honeybees are responsible for 1/3 of the food we eat on a daily basis. Alfalfa is commonly fed to cattle, yet alfalfa is a honey bee pollinated crop. Melons, cucumbers, apples, blueberries, cranberries, and the list goes on and on are examples of honeybee pollinated crops.

While I empathize with your beekeepers, they can build back up but it is a very expensive proposition.

Darjones - a long term beekeeper

The collapse of bee populations has happened in the past few years if I'm not mistaken. The collapse coincided with a trend to organic growing and other "green" concepts. Prior to that there were many decades of healthy bee colonies. Now, I am not blaming green activities for the collapse. There has not been enough of that to cause such an impact. What I am saying is that after a hundred or two years of beekeeping in this country, during which all sorts of pesticides (DDT and the rest) have come and gone, it is ironic that collapse of bee populations happened in this particular era. I think it is rash to jump to any conclusions about the cause without a solid basis. Tell me if I'm wrong but so far as I know, nothing solid has appeared. The collapse seems a mystery at this point.

An interesting "sidebar", as the journalists put it, is that honey bees are not native to North America. Apparently they pollinate some native species (apples, blueberries, cranberries?) but there must be native pollinators for those.

What do you think? Is there a cause for the collapse which can be associated with a current phenomenon which has not existed in the past? Is the solution to ban pesticides? Which ones? All of them?

Jim

It's a head scratcher all right, It's only the honey bees that seem to be disappearing around here. Still lots of mason bees, bumbles and wasps.

Annette

Jim,

The best evidence so far is that it is caused by one or more viruses and it is linked to the varroa mites. Probably the varroa mites spread the virus(s) throughout the colony as they feed on the bees.

DarJones

There may be more than one cause; some research has suggested that pesticides weakened the bees, and the mites are just a symptom of their weakened condition.

Personally, I believe that the cumulative effect of humans on the ecosystem is responsible. Bees need a good consistent food supply, which means various species blooming in overlapping periods over their life cycle. In my area, there were once pickle & pumpkin patches (rich pollen sources), and wild spaces everywhere filled with prairie flowers. Much of that is gone now, replaced with a monoculture of winter wheat and GM corn & soybeans.

Whether BT pollen from GM corn could play a role is uncertain. I've seen bees feeding in my corn tassels. It is curious that the CCD was noticed shortly after GM corn went into widespread cultivation.

On a more positive note... honeybees disappeared from my area for several years. I have a large population of ground dwelling bees both at home & near my rural garden, so my vegetables were none the worse. But to keep those bees in my yard, and to attract beneficial insects, I began planting perennial flowers, and growing annual flowers throughout my vegetable garden.

The honeybees returned two years ago. They are especially fond of Malva sylvestris "Zebrina", which blooms heavily over a very long period. It self-seeds heavily if allowed, which is either good or bad, depending upon your point of view. For me, I'd rather have a "weed" that attracts bees, and let the volunteers grow wherever there is empty space.

I think I read somewhere that bees eating the pollen from GM crops might be partly to blame, does something to their gut, really makes one wonder.
My garden has been mainly flowering plants for decades, beans and tomatoes of course but haven't had a big veggie garden since the kids left home. The last 3 or 4 years I've been slowly adding more edibles to my garden, I had forgotten how good these tasted compared to store bought.

We do get a few honey bees but only in the fall when the perennial asters (bee magnets) are blooming that's about it though. I put this down to we must have a bee keeper near who has just brought his hives in. I keep looking for them throughout the year and they just don't seem to be around.

Go back 20 years, the first honey bees arrived in number to my garden when the crocus bloomed, now we see the odd bumble bee working them and that's about it.

Annette

Annette,

It is not linked to gm crops. It has been tentatively linked to neonicotinoid pesticides but that link has not been proven. At this point, we can't prove the cause of the mass die-offs. We can see the effect. As evidence that gm crops are not a factor, die-offs have occurred in areas where no gm crops were being grown. As noted above, there may be more than one cause or it may be a group of causes that are cumulative in effect.

What is certain is that we must keep the honeybees if we want to ensure our food supply.

DarJones

Darrel, thanks for clearing that up, one shouldn't believe everything one reads unless it is a proven fact, colony collapse is probably caused by a number of things, climate change being one of them.
I for one try to keep my garden as bee friendly as possible, yellow jackets can be a bit of a problem but one good thing about that is if you are growing broccoli, cabbage or cauliflower you're not going to find any of those little green worms lurking in them :o).

Annette

My alarm lessened somewhat when I found that there are many many pollinators of gardens that I never knew about, solitary and native bees, even the occasional ant. I believe the emptying niche will be filled by other kinds of bees and insects, though it really is distressing to see honeybees so devastatingly decreasing and we don't know why.

