[Pollinator] The Christian Science Monitor: Progress on "collapsing" beehives

[Jennifer Tsang]

from the November 08, 2007 edition -
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1108/p13s01-sten.html


Progress on 'collapsing' beehives


Some warned of crop disaster when honeybees started to disappear. Crops
didn't fail, but farmers and beekeepers aren't out of danger yet. 


By Moises Velasquez-Manoff | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

 

New York

Last fall, honeybee hives began showing up mysteriously vacant. Entire adult
bee populations seemingly vanished without a trace, often leaving the queen,
juveniles, and honey behind. 

By spring, what beekeepers had called "autumn collapse" or "fall dwindle
dis--ease" had a new name: Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). CCD hit nearly
one-quarter of commercial beekeeping operations in the United States.
Affected operations lost between 50 and 90 percent of their hives. In an
industry where 10 to 20 percent yearly losses are common, the die-offs were
drastic. In March testimony before the House's Committee on Agriculture,
Diana Cox-Foster, a professor of entomology at Pennsylvania State University
in University Park, called CCD a "serious threat to American agriculture." 

Ultimately, pollination went smoothly this year. Imported bees replenished
domestic stocks, and good weather aided weak hives. Research on CCD has
progressed, though its exact causes remain hidden. But the crisis did
highlight what some say is agriculture's overreliance on honeybees. 

Honeybees pollinate one-third of all US crops - apples, almonds, and
blueberries among them - valued at some $14.6 billion. For years, ecologists
had warned that total reliance on honeybees - and on any monoculture, be it
cotton, potato, or bee - makes a crop vulnerable to failure. Potential
alternate pollinators - some 4,000 kinds of native bees - were having their
own problems, from habitat loss and pesticides to imported diseases. 

Alarmed lawmakers introduced the Pollinator Protection Act into Congress,
which was later rolled into the 2007 Farm Bill. In July, the House
authorized $86.5 million over five years for research on CCD and honeybee
health. In October, the Senate raised the amount to $100 million. Meanwhile,
scientists from several institutions and disciplines brought their expertise
to bear on CCD. And in September, they named a prime suspect: the so-called
Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV). 

As for this year's crop, "I don't want to say it was business as usual, but
it was pretty close," says Kim Flottum, editor of Bee Culture magazine in
Medina, Ohio. "There were enough bees to pollinate everything that needed
pollinating." 

Warm, clear weather, especially in California, helped weak hives do more
pollinating, he says. (Dry conditions also contributed to a record low honey
harvest - 150 million pounds compared with the usual 200 million to 250
million, he says.) Beekeepers augmented hives with bees imported from
Australia. Hive rental fees did rise, he says, but that was due more to
speculating than to a honeybee shortage. 

"Beehives are worth their weight in gold somewhere," says Mr. Flottum. 

We're not in the clear, Flottum and others warn. The money that beekeepers
spent replenishing hives likely put them deep into the red, and the hives
are still weak. Neither bees nor beekeepers can absorb these losses on an
ongoing basis. 

"I'm anxious about what happens this year," says Dennis vanEngelsdorp, the
acting state apiarist with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.
"Migratory beekeepers are the last of their kind, the last nomadic farmers
in America." 

James Doan, a beekeeper out of Hamlin, N.Y., lost more than half his hives
last winter. After getting his numbers back up to 2,000, he lost another
quarter over the summer. 

"If I can get enough money to get out of this business, I'll get out," he
says. "I don't see a lot of future."

Honeybee health problems come at a time when, driven by a growing taste for
specialty crops, demand for pollination services is growing. This year, the
almond harvest increased by 19 percent over last year, topping 1,330 million
pounds for a record crop, according to the Almond Board of California. Of
the estimated 2.5 million hives in America, more than half will converge on
California's almond orchards come spring. 

We're "not really at a crisis situation," says Jeff Pettis, research leader
at the USDA-ARS's Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Md. "We just don't
have much in the way of a buffer." 

