason bees as a pollinator alternative. "In addition to being
effective pollinators," Feldman says, "they require minimal attention."
And, he adds, they're not affected by mites.
Florida's NVID International said that it is testing an environmentally-
safe liquid disinfectant, Microsafe F-5A, as a bee protectant. "All
of our initial studies give us a very high level of confidence that
we will be able to kill the fungi and mites without harming the bees
or plants," says NVID President Bob Bunte.
In their recent book The Forgotten Pollinators, entomologists Stephen
Buchanan and Gary Paul Nabhan advocate creation of insect preserves,
modification of pesticide application practices and exploration of
alternatives to the honeybee for specific crops. "We can no longer
afford to risk the security of our food supply on the services of
just one insect," says Buchanan.
CONTACT: American Beekeeping Federation, P.O. Box 1038, Jesup, GA
31598/(912)427-8447; Honey Producers Association, P.O. Box 584, Cheshire,
CT 06410/(203)250-7575; Whatever Works, Earth Science Building, 74
20th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11232/(800)499-6757.
COPYRIGHT 1997 Earth Action Network Inc. |
