Honeybee Decline

           Can you imagine a world without the beauty of certain plants and flowers? Or a world where you never got to taste sweet, smooth honey? With the recent decline of the honeybee population, we could be looking at a reality of having little to no plants, flowers, fruits, vegetables, and even animals. Honeybees are responsible for the pollination of crops. With their decline our world could be in a detrimental state. Honeybee decline has started a chain reaction involving many different factors. Their decline will affect plant life, nut production, fruit production, and vegetable production. With loss of plant life, livestock are in turn affected as well. For example, cattle rely heavily on alfalfa. With little to no alfalfa for cattle to consume how will farmers continue to keep them alive? It is self-explanatory that monetarily society becomes affected by all of this. What society needs to look at is the bigger picture. The effects of the honeybee decline will cause us to lose our agricultural resources if we do not make amends to fix it.

           All over the United States beekeepers were alarmed to find their hives with little to no bees. It was nothing they had ever seen before. It’s like the bees were just leaving their hives and never returning. The beekeepers wanted answers and that’s what they got. From October of 2012 through April of 2013, Harvard did a study on insecticides and its effects on the honeybee. Early research found that neonicotinoid exposure caused the bees to lose their ability to find their home. Carrington quotes in his article, "We demonstrated that neonicotinoids are highly likely to be responsible for triggering 'colony collapse disorder' in honeybee hives that were healthy prior to the arrival of winter," said Chensheng Lu, an expert on environmental exposure biology at Harvard School of Public Health and who led the work”. Lu and his team found a direct link, colony collapse disorder and their research was startling. The study found that 6 out of the 12 neonicotinoid colonies were directly linked to colony collapse disorder (CCD). The bees had left their hives and some were found with symptoms resembling CCD, which later they died. That same study showed the colonies who were not exposed to neonicotinoids had only lost 1 out of their 12 hives and it was due to an infection by the parasitic fungus Nosema. They were able to conclude this because the bees remained in the hive with the infection, as opposed to colony collapse disorder where the bees flee their homes never to return due to their inability to navigate back to the hive. The United States is not the only country that has taken notice to colony collapse disorder. The article “Colony Collapse Disorder in Europe” reports “the first CCD case from outside of the USA” (Dainat, Vanengelsdorp, Neumann, 123). This article written in 2012, reports that honeybee decline has been “evident in the last 5 years” (123). We need to ban uses of particular neonicotinoids because it is killing off the honeybee population. If a ban is not obtainable, a restraint or a limit on the amount of neonicotinoids people can use needs to be put into place.

           Worrying about your neighbor spraying insecticides is one thing but there are other factors that have caused the decline of everyone’s favorite pollinator, the factor being the varroa mite. In the article “Varroa Mites: Beekeeper Enemy Number 1”, Ramsey and Engelsdorp state that “ the parasitic varroa mite, plays a large, if not the largest, role in the high rates of colony mortality experienced in many places around the world” (1). The varroa mite is an inevitable danger when it comes to beekeeping, something that is nearly unavoidable. This particular parasite appears to be the most prominate among pests. Bayer’s Bee Care Center in Germany have even gone to great lengths to blame this particular pest to save their own behinds. In an article from The New York Times “Bayer is one of the major producers of a type of pesticide that the European Union has linked to the large-scale die-offs of honey bee populations in North America and Western Europe” (Hakim). This particular pesticide being neonicotinoids. Bayer has made speculations that the varroa mite is more to blame than the pesticide that writes their paychecks at Bayer Bee Center.

