The Vanishing Bees:
Colony Collapse Disorder
I chose to write my senior thesis on Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). CCD is a condition where bees become neurologically and physically compromised and abandon their hives, leaving the queen and the developing bees unattended. Without the support of the worker bees, the hive declines and then dies. Due to the increasing use of systemic pesticides, monoculture farming practices, and the stress of shipping bees long distances to agricultural sites there is an epidemic of CCD in the United States. Since approximately 1/3 of the food we eat is due to the pollinating activity of the bees, I thought this was an important subject to research and report on with the hope of making more people aware of a problem that impacts the entire planet and its inhabitants.
John Harr
The Vanishing Bees: Colony Collapse Disorder
Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is a disorder where honey bees desert the hive and leave their babies to die, depleting the colony completely. It took scientists 8-10 years to find out what was causing this phenomenon. It was first reported in the US in 2006; since then the bee population has been rapidly declining (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). This paper will examine the possible causes of CCD and suggest ways to reverse this honey bee affliction that could adversely impact our food supply.
Bees symbolize unity, hard work, and cooperation.
One out of every three bites of food is provided because a bee did what it was suppose to do (Pollan, 2009). About 1/3 of our food is made possible by the pollinating activity of the bees. One bee visits approximately 100,000 flowers in a single day (Stone, 2010).
According to D.M. Stone (2010) writing in Wikipedia, the life of a honey bee colony is perennial. There are three castes of honey bees: queens, which produce eggs; drones or males, which mate with new queens and have no stinger; and workers, which are all non-reproducing females. The queen lays eggs singly in cells of the comb. Larvae hatch from eggs in three to four days. They are then fed by worker bees and develop through several stages in the cells. Cells are capped by worker bees when the larva pupates (transitions to a more mature state). Queens and drones are larger than workers and so require larger cells to develop. A colony may typically consist of tens of thousands of individuals (Stone, 2010).
Development from egg to emerging bee varies among queens, workers and drones. Queens emerge from their cells in 16 days, workers in 21 days and drones in 24 days (Stone, 2010). Only one queen is usually present in a hive. New virgin queens develop in enlarged cells through selective feeding of royal jelly by workers (royal jelly is secreted from the worker bee’s head’s from a special gland; it is fed to all the larvae). When the existing queen ages or dies or the colony becomes very large a new queen is raised by the worker bees (they feed large amounts of the royal jelly to a few select larvae in larger cells within the honey comb – feeding the larvae the large amounts triggers development of the new queen) (Stone, 2010).
The virgin queen takes one or several flights during which she is inseminated by the drones and once she is fertilized starts laying eggs in the hive. A fertile queen is able to lay fertilized or unfertilized eggs (Stone, 2010). Each unfertilized egg contains a unique combination of 50% of the queen's genesand develops into a drone. The fertilized eggs develop into either workers or virgin queens (Stone, 2010).
The average lifespan of a queen is three to four years; drones usually die upon mating or are expelled from the hive before the winter; and workers may live for a few weeks in the summer and several months in areas with an extended winter (Stone, 2010).
There is only one queen bee in the hive and all the female bees work to support the queen. Nurse bees aid the queen and the babies. Guard bees protect the queen and foragers that go gather pollen. Bees are a predominantly female society. All the worker bees are female and make up to 95 percent of the population. Their jobs are to make honey, build the combs, guard the hive, and raise the young; the drone’s only job is to mate with the queen (Stone, 2010).
Honey gathering has been around since ancient times. It is depicted in hieroglyphics and writings of ancient times throughout history. Many rain forest tribes still gather honey within sacred ceremonies (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). The tribes usually pray before taking the honey and are careful to maintain the integrity of the hive, only taking as much as they need, but leaving plenty to support the bees.
The bee is equipped with a fury body that creates static electricity to attract pollen (Stone, 2010). Special notches exist on their front legs to clean the antenna. Bees are equipped with great sensors to pick up all types of environmental info.
David Hackenberg was the first bee keeper to alert authorities about the missing bees (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). He owns and operates 3000 bee hives in Florida. He has been raising bees since 1962. He normally ships 3 semi trucks loads of hives at a time to various places. But lately has only been shipping 2 trucks because of the decrease in bees.
