Pollinator Decline and Bees

RESEARCH ON POLLINATOR DECLINE AND BEES

The value of bee pollination in human nutrition and food for wildlife is immense and difficult to quantify. 60 to 80% of the world’s flowering plant species are animal pollinated, and 35% of crop production and 60% of crop plant species depend on animal pollinators. It is commonly said that about one third of human nutrition is due to bee pollination. This includes the majority of fruits, many vegetables (or their seed crop) and secondary effects from legumes such as alfalfa and clover fed to livestock.

I began to research into the potential reasons behind this extensive loss of pollinators, and was upset but not suprised to find the majority of these factors are caused by human interferance. 

The global dependency on livestock and agriculture has rendered no less than 50% of the earths landmass uninhabitable for bees. The agricultural practice of planting one crop in a given area year after year leads to extreme malnourishment. Regardless if the planted crop does flower and provide food for the bee, the bee will still be malnourished because a single plant cannot meet the nutrient requirements. Furthermore, the crops needed to support livestock tend to be grains which do not provide nectar.

Studies have linked neonicotinoid pesticide exposure to bee health decline. These studies add to a growing body of scientific literature and strengthen the case for removing pesticides toxic to bees from the market. Pesticides interfere with honey bee brains, affecting their ability to navigate, also preventing bumble bees from collecting enough food to produce new queens.

In 2014 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that bees, butterflies and other pollinators faced increased risk of extinction because of global warming due to alterations in the seasonal behaviour of species. Climate change was causing bees to emerge at different times in the year when flowering plants were not available.

There is also an unexplained phenomena of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) In CCD the majority of worker bees in a colony disappear and leave behind a queen, plenty of food and a few nurse bees to care for the remaining immature bees and the queen. While such disappearances have occurred throughout the history of apiculture, and were known by various names, the syndrome was renamed colony collapse disorder in late 2006 in conjunction with a drastic rise in the number of disappearances of western honey bee colonies in North America and throughout Europe. In the six years leading up to 2013, more than 10 million beehives were lost, nearly twice the normal rate of loss. The strangest thing about CCD in comparison to other sources of bee decline is that little to no dead bees are found in the remains of the collapsed colony, leaving much of the scientist's deciphering up to guesswork.

Although some improvement has been shown in pollinator numbers due to a recent growth in awareness and action, I found statistics from the United States Department of Agriculture for 2015-16 that showed major losses are still taking place. HERE In these findings, operational honey bee colonies with 5 or more hives were down 8% on numbers from exactly a year before. Loss of colonies with 5+ hives was at 17%, nearly unchanged since a year previous which totalled 18%. Varroa mites, a common bee parasite, were also listed as the top stressor for colonies of 5+ hives, however rates of CCD peaked at 114 thousand, a sizeable rise on exactly a year before which saw losses of 92.3 thousand.

As well as their environmental significance, bees also hold a lot of symbolic and conceptual meaning. As hard working little insects they produce valuable byproducts, and are a small cog in a much larger mechanism that ultimately supports much of life on this planet, this marks them out as a symbol of natural providence. Highly social and communicative, they also work together for a larger cause than themselves, and by putting their collective needs first, are able to grow vastly in numbers and thrive. I found an incredibly interesting video about how bees are able to work together and communicate very specific locations. They are also given symbolic protective qualities due to their role in the complex balancing act of an ecosystem and in the defense of their own hive and family, prepared to die in vast numbers in the face of predatory threat.

Mathematically and aerodynamically bumblebees also should not be able to fly, which suggests concepts of overcoming adversity and unprecidented challenges. They are also extremely creative and amazing builders, creating hexagonal shaped wax combs which are specifically designed to be as economical and efficient as possible, storing the maximum honey with minimum losses. Bee colonies have been repeatedly compared to human society by politcal thoerists, this image occurs in Aristotle and Plato; in Virgil and Seneca; in Erasmus and Shakespeare; in Marx and Tolstoy.