Annette, Vancouver Island appears to be close enough to the mainland for there to be a pretty secure passage of other pollinators, so maybe there is less need for alarm than one might think at first. In my state alone, there are several pollinator bees:

Digger Bees
Bumblebees
Sweat Bees
Alkali Bees
Squash Bees
Leafcutter Bees
Carpenter Bees
Mason Bees
Shaggy Fuzzyfoot Bees

Beetles, butterflies, moths, and flies can also be good pollinators.

Fusion, if you really like beekeeping and your honeybees are dying, too, you might consider raising native and other bees, just to keep life going, even if you can't gather any honey.

Here is a link that might be useful: Alternative Pollinators

Anney,

My bees are the picture of health. I am however, aware of problems lots of other beekeepers are dealing with. There are not that many of us left.

DarJones

From observing my garden it seems that insects are quite selective about which plants they visit.

I don't see a lot of honey bees unless some mustard flowers, when I get lots. I must remember to let some mustard go to seed this summer. I see bumble bees all the time, visiting various crops. Yellow jackets swarm the cowpeas. Monarch butterflies love the zinnias. Zeedman's comment about honey bees on malva reminds me that hollyhocks, which are in the malva family, are liked by honey bees.

Thanks for the information relative to GM plants and honey bees, Dar. GM crops, are a natural target for those seeking a boogeyman. It isn't necessary to have absolute proof to suspect a cause, but the suspicion should have some rational basis. There is way too much junk science these days, causing valuable resources to get wasted on useless solutions.

Jim

fusion

I'm glad your colony is doing fine!

Have you read this? This guy must have something against bees and beekeepers.

His points are well taken in some cases but seriously biased and miss entirely the point of using honeybees for pollination.

There are no other pollinators - native or imported - that can be brought together in sufficient numbers to support economic pollination of the mega plantings farmers must grow to be competitive. Native pollinators are entirely inadequate for production of almonds as an example. The same is true for production of blueberries, cranberries, blackberries, cherries, and apples. There is a bit of wriggle room in this since orchard mason bees can be grouped together into nesting boxes that would permit them to pollinate some crops but the expense of doing so is currently significantly higher than the cost of honeybees.

He is perfectly right that we import most of our honey. That is a crying shame in my opinion. We are perfectly capable of producing honey here in the U.S. and did produce all we could consume plus enough to export until about 30 years ago. That is when China and a few other very low cost countries began to ship honey into the U.S. at prices that were below the cost of production in the U.S. which drove our honey producers out of business or forced them to change their business from honey production to pollination.

Taken all in all, they guy's arguments don't stand up to intense scrutiny, but only a beekeeper would recognize the fallacies in his arguments.

My 12 colonies are doing fine thank you. I inspected one colony yesterday and reversed the brood chambers to get the queen to lay eggs in a different part of the hive.

DarJones

We're a few weeks behind you DarJones. Planning to move up to 12 hives this year. I agree. There is PLENTY of potential to produce our own honey, here in the US. A problem I see is that one doesn't learn to keep bees from a book.l A mentor is required. And, there are fewer beekeepers than in past decades. When I started there were plenty of small beekeepers, most of whom were willing to mentor a person. But with the introduction of mites, and the aging of the beekeeper population, etc. there are fewer to teach. It also seems that there are fewer interested in trying.

I did attend an introductory seminar, last month, and was very happy to see a number of young people showing interest.

George
Tahlequah, OK

I am surprised no one mentions the flowers my bees like best- big patches of mint and borage. Both can be pesky but the borage really pulls the bees into the beds with squash and cucumbers, and come up by themselves, they are excellent self-sowers. So I tolerate them for their bee attracting ability. Mints can spread wildly but I have several big stands of them, one a wild mint that likes water, so it grows in my ditch, and suppresses the weedy grasses that were there before. It is high in menthol and makes a nice tea, too. Not only honeybees but small black bees like it. Another advantage is that it has dark bracts, so those nasty crab spiders that are camouflaged yellow or white and hide out in flowers to eat bees can't hide in them very well, as they stick out like a sore thumb.;-) I take a tour of the flowers every day and kill a number of crab spiders on a daily basis, I hate it when I find one dining on a honeybee.

It's great that there are beekeepers here in the bean forum! There is a beekeeping forum on GW, George. Might help with some of the mentoring.

I'd heard that the problem was pesticides and varroa mites becoming resistant. Trucking commercial hives around to pollinate crops might be hard on the bees, too.

Hemnancy, thanks for the advice, I have borage and mint seed and will plant some for the bees. Hope it don't attract Japanese beetles as well, though. They have been a problem the last few years.