An article at the BBC today is talking about how “honeybees are vanishing at an alarming rate from 24 US states”. Depending on the state, the losses range from 30% to 70%. That is a very significant number!

I did some googling around because I’ve read similar stories regarding this issue before. The BBC article doesn’t enumerate possible causes so I wanted to find out more. This article at The Ledger (Lakeland, FL newspaper) claims that these losses threaten the entire beekeeping industry and, more importantly, “Without honeybee pollination, the food supply could decrease by a third.”

Further research revealed this article at Suite 101 that actually points out that there was also a beekeeping crisis in 2005 that left “40-60% of honey bees in U.S. dead or weakened.” More importantly, that article has a list of all the crops that require pollination via insects: “Apples, avocados, blueberries, cherries, cranberries, cucumbers, melons, oranges, grapefruit, pumpkins, squash, sunflowers, tangerines, and watermelon. Also, forage plants like clover and alfalfa need pollination (and cows need clover).”

Regarding that list, I have a pertinent quote by John Muir: “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” The bee population problems couldn’t be a better example of this.

After reading several articles regarding the issue, it seems that the bee crisis is due to unknown causes. However, the following problems are suspected:

• Warmer winters causing the bees to come out of hibernation too early (global climate change).
• Pesticide-resistant “varroa mites” and “tracheal mites” (another reason why chemical pesticides are bad/unsustainable).
• Various bee diseases and/or poison from pesticides.
• Over-development of land.

Most interesting to note is that the “bee crisis” originally began in 1984 and has been steadily getting worse ever since.

My personal theory is that it is due to increased pesticide spraying and land development. I also believe that global warming is only making the situation worse. I don’t suspect that warmer winters would have that much of an effect because plants bloom earlier as a result of warmer winters just as the bees “wake up” from hibernation earlier. I’m not saying that they two aren’t out of sync, but I doubt it would be enough to destroy 70% of the bee population.

Pesticides are much more likely to cause problems with the bees themselves, develop resistant mites, and as these problems increase we end up spraying more of the stuff. Irresponsible pesticide use (and land development) are precisely why Florida lost 90% of its bird population since the 1930s.

Update: It seems I scooped Slashdot by a few hours on this story! While not very impressive, it is an indicator that I’m staying on top of things. More importantly, in the comments for that story there are some very insightful posts:

• By constantly moving hives around beekeepers are exposing them to much more diseases/pests and a much wider array of pesticides than the bees would normally be exposed to in the wild. This could be the “magic bullet” that explains the entire bee crisis. There were a few comments that noted this, but here’s the first (by John Jamieson)
• “Minwee blamed Bush’s ‘No drone left behind’ program.”:http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=224390&cid=18170300
• Albert Einstein once said, “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years left to live.” (noting their importance in crop pollination)
• jc42 wrote that the loss of honeybees has resulted in increased populations of bumblebees. He also noted that honeybees are actually an invasive species to North America in much the same way that sparrows and starlings are.
• zacharria noted that this ‘This is what you get when you breed monocultures of plants or animals.’ Which would explain the autoimmune deficiencies some researchers are finding.
• dave562 described a beetle problem they’re having in Colorado that is the result of global warming The bee crisis may not be related, but a reply by goombah99 is one scary post!