In October 2006, he found 400 of his hives empty (abandoned) and another 30 hives had decreased numbers in the colony and the bees left were infected with a fungus. Just three weeks before, they had been active hives thriving with bees. They had left their young to starve. There were no signs of the bees dying off; no bodies to prove it, they had obviously left everything behind for some odd reason. Other beekeepers began to report the same issue. Some people on the street said they were bad beekeepers even after 40 plus years in the beekeeping industry.
Denis van Engelsdorp is an apiarist at Pennstate University’s Department of Entomology (an apiarist is a beekeeper). In 2007 he participated in a US formed task force to study the problem, and they named the problem Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) . Symptoms include : no adult bees left at the hive, no evidence of mites or diseases to explain the problem. The bees abandon the queen and the babies. They leave very suddenly and without warning. Dennis set up a test apiary to monitor to hives. He checked two of the hives in the morning and they seemed normal but by that evening 3000 bees had disappeared never to return (The Vanishing Bees, 2009).
Beekeeping has always been important from the beginning of recorded history. As mentioned before, ancient Egyptians used to float bee hives down the Nile to pollinate far off farms and gardens. Today beekeepers transport hives on trucks and pollinate 15 billion dollars worth of food every year (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). Beekeepers make most of their money transporting bees to the farm lands. They travel up to 4 days on the truck, through extreme elevation changes, temperature changes and up to 5 or 6 different locations in as many months (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). This causes lots of stress for the bees. The beekeepers are worried because when the bees begin to disappear it is an indication that something is terribly wrong on the planet. What is bad for the bees is bad for all of us.
In Yuma Arizona one of the most extensive losses of bees occurred in 2008 (The Vanishing Bees, 2009)… it’s a new problem that no one has ever seen before (qtd. from The Vanishing Bees, 2009). Thirty five states have been impacted by CCD (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). Scientists studied bees wax and pollen around the nation. One problem was that there were no bees left behind to study. The bees they did find had every known pathogen indicating that their immune systems were not functioning. They looked at a number of causes (mites, funguses, the Israeli acute paralysis virus), but none of this was the cause of CCD (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). Beekeepers have became really good at replacing their hives because they lose 30% of their hives every year (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). They split a healthy colony in half and plant a new queen in the split off hive.
Michael Pollan is a famous author and he is also a professor at UCLA Berkeley. He says we no longer have enough American bees to pollinate the almond crop in California (Pollan, 2006). They started importing bees from Australia to make up for the deficit. It is highly stressful for the bees crossing multiple time zones. Scientists have tried to treat them with antibiotics to see if it would stop the collapse of the colonies, but the effort was unsuccessful, so now we have honey that is tainted by the antibiotics as we ingest it, and this comes at a time of overuse of the antibiotics in general.
Holistic beekeepers keep smaller numbers of hives and they do not truck them off (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). They plant a variety of flowers so the bees have a diverse diet. They do not think CCD is due to disease. They believe that large monoculture agricultural practices which limit the variety of food available to the bees is one reason that CCD developed (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). These large operations are using large amounts of pesticides. There are places in Illinois and Iowa where the ground water is so poisonous that you cannot drink it (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). One thing that has weakened the bees is how the commercial beekeepers treat the queen. While the workers and drones live up to a couple weeks the queen can live up to 5 years. The commercial beekeepers kill the queen after a few months and replace her with an artificially inseminated queen (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). The queen is knocked out with carbon dioxide and injected with semen. Holistic beekeepers are concerned that the artificially inseminated queens are being produced from a very narrow gene pool (The Vanishing Bees, 2009).
Another reason the bees are being weakened is because beekeepers take the honey out of the hives and replace it with high fructose corn syrup before they ship the bees (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). They feed it to the adult bees and the adult bees are feeding it to their young and it is like feeding a human child a bunch of junk food that cannot be very good for the developing bees. Honey is extremely nutrient rich and good for bees and humans; we are messing with the natural order of life with all this artificial feeding and breeding.