           So now you are probably asking, how can we fix the problem? What are the possible solutions to honeybee decline? Some parts of the world have begun to realize that there is a problem. From the article “When the Hive Mind is Wrong” McIntyre describes downtown Toronto and a group of wannabe beekeepers. She discusses the recent honeybee decline in the past six years and how Canadians are taking the matter into their own hands and trying to solve the problem. The article takes a turn describing their efforts may not be helpful but harmful. The article suggests that despite Canadians efforts it is basically impossible to fix the problem of honey decline. Mcintyre suggests other insects as pollinators and how they are just as useful as honey bees. In an article written by Ron Smith titled “Managed Pollinator Protection Plan seeks to reverse honeybee decline”, he makes the argument that the honeybee decline is to be blamed on three factors; health, stress, and pesticides. Smith poses the argument that honeybee health has been on the decline because of the “overuse of domestic bees in places such a almond orchards; varroa mite infection and disease” and that honeybee stress has been on the rise because honeybees are “traveling all over the U.S. for pollination of crops; lack of genetic diversity (most honeybee queens have come from the same line for many years)” (14). Smith introduces a protection plan in his article that creates an alliance between beekeepers and applicators called the Managed Pollinator Protection Plan (MP3). Smith says that the MP3 “is a voluntary plan”. The plan itself focuses on “communication between growers and beekeepers, minimizing the use of pesticides, and public outreach” just to name a few of its factors (Smith, 14). In doing so, we can help create a more controlled environment favorable for the honeybee population. While these two solutions are both problematic on their own, you wont reap the benefits of honey production. However, you won’t lose the ecosystem service of pollination that we take for granted.

           Along with the decline, problems have begun to arise. In an article stated that “Overall, more than $20 billion of annual harvests rely on pollination, according to U.S. estimates, with the almond harvest alone valued at $4 billion a year” (Tomson and Tracy). The agricultural world that everyone relies on not just farmers is in a detrimental state because of this epidemic. An article from National Geographic puts the reality into perspective for us as consumers by stating that, “About a third of our foods (some 100 key crops) rely on these insects, including apples, nuts, all the favorite summer fruits (like blueberries and strawberries), alfalfa (which cows eat), and guar bean (used in all kinds of products). In total, bees contribute more than $15 billion to U.S. crop production, hardly small potatoes” (Holland).

           All of this information is a lot to take in and a lot to think about in regard to our future well-being. It has been made apparent that honeybees being our most valuable pollinator, that issues and problems are going to arise. It has also been made apparent that something needs to be done in regard to eliminating the curse of the honeybee decline. With pesticides such as neonicotinoids and pests such as the varroa mite we are lacking a positive outlook at the situation. We know what some of the potential factors are in the cause of honeybee decline, it is now our job to fight the fight for our precious honeybees.

Works Cited

Carrington, Damian. “Honeybees abandoning hives and dying due to insecticide use, research finds.” The Guardian, US Edition, 9 May 2014 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/09/honeybees-dying-insecticide-harvard-study. Accessed on 27 March 2018.

Dainat B, et al. “Colony Collapse Disorder in Europe.” Environmental Microbiology Reports, vol. 4, no. 1, 2012, pp. 123–5., doi:10.1111/j.1758-2229.2011.00312.x.

Hakim, Danny. “Accused of Harming Bees, Bayer Researchers a Different Culprit”. The New York Times Online, 11 Dec. 2013 https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/12/business/energy-environment/accused-of-harming-bees-bayer-researches-a-different-culprit.html. Accessed on 26 March 2018.

Holland, Jennifer. “The Plight of the Honeybee”. National Geographic Online, 10 May 2013 https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130510-honeybee-bee-science-european-union-pesticides-colony-collapse-epa-science/. Accessed on 26 March 2018.

Mcintyre, Catherine. "When the Hive Mind Is Wrong." Maclean's, vol. 130, no. 9, Oct. 2017, pp. 16-17. Academic Search Complete. Accessed 16 February 2018.

Ramsey, Samuel, and Dennis Van Engelsdorp. “Varroa Mites: Beekeeper Enemy Number 1.” Mellifera, vol. 16, no. 1, 2016, pp.1-3. EbscoHost. Accessed on 27 March 2018.

Smith, Ron. "Managed Pollinator Protection Plan Seeks to Reverse Honeybee Decline." Southwest Farm Press, vol. 42, no. 20, 15 Oct. 2015, p. 14. Academic Search Complete. Accessed 16 February 2018.

Tomson, Bill and Ryan Tracy. "Bee Deaths Put Crops at Risk." Wall Street Journal, vol. 261, no.          107, 08 May 2013, p. A3. Academic Search Complete. Accessed 16 February 2018.