America’s honey bees are in trouble, and you should be very concerned.
Honey bees give us a lot more than just honey. From fruits and veggies to nuts and beans, they are responsible for one out of every three mouthfuls of food you eat.
That’s because more than 100 American crops depend on honey bees for pollination. While honey bees are in the process of collecting pollen and nectar to eat, they transfer pollen between plants, allowing those plants to grow and reproduce.
But our honey bee population is on the decline, both nationally and globally. The total number of managed honey bee colonies in the U.S. has decreased from 6 million in 1947 to just 2.5 million today, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Honey bee colonies have been dying off at historic rates in recent winters, with an average loss rate of 30 percent compared to historical rates of 10 to 15 percent.
There are several factors responsible for the death of our nation’s bees. One is a loss of natural forage, as increased suburban development and Americans’ love of perfectly manicured lawns have limited the amount of natural food sources for honey bees.
“Green lawns are like deserts to bees,” said Chris Kelly at a Talmage Farm Agway beekeeping seminar yesterday evening. “They’re unnatural. The use of herbicides and weed killers destroys the flowers bees need to survive, so these lawns end up becoming a sterile area for them.”
Kelly, who is the director of agricultural operations at WRS Environmental Services, added that the heavy use of pesticides on East End farms is another danger to the North Fork’s honey bee population.
But mites – particularly Varroa mites – are what Kelly describes as “the most destructive pest to ever affect honey bees.”
“When these mites first started showing up, we beekeepers wanted a silver bullet,” Kelly said. “We sprayed the hell out of them with heavy pesticides. But we ended up creating a superbug instead.”
Pesticides actually changed where the mite preferred to host, Kelly said. When they first started appearing, mites usually could be found on the exterior of the bee, making it easy for beekeepers to identify them. But after pesticides killed off the mites on the bees’ exteriors, the mites hosting inside the bees survived and reproduced, passing along that behavior.
“It’s harder to spot now,” Kelly said, “and it’s harder to treat.”
All of these factors may contribute to a phenomenon known as “colony collapse disorder,” which Kelly described as “the single biggest threat to honey bee colonies today.” Colony collapse disorder occurs when there is an abrupt and unexplained disappearance of all the adult bees in a hive, with little or no buildup of dead bees.
Nobody can explain what happens to them. The bees simply vanish, abandoning their hives en masse.
Colony collapse disorder has contributed to the disappearance of almost an entire third of the nation’s honey bee colonies. And as the honey bee population continues to decline, your favorite fruits, veggies and nuts — many of which depend completely on bees for pollination — could soon be in danger.
So what can we do to help them?
Not everyone has the time or resources to maintain their own bee colonies as a beekeeper, but the average homeowner can do several things to make a yard more friendly for honey bees.
Keep in mind that honey bees away from their hives sting very rarely — only when they’re stepped on or roughly handled — so making your yard more honey bee-friendly won’t make it friendlier for their nastier cousins, yellow jackets and wasps, which feed on insects and sugar rather than flowers and plants.
“The average homeowner could simply plant a pollinator garden,” Kelly said at the seminar. “Aster, lavender, salvia – these are all pollen-friendly plants.”
Trees such as lindens and fruit trees are also great pollinators, Kelly said.
“If every homeowner planted just a 50 square foot pollinator garden, that would make life a lot easier for these honey bees,” Kelly said.
There is even a Peconic Estuary program that includes homes within the Peconic Estuary watershed area, which surrounds the Peconic Bay and includes both the Riverhead and Southold townships. Homeowners can earn up to $500 in rebates to offset the cost of installing “green infrastructure,” which includes native plant gardens.
Kelly also suggests “taking it easy” with pesticides and weed killers.
“I will never understand America’s obsession with a perfectly green lawn,” he said. “We’ve clung to it for so long. But those natural weeds are great pollinators for honey bees.”