Organic beekeepers do not use high fructose sugars or mite pesticides; they let the natural order of the bee hive go as it should. One problem for people who keep bees is that they cannot make a living just off the honey. Once you start being a commercial beekeeper you have to start with all the artificial feedings and making artificial queens in order to transport them elsewhere. They transport the bees to increase their income because they cannot make enough money by selling the honey products of their bees. China is importing honey blends that consist of 49% honey and 51% high fructose syrup. Therefore, China is able to under sell Americans who produce honey. It is not as healthy or fresh a product, but people buy it because it is so much cheaper and they do not realize that it is only part honey (The Vanishing Bees, 2009).
Billy Rhodes is another commercial beekeeper from Florida (qtd. from The Vanishing Bees, 2009). He states that all the big food companies are buying all the cheap honey blends from China, but if they would buy American honey then the American beekeepers would not have to transport bees in trucks to make money. Thirty five percent of the fruits and veggies we eat are imported from all around the world (Pollan, 2006). It is predicted that within the next 10 years most of our fruits and veggies will be imported (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). It is bad enough that we are dependent on foreign oil; if we become dependent on foreign food also, we are in trouble.
In 2008 the worst case of CCD was recorded in California (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). Two billion bees were gone in a few weeks time (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). Up until the 1950s the typical American farm was diversified in what they grew on the farm. No American farms utilized monoculture practices. The bees would not hang around a monoculture farm operation because the plants are only in bloom for approximately three weeks and then there is only one kind of plant for the bees to choose from over thousands of acres. You do not find monoculture in nature; monoculture is an unbalanced state in nature (Pollan, 2006). You need a lot of intervention in monoculture because pests love monocultures (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). Monocultures are a huge frat party for pests because there is food in abundance.
Pesticides developed from chemical warfare technology in WWI in Germany (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). After the war was over they switched the chemical weapon use to pesticide use so they could continue to make money. First we try and kill soldiers with the chemicals and now we are killing bugs with it. Then we eat the food we spray with the pesticides, and seem confused as to why the bees would become neurologically impaired to the degree that they left their hives. In the 40s early 50s they were spraying DDT along city streets to combat the polio virus (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). We have not used common sense in utilizing pesticides.
Jade Feldmen, Executive director of Beyond Pesticides and a member of the National Organic Standards Board (qtd. in The Vanishing Bees, 2009) points out that with old styles of sprayed on pesticides, if the application created a problem for the bees you knew it right away because you would see a lot of dead bees. Beekeepers would move the bees during spraying and found they did not die; however, the new pesticides are systemic in nature and they stay within the plant throughout the life span of the plant. A lot of times systemic pesticides show up in the pollen and nectar of the plants presenting an ever present toxicity to the bees as they forage (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). The systemic pesticides weaken the immune system, impair digestive tracks, and result in progressive neurological damage. It can cause the bees to become confused and lose their way back to the hive. Bees cannot survive longer than 24 hours outside the hive (The Vanishing Bees, 2009).
Systemic pesticides such as Gaucho and Poncho came in to use in 2003 (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). The bees can be exposed to the pesticides and not have any symptoms for many months because the doses are sub-lethal. When symptoms of systemic pesticide poisoning do show up it is usually devastating. The bees are not getting a lethal dose of the pesticides, but they bring the pollen back to the hive, and feed it to the developing babies. As a result, the young are not developing correctly. The chemical companies are only required to test the pesticides on adult bees. They are not required to test the effects of the pesticides on the baby bees (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). The beekeepers are concerned about the delivery of sub-lethal doses of pesticide over long periods of time to the young. During the study that the USDA did there were large amounts of pesticide residue in the honey, in the wax of the hive, and in the bees themselves.
France and Germany banned the use of systemic pesticides because their bees were vanishing too. Those two counties decided it was safer to study the effects of the pesticides before they released them for use on the crops. America chooses to continue use of the pesticides until they are proven unsafe. Fifteen years ago, CCD appeared in France. The problems began in 1994 the same time farmers started using the systemic pesticide Gaucho (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). The French filmed the bees feeding on organic crops and crops treated with the pesticide. On the organic crops the bee worked steadily to collect pollen in a precise manner. On the crops treated with pesticide, the bee was disoriented and confused (The Vanishing Bees, 2009).
