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Inc. magazine recently featured another article about the disastrous effects of colony collapse disorder affecting honey bees around North America.
The US Department of Agriculture reports that 30% of hives have been lost to this mysterious epidemic over each of the past 2 years. Even worse, this past winter, over 1/3 of US bee colonies were lost for the fourth year in a row! Colony collapse disorder follows die-offs from the South African beetle in the 1990s and the vampire mite in the 1980s.
No one knows when this current bee calamity will end or if it will get worse.
Even Ted Dennard, CEO of Savannah Bee Company, a specialty raw honey maker my family visited last summer while on vacation, doesn’t seem to have a clue. Dennard terms the problem “a constant battle against nature.”
Since this never-ending fight against nature doesn’t seem to be working very well considering the disastrous drop in bee colonies that continues unabated since 2006, perhaps beekeepers should try working with nature instead.
Organic beekeepers across North America, for instance, are not experiencing colony collapse. Why is this crucial distinction consistently absent from news reports on this crisis?
Perhaps the little known fact that conventional bees are bred and handled much like factory-farmed animals is part of the reason.
Conventional Bee Colonies Treated Like Factory Farmed Animals
The bees that are disappearing are the hyper-bred type who live in hives that are fumigated for mites. They are bred for large size which requires a bigger larval cell and a longer larval phase. These changes make the conventional bees more susceptible to the parasitic varroa mites. Varroa mites can gradually weaken and destroy a large bee colony over the span of a few years. Natural sized bees seem to detect and destroy the presence of the mites whereas the hyper-sized bees do not.
Nonorganic bees are also fed antibiotics and subjected to many environmental stressors like hauling over large distances and exposure to GMO crops and agricultural pesticides.
In samples of conventional bees, wax, and pollen, scientists have found traces of over 121 different pesticides. When farmers begin to mix and match pesticides to the needs of their crops, the combination effects on pollinating bees in the area are completely unknown.
Organic Hives Healthier than Conventional
Conventional beekeepers could clearly learn a thing or two from organic beekeepers. Organic hives are not subjected to pesticides as their beekeepers instead use methods that attempt to mimic the activities of bees found in the wild. The size of organic bees is the same as those found in the wild as oversized larval cells are not utilized.
Instead of switching back to larval cells that are the same size as wild honey bees to reduce mite infestation and the need for fumigating the hives, conventional beekeepers have instead opted for “splits”, a technique that divides larger hives in two and introduces a new queen. While this band-aid approach seems to have reduced the problem, it certainly does not solve it.
Hence, the bee crisis continues. Or, should I say the conventional bee crisis continues.
Feral and organic honey bees are doing just fine, thank you.
The "larger bee / smaller bee" thing is wide open for debate. The evidence just isn't there. There may be something to it, but there are plenty of "large bee" beekeepers successfully keeping bees year on year without treatment.
On the balance, many people that are taking the route of non-treatment are struggling through years of massive and very costly losses.
As for the chemicals, no one wants to use them, but without them there would be no beekeeping industry right now. Our pollinators would have gone utterly bankrupt.
The bees are recovering (not recovered) now. Time to wean ourselves off the chemicals.
By the way, in the USA, there really are nearly no "organically raised" honey bees. Show me 10s of thousands of acres of unpolluted forage… and then you can make that claim. It's misleading and distracting. Hence, I am a fan of Certified Naturally Grown and other, more honest, certifications and labeling.
I guess I should note that I am not sure about the actual regulations for organic beekeepers. It may be that so long as the hive is maintained organically it doesn't matter where the bees forage. I haven't looked into it.
We are not certified organic (we rent land from the University who will not allow us to certify it) so we just let our bees roam and hope they stay close to home and forage in the organic gardens.
Hi, Thanks for following me on Twitter. Like the topics of your articles. Very informative. Shall keep coming. Keep in touch.
Hi Kimberly, thank you for posting about your experiences as an organic beekeeper. I did not know the "5 mile" rule for organic beekeeping! Very interesting info!
I have read that High Fructose Corn Syrup is a major culprit to killing off the bees, too.
This post is VERY great timing. I had no idea how conventional bee hives are treated! My garden isn't doing great because there aren't any pollinators around anymore. Where did the bees go? I am assuming that they vanished due to the farm a few hundred yards away spraying their crops. Now I have to pollinate my veggies by hand. When will conventional farmers learn that pesticides are not the cure for neglecting their stewardship of the land.
Thanks for this post!
"Nicotine Bees" is a great movie to watch that talks about how pesticides harm bees.
Surprise, surprise. People fighting nature and losing — AGAIN!
It also bugs me that it's called "conventional." That seems to imply that it's the right way to do things, the way it's been done for awhile. But these modern farming methods are really a very new invention. Ugh.
When will people learn?
I help keep two bee hives for the student farm at the University of Wisconsin. We aim to keep them organically but one of the greatest difficulties is just the fact that bees can fly up to 5 miles in search of food. In order to truly be organic you must know that 5 miles in every direction of your hives there are no chemicals being used. Something to think about when you purchase organic honey.
As for the hive, we do not use any chemicals. To treat for mites we sprinkle powdered sugar over the bees. This encourages them to clean themselves and they in turn clean the mites off.
We did also loose one of our hives over this past winter, but not due to colony collapse. (We harvested slightly too much honey on accident and they starved before we realized the problem) It was a sad day 🙁
I spoke with my bee keeper about this issue too. I live in Central Florida. He said that is near impossible to truly find organic honey in Florida due to horrible zoning laws. You can’t be within five miles of XYZ and its very, very rare to find that here. He said they haven’t had any problems with colony collapse. They use very limited chemicals if any during production. He said he doesn’t even know of one truly organic bee farm in Florida that is actually doing what it says its doing.
I just got done asking him about pollen today. He said that most pollen is extracted in desert climates like Spain or Cali – in literally the desert. It is impossible to buy local pollen here he said because of the climate. He then went on to tell me that because they harvest pollen in such remote areas that there is little worry of the pollen having pesticides from treated plants.. and organic is just a labeling trick. They have no way to backup their claims of being organic or not even if it is certified.
I did not know that about the breeding of conventional bees. You learn something new everyday.