[Pollinator] Commercial honeybee hives on forestlands rile greens

[David Inouye]

  Commercial honeybee hives on forestlands rile greens

Marc Heller <https://www.eenews.net/staff/Marc_Heller>, E&E News 
reporterPublished: Wednesday, July 29, 2020


Conservation groups have petitioned the Forest Service to stop allowing 
commercial honeybee hives on national forest lands without more 
environmental review. Piqsels

An environmental group pressed the Forest Service today to scale back 
the placement of commercial honeybee hives on land it manages, calling 
the nonnative bees a potential harm to other pollinators.

In a formal petition to the agency, the Center for Biological Diversity 
said the Forest Service should stop granting streamlined permits to 
people who want to place honeybee hives in national forests.

"The science is clear that honeybees can present a serious threat to 
native bees, thus having significant environmental impacts," the group, 
joined by three other organizations, said in the petition to Forest 
Service Chief Vicki Christiansen and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue.

The Forest Service allows the placement of apiaries on its lands through 
special use permits. Covered by categorical exclusions from the National 
Environmental Policy Act, the beekeeping permits don't require an 
environmental impact statement, which might shed light on competition 
among species and potential diseases the European-derived bees could 
spread to native bees.

During the past decade, the agency has approved permits for about 900 
hives. Officials are considering an application for as many as 4,900 
hives on national forests in Utah, the petitioners said they learned 
through documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

A hive can contain between 10,000 and 60,000 bees, according to the 
Center for Biological Diversity, meaning tens of millions of honeybees 
could be introduced in national forests.

The Forest Service has promoted use of its lands for honeybees since the 
Obama administration, which encouraged agencies to aid both honeybees 
and native species.

The Trump administration reaffirmed its commitment in proposed changes 
to NEPA regulations, including categorical exclusions with reduced 
requirements for public comment.

Forest Service researchers have been studying the potential impact of 
honeybees since 2017, in connection with the Utah applications.

Because of the danger of pesticides to bees, federal agencies have been 
under pressure to make land available in national forests, where 
pesticide use is less of a factor, researchers from Brigham Young 
University told the Forest Service in outlining the study's goals.

In a news release, the CBD said it's sensitive to the plight of 
commercial beekeepers, who are combating a host of troubles including 
parasites that attack bees and the dangers of certain pesticides used on 
farms.

The Forest Service declined to comment on the petition. The agency also 
promotes native bees, including on a bee-related webpage that touts more 
than 4,000 native species and declares, "Bees are the champion pollinators!"

The CBD puts the number of native species at around 3,600. Researchers 
say native bees are threatened by disappearing habitat, pesticides and 
other factors; the western bumblebee has seen a 93% decline in the last 
20 years, by some estimates.

"While viable populations still exist in Alaska and east of the Cascades 
in the Canadian and U.S. Rocky Mountains, the once common populations of 
central California, Oregon, Washington and southern British Columbia 
have largely disappeared," according to the Xerces Society for 
Invertebrate Conservation, which joined on the petition.

Others on the petition are the Grand Canyon Trust and the Utah Native 
Plant Society.

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