[Pollinator] Wild Things - ARD Article

[Ladadams at aol.com]

 Wild Things

By SANDY MILLER HAYS, Agricultural Research Service
You've probably already heard that something strange is going on in the world 
of honeybees. In fact, if honeybees could suddenly talk, perhaps the first 
words out of their mouth might be "Houston, we have a problem."

Thanks to a very mysterious syndrome known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), 
beginning in the fall of October 2006, some beekeepers began reporting the 
losses — no, make that the disappearance — of as much as 90 percent of their 
bees.

An alfalfa leafcutting bee (Megachile rotundata) on an alfalfa flower. This 
bee is widely used for pollination by alfalfa seed growers. ARS scientists in 
Logan, Utah, are always on the lookout for wild bees that can be recruited to 
help the honey bee with the huge job of pollinating the nation’s crops.    
(Photo by Peggy Greb)

That's right: The bees were simply...gone. The main symptom of CCD is a 
largely empty hive, with no or very few adult honeybees present, but a live queen 
and some immature bees. There aren't even any bodies lying around as clues!

I can almost hear you saying, "Hey, we've all got problems, so why should I 
get all worked up about bees?" The answer is, because bees get all worked up 
about us, indirectly. That phrase "busy bee" didn't come out of nowhere; bees 
are responsible for the pollination of a enormous variety of crops that we 
depend on every day.

In fact, about one mouthful in three of our typical American diet directly or 
indirectly benefits from honeybee pollination. And that includes that sizz
ling sirloin steak on your plate, because bees also pollinate important forages 
such as alfalfa that help "fuel" the cow who's going to wind up as your steak. 
The California almond crop alone uses 1.3 million colonies of bees for 
pollination — roughly half of all the honeybees in the United States — and that need 
is expected to grow to 1.5 million colonies by 2010.

The good news is, the scientists of the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) 
are all over this problem. In April 2007, they held a CCD research workshop and 
brought together more than 80 of the major bee scientists, bee industry 
representatives and others to map out a research agenda. From that, they developed 
a Research Action Plan to coordinate investigations to discover what factors 
may be causing CCD and what actions need to be taken.

The researchers are focusing on four areas of concern: pathogens 
(disease-causing organisms), parasites, environmental stresses, and bee management 
stresses such as poor nutrition. The experts think the culprit behind CCD isn't 
likely to be just one of those, but a combination of any or all of the four.

In the time-honored tradition of not putting all of one's eggs in a single 
basket, ARS scientists also are focusing attention on wild bees that might be 
able to help the beleaguered honeybees carry out their vital pollination chores.

One promising "wild thing" has the tongue-twisting name Osmia aglaia. This is 
a beautiful, emerald-green bee, small in size but big on pollinating the 
flowers of blackberry and raspberry bushes.

This is just one of what the scientists call "non-honey bees" — bees that 
don't produce honey, but do just about everything else you'd want a bee to do. 
The wild bees are also sometimes called "solitary bees," because while they 
might make their nests near other bees, they're not into the communal lifestyle of 
the honeybees.

Another wild bee that can be particularly useful is the alfalfa leafcutting 
bee, which, as its name implies, is a lively pollinator of that particular 
forage crop. It gets its picturesque name from its habit of cutting plant leaves 
into tidy little pieces that it uses to make leafy nests for its young. And 
there's the blue orchard bee, which labors in our apple, cherry and almond 
orchards.

If we're going to put these wild bees to work for us in a really useful way, 
we need to learn more about their ways. So ARS has a lab in Logan, Utah, 
that's North America's only scientific institution devoted exclusively to providing 
practical, science-based knowledge on how to manage these wild bees.

Rest assured, no one's saying that we're all going to go hungry next week 
because of our recent woes with CCD and the disappearing honeybees. But by 
learning more about the wild bees and how they can be used to fill in the gaps in 
our pollination needs, I'd say the ARS scientists are doing a good job of 
hedging our bets!


 


The Agricultural Research Service is the chief in-house scientific research 
agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. You can read more about ARS 
discoveries at http://www.ars.usda.gov/news/












































































































































































Laurie Davies Adams
Executive Director
Coeovlution Institute
425 Washington Street, 5th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94111
415 362 1137 (p)
415 362 3070 (f)
LDA at coevolution.org
www.coevolution.org
www.nappc.org
www.pollinator.org

National Pollinator Week is June 22-28, 2008. Create or attend an event in 
your state. Visit www.pollinator.org National Pollinator Week for complete 
details.

Join the Pollinator Partnership working to protect agriculture and ecosystems 
- visit www.pollinator.org
.




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