A paper recently published in the journal Virology hints at a possible fix.
One of the scientists who originally identified IAPV, Ilan Sela of Hebrew
University in Jerusalem details a honeybee strain that's resistant to the
virus. The bee has retained bits of IAPV genetic material in its own genome
- a naturally occurring phenomenon - and gained some immunity, he says. 

"The whole problem could be addressed by using these transgenic bees," says
Dr. Lipkin.

Meanwhile, honeybees' predicament has brought long-sought attention to the
usefulness - and plight - of natural pollinators. A 2006 National Academy of
Sciences report on the status of pollinators in North America cites "direct
evidence for decline in some pollinator species." And yet, in a forthcoming
study in Ecology Letters, Rachael Winfree, a postdoctoral research associate
at the University of California, Berkeley, finds that, when present, wild
pollinators can do much of the pollinating. 

In the New Jersey watermelon farms she studied, they did 90 percent. As
compared with the vast monocultural fields of California's Central Valley or
the Great Plains, the eastern agricultural landscape is dominated by many
small farms interspersed with patches of natural habitat. 

"Native bees are doing close to complete pollination," she says. "It would
be good to have that kind of backup plan" in other places. 

And that means different land-use practices. Indeed, recognizing wild
pollinators' importance, some states already offer incentives to restore
pollinator habitat. 

For three years, the National Resources Conservation Services (NRCS) in
Montana has offered cost-sharing incentives for farmers and ranchers to grow
pollinator-friendly plants. More recently, NRCS in New Jersey began offering
$750 per acre to landowners who restore "wildflower meadows for
pollinators." 

Conservationists hope for $3 billion to $5 billion more from the new Farm
Bill to boost such cost-sharing measures, says Tom Van Arsdall, the public
affairs representative for the Pollinator Partnership in Washington, D.C.
Although the authorized funds may not make it through appropriations, Van
Arsdall already counts one victory. The Farm Bill now contains the word
"pollinator," he says. It didn't, before. 

"You could call it a watershed moment," he says.

To learn more about honeybees and pollinators in general:

. The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation offers a wealth of fact
sheets and information on natural pollinators:
www.xerces.org/Pollinator_Insect_Conservation/xerces_publications.htm 

. Of particular note is Xerces' Pollinator Conservation Handbook,
downloadable at:
www.xerces.org/Pollinator_Insect_Conservation/Farming_for_Bees_2nd_edition.p
df 

. Bee Culture magazine has bountiful information relating to honeybees.

www.beeculture.com/ 

. Tips on natural pollinators from the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation
Service: www.nrcs.usda.gov/feature/pollinators.html 

Pollinator-friendly land 

Scientists have long warned that reliance on one species for pollination
services - the honeybee - leaves pollination-dependent crops at greater risk
of failure. "We've been saying that for a while. It's crazy to rely on a
single species," says Claire Kremen, a conservation biologist at the
University of California, Berkeley, and a recently named MacArthur Fellow. 

A decline in wild pollinators has only exacerbated the problem. Farmers
can't count on native pollinators for backup. But certain land-management
practices can "bring back some floral diversity" and entice natural
pollinators back to the farmscape, says Dr. Kremen. Here are a few: 

. Learn to tolerate weeds around field edges. They provide food and habitat
for pollinators. 

. Plant "insectary strips" - strips of flowers for insects. They should
include plants that bloom in succession - spring, summer, and fall - so
pollinators have forage at any given time of the year. In very large fields,
grow not just strips, but islands of habitat. 

. Grow hedgerows at field boundaries. They provide good habitat. They also
block wind and halt erosion.

. Leave some land unplowed. Tilling kills native bee species that nest in
the earth.

Full HTML <http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1108/p13s01-sten.html>  version of
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Jennifer Tsang
Coevolution Institute <http://coevolution.org> 
423 Washington St. 5th Fl.
San Francisco, CA 94111-2339
T: 415.362.1137

F: 415.362.3070

www.nappc.org

www.pollinator.org

 

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