The French beekeepers rioted in the streets against Bayer, the company that makes Gaucho. They filed a lawsuit against Bayer, obtained proof through scientific studies that the bees were being harmed, and won the suit (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). The American beekeepers went to the French beekeepers conference to trade information about the studies that have been done. The difference between America and France is that the US still does not have the science to back up their claims that the systemic pesticides are harming the bees. Because of the lag time between exposure to the pesticides and the symptoms showing up, the beekeepers are having a hard time linking the cause to the effect (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). Britain followed France’s lead in protests and banning (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). Italy, Germany and Slovenia also placed bans on these pesticides (The Vanishing Bees, 2009).
The EPA approves a chemical based upon the projected risk to the public with very few preliminary studies to support the decision. It is not the EPA that does the research; it is the chemical companies. The chemical companies confirmed that they are only studying short term effects on adult bees and not the long term effects of residue build up in soil and bee populations over time (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). They are also mixing pesticides, which makes a more toxic cocktail, and they are not studying the effects of that (The Vanishing Bees, 2009).
“Whatever effects one directly, effects all indirectly… this is the interrelated structure of reality” Martin Luther King Jr. (qtd. in The Vanishing Bees, 2009). Over a billion pounds of toxic chemicals are used each year on crops that we eat (Pollan, 2009). We genetically modify and apply systemic pesticides to boost the production per acre and lower the cost of food. But it has yet to be determined whether this type of food will cost us more in medical bills and health issues than growing food the old way.
The way we are farming now is unsustainable. The bees are a good indication of how unhealthy our current farming practices are. Why is monoculture so bad? Monoculture farming is the practice of growing single crops over thousands of acres of land for a large number of consecutive years (Wikipedia.com). It is widely practiced because it allows for large harvests with minimal labor. Monoculture is one of the many reasons that honey bees are rapidly declining because bees do not get the right diversity of food which weakens their immune systems. Monocultures can lead to the quicker spread of diseases, where a uniform crop is susceptible to a pathogen.
We have the means to feed the world without the use of toxic chemicals. We still lose about 1/3 of our crops each year whether we use pesticides or not (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). It should be a moral decision about continuing to use pesticides. Instead it seems to be a financial decision.“Only when the last tree has died, and the last river has been poisoned, and the last fish has been caught will we realize that we cannot eat money” - Cree Indian Proverb.
The year 2010 looks like it will be the worst loss of bees since CCD started. The beekeepers are planning to relocate the bees to safe areas during pesticide application (The Vanishing Bees, 2009).
The NRDC sued the EPA in 2010 over the use of systemic pesticides. They stopped the sale of one kind of pesticide (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). In regions where systemic pesticides were not applied to crops (France) the bees bounced back in 12 months (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). In America several groups are practicing holistic, organic beekeeping and maintaining sanctuaries for bees. They advocate a return to a more sustainable approach to farming that brings back diversity and limited use of pesticides. Many small groups (hobby beekeepers) are growing in numbers and even in places like New York City, gardeners are keeping bees within the city.
At home, we can cut the use of toxic chemicals on our yards and gardens. Practice organic gardening, and buy organic produce (vote with your fork). If more people buy organic, more farming operations will grow organically. We can demand change by only buying what is healthy to eat. Join organic community gardens, and use them to educate children about organic farming practices.
Much of our food travels 1500 to 2000 miles and is close to a week old when it gets to our tables (Food Matters, 2009). Everything in the environment affects our food: fertilizer, pesticides, fungicides, deficient soils that produce weakened plants that are then susceptible to disease and pests. So even if we eat vegetarian commercial food, we have lost 40% of the nutrients to time and processing and the insults we introduce via chemicals so the food contains high levels of toxins too (Food Matters, 2009). Food is a living entity that contains enzymes designed to aid our digestive processes (Food Matters, 2009). Much of our current farming practices rob the food of those enzymes and nutrients, so the same processes that are weakening the honey bees are affecting humans as well. Even cooking food can activate white cell activity in the body because the act of cooking changes the structure of the food and the body cannot recognize it as food (David Wolfe, 2009). Add the toxic chemicals and genetic modification on top of that and you really have stress on the body (whether you are a human or a bee).
All the things that are affecting the bees, are affecting us as well. You nourish the body, and the body then heals itself (David Wolfe, 2009). It has its own healing mechanism. We can activate the body’s healing mechanisms by providing quality nutrition, clean air and water, adequate rest and shelter. We can provide quality nutrition by allowing nature’s system to function without interference in growing our food.
Like the canaries in the coal mines that warned miners when the air quality was compromised, the honey bees warn us that we are damaging our food supply, our soils, the water on the planet, and the air quality. As we add chemicals to our food, utilize unnatural monoculture farming procedures, genetically modify our seeds, ship bees all over the US to make up for the poor farming practices, feed the bees an artificial diet during shipment, limit their diet once they get to their destination, and limit the gene pool of the bees by artificially inseminating the queens we also guarantee that we produce food supplies that are deficient in the nutrients that we need to maintain human health. The bees are quietly telling us that we need to utilize common sense and return to more nature agricultural practices that support life rather than contribute to stress on the body of humans and the other organisms that we share the planet with.
References
Whitefield, P. “Monoculture” Wikipedia, 2002. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoculture
Dogwoof Pictures, Langworth, G., Henein, M. (2009). “The Vanishing Bees” (motion picture), UK, Hive Mentality Films.Producer.
Pollan, M. (2006). Omnivore’s Dilemma, New York: Penguin Group.
Pollan, M. (2009). Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual. New York: Penguin Group.
Ten Bosch, L., Colquhoun, J., (2009). “Food Matters” (motion picture), USA, Passion River Films Studio.
Stone, D. M. ”Honey Bee Life Cycle” Wikipedia 26 October, 2010. 14 April, 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_bee>
Wofe, D. (2009), The Sunfood Diet System, Berkley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
The Vanishing Bees: Colony Collapse Disorder
Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is a disorder where honey bees desert the hive and leave their babies to die, depleting the colony completely. It took scientists 8-10 years to find out what was causing this phenomenon. It was first reported in the US in 2006; since then the bee population has been rapidly declining (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). This paper will examine the possible causes of CCD and suggest ways to reverse this honey bee affliction that could adversely impact our food supply.
Bees symbolize unity, hard work, and cooperation.
One out of every three bites of food is provided because a bee did what it was suppose to do (Pollan, 2009). About 1/3 of our food is made possible by the pollinating activity of the bees. One bee visits approximately 100,000 flowers in a single day (Stone, 2010).
According to D.M. Stone (2010) writing in Wikipedia, the life of a honey bee colony is perennial. There are three castes of honey bees: queens, which produce eggs; drones or males, which mate with new queens and have no stinger; and workers, which are all non-reproducing females. The queen lays eggs singly in cells of the comb. Larvae hatch from eggs in three to four days. They are then fed by worker bees and develop through several stages in the cells. Cells are capped by worker bees when the larva pupates (transitions to a more mature state). Queens and drones are larger than workers and so require larger cells to develop. A colony may typically consist of tens of thousands of individuals (Stone, 2010).
Development from egg to emerging bee varies among queens, workers and drones. Queens emerge from their cells in 16 days, workers in 21 days and drones in 24 days (Stone, 2010). Only one queen is usually present in a hive. New virgin queens develop in enlarged cells through selective feeding of royal jelly by workers (royal jelly is secreted from the worker bee’s head’s from a special gland; it is fed to all the larvae). When the existing queen ages or dies or the colony becomes very large a new queen is raised by the worker bees (they feed large amounts of the royal jelly to a few select larvae in larger cells within the honey comb – feeding the larvae the large amounts triggers development of the new queen) (Stone, 2010).
The virgin queen takes one or several flights during which she is inseminated by the drones and once she is fertilized starts laying eggs in the hive. A fertile queen is able to lay fertilized or unfertilized eggs (Stone, 2010). Each unfertilized egg contains a unique combination of 50% of the queen's genesand develops into a drone. The fertilized eggs develop into either workers or virgin queens (Stone, 2010).
The average lifespan of a queen is three to four years; drones usually die upon mating or are expelled from the hive before the winter; and workers may live for a few weeks in the summer and several months in areas with an extended winter (Stone, 2010).
There is only one queen bee in the hive and all the female bees work to support the queen. Nurse bees aid the queen and the babies. Guard bees protect the queen and foragers that go gather pollen. Bees are a predominantly female society. All the worker bees are female and make up to 95 percent of the population. Their jobs are to make honey, build the combs, guard the hive, and raise the young; the drone’s only job is to mate with the queen (Stone, 2010).
Honey gathering has been around since ancient times. It is depicted in hieroglyphics and writings of ancient times throughout history. Many rain forest tribes still gather honey within sacred ceremonies (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). The tribes usually pray before taking the honey and are careful to maintain the integrity of the hive, only taking as much as they need, but leaving plenty to support the bees.
The bee is equipped with a fury body that creates static electricity to attract pollen (Stone, 2010). Special notches exist on their front legs to clean the antenna. Bees are equipped with great sensors to pick up all types of environmental info.
David Hackenberg was the first bee keeper to alert authorities about the missing bees (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). He owns and operates 3000 bee hives in Florida. He has been raising bees since 1962. He normally ships 3 semi trucks loads of hives at a time to various places. But lately has only been shipping 2 trucks because of the decrease in bees.
In October 2006, he found 400 of his hives empty (abandoned) and another 30 hives had decreased numbers in the colony and the bees left were infected with a fungus. Just three weeks before, they had been active hives thriving with bees. They had left their young to starve. There were no signs of the bees dying off; no bodies to prove it, they had obviously left everything behind for some odd reason. Other beekeepers began to report the same issue. Some people on the street said they were bad beekeepers even after 40 plus years in the beekeeping industry.
Denis van Engelsdorp is an apiarist at Pennstate University’s Department of Entomology (an apiarist is a beekeeper). In 2007 he participated in a US formed task force to study the problem, and they named the problem Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) . Symptoms include : no adult bees left at the hive, no evidence of mites or diseases to explain the problem. The bees abandon the queen and the babies. They leave very suddenly and without warning. Dennis set up a test apiary to monitor to hives. He checked two of the hives in the morning and they seemed normal but by that evening 3000 bees had disappeared never to return (The Vanishing Bees, 2009).
Beekeeping has always been important from the beginning of recorded history. As mentioned before, ancient Egyptians used to float bee hives down the Nile to pollinate far off farms and gardens. Today beekeepers transport hives on trucks and pollinate 15 billion dollars worth of food every year (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). Beekeepers make most of their money transporting bees to the farm lands. They travel up to 4 days on the truck, through extreme elevation changes, temperature changes and up to 5 or 6 different locations in as many months (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). This causes lots of stress for the bees. The beekeepers are worried because when the bees begin to disappear it is an indication that something is terribly wrong on the planet. What is bad for the bees is bad for all of us.
In Yuma Arizona one of the most extensive losses of bees occurred in 2008 (The Vanishing Bees, 2009)… it’s a new problem that no one has ever seen before (qtd. from The Vanishing Bees, 2009). Thirty five states have been impacted by CCD (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). Scientists studied bees wax and pollen around the nation. One problem was that there were no bees left behind to study. The bees they did find had every known pathogen indicating that their immune systems were not functioning. They looked at a number of causes (mites, funguses, the Israeli acute paralysis virus), but none of this was the cause of CCD (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). Beekeepers have became really good at replacing their hives because they lose 30% of their hives every year (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). They split a healthy colony in half and plant a new queen in the split off hive.
Michael Pollan is a famous author and he is also a professor at UCLA Berkeley. He says we no longer have enough American bees to pollinate the almond crop in California (Pollan, 2006). They started importing bees from Australia to make up for the deficit. It is highly stressful for the bees crossing multiple time zones. Scientists have tried to treat them with antibiotics to see if it would stop the collapse of the colonies, but the effort was unsuccessful, so now we have honey that is tainted by the antibiotics as we ingest it, and this comes at a time of overuse of the antibiotics in general.
