Wanted: Pollinators

Today I was thinking about the ongoing honey bee collapse while making an orchard mason bee condo. If you haven't heard about it yet, vast numbers of colonies of honey bees are disappearing all over North American and Europe. The disappearances started last year but the news only recently hit the mainstream media. What is startling is that no one knows what has happened to them. Certainly honey bees are very susceptible to epidemics, being colonial, and to pesticides, being insects, but at least some of them will die in the hive, giving beekeepers some evidence to work with. They don't just vanish.

From what little I know about bees, it seems likely that whatever the problem is, it is affecting their ability to navigate and find their way back to the hive. One possible culprit I've heard about is the new nicotine-based pesticides which have been known to cause disorientation in insects. We may be witnessing another case of Silent Spring, except that the sound that has been silenced by pesticides is the buzzing of bees in the flowers.

The problem for the species that has probably caused all this is that a large proportion of our food, perhaps a third, is dependent on the industrial honey bee pollination. I say industrial because it is very much an industry. The way modern agriculture works is that the farmer eliminates all the natural vegetation on the farm and kills all the non-crop plants with chemicals, thus eliminating all the habitat and food plants for native pollinators. The farmer must then pay to import hives of honey bees for pollination services. It is astonishing that farmers would rather squeeze in that extra acre than leave some habitat for pollinators (not to mention other beneficial species, such as wasps, snakes, songbirds, and raptors).

This is just another reminder of what a house of cards our food supply is. One third of our agriculture is dependent on one very vulnerable species, and the rest is not much better off. Global warming is already decreasing grain production, and will continue to do so. The years of surpluses are over, and we are rapidly eating our way through our reserves. I should say eating and driving, because we are now competing with our own cars for fuel. Those who can't compete—that is, most of the world—will have to go the way of the bees.

If you would like to promote native pollinators, try making an orchard mason bee condo. Nothing could be simpler: you basically drill a bunch of holes in some wood. For full instructions, visit Gardening in Western Washington.

Comments

[The Cloudwalking Owl]

I remember seeing a program on the CBC's "Nature of Things" on this subject. The biologist that was the focus of the program had his grad students do some research on urban populations of native bees and found that they were doing exceptionally well. His theory was that the movement away from lawns to "naturalized" yards was creating good habitat. My experience with my little urban oasis ( http://www.yougrowgirl.com/lawns_gardens.php ) would seem to bear this out, as I see hordes of native bees around my home.

[Sylvia]

Very nice, Bill!

[JLB]

Thanks for sharing this Sylvia! I never thought of making a "bee house"... I'll have to give it a try!