Holistic beekeepers keep smaller numbers of hives and they do not truck them off (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). They plant a variety of flowers so the bees have a diverse diet. They do not think CCD is due to disease. They believe that large monoculture agricultural practices which limit the variety of food available to the bees is one reason that CCD developed (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). These large operations are using large amounts of pesticides. There are places in Illinois and Iowa where the ground water is so poisonous that you cannot drink it (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). One thing that has weakened the bees is how the commercial beekeepers treat the queen. While the workers and drones live up to a couple weeks the queen can live up to 5 years. The commercial beekeepers kill the queen after a few months and replace her with an artificially inseminated queen (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). The queen is knocked out with carbon dioxide and injected with semen. Holistic beekeepers are concerned that the artificially inseminated queens are being produced from a very narrow gene pool (The Vanishing Bees, 2009).
Another reason the bees are being weakened is because beekeepers take the honey out of the hives and replace it with high fructose corn syrup before they ship the bees (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). They feed it to the adult bees and the adult bees are feeding it to their young and it is like feeding a human child a bunch of junk food that cannot be very good for the developing bees. Honey is extremely nutrient rich and good for bees and humans; we are messing with the natural order of life with all this artificial feeding and breeding.
Organic beekeepers do not use high fructose sugars or mite pesticides; they let the natural order of the bee hive go as it should. One problem for people who keep bees is that they cannot make a living just off the honey. Once you start being a commercial beekeeper you have to start with all the artificial feedings and making artificial queens in order to transport them elsewhere. They transport the bees to increase their income because they cannot make enough money by selling the honey products of their bees. China is importing honey blends that consist of 49% honey and 51% high fructose syrup. Therefore, China is able to under sell Americans who produce honey. It is not as healthy or fresh a product, but people buy it because it is so much cheaper and they do not realize that it is only part honey (The Vanishing Bees, 2009).
Billy Rhodes is another commercial beekeeper from Florida (qtd. from The Vanishing Bees, 2009). He states that all the big food companies are buying all the cheap honey blends from China, but if they would buy American honey then the American beekeepers would not have to transport bees in trucks to make money. Thirty five percent of the fruits and veggies we eat are imported from all around the world (Pollan, 2006). It is predicted that within the next 10 years most of our fruits and veggies will be imported (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). It is bad enough that we are dependent on foreign oil; if we become dependent on foreign food also, we are in trouble.
In 2008 the worst case of CCD was recorded in California (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). Two billion bees were gone in a few weeks time (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). Up until the 1950s the typical American farm was diversified in what they grew on the farm. No American farms utilized monoculture practices. The bees would not hang around a monoculture farm operation because the plants are only in bloom for approximately three weeks and then there is only one kind of plant for the bees to choose from over thousands of acres. You do not find monoculture in nature; monoculture is an unbalanced state in nature (Pollan, 2006). You need a lot of intervention in monoculture because pests love monocultures (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). Monocultures are a huge frat party for pests because there is food in abundance.
Pesticides developed from chemical warfare technology in WWI in Germany (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). After the war was over they switched the chemical weapon use to pesticide use so they could continue to make money. First we try and kill soldiers with the chemicals and now we are killing bugs with it. Then we eat the food we spray with the pesticides, and seem confused as to why the bees would become neurologically impaired to the degree that they left their hives. In the 40s early 50s they were spraying DDT along city streets to combat the polio virus (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). We have not used common sense in utilizing pesticides.
Jade Feldmen, Executive director of Beyond Pesticides and a member of the National Organic Standards Board (qtd. in The Vanishing Bees, 2009) points out that with old styles of sprayed on pesticides, if the application created a problem for the bees you knew it right away because you would see a lot of dead bees. Beekeepers would move the bees during spraying and found they did not die; however, the new pesticides are systemic in nature and they stay within the plant throughout the life span of the plant. A lot of times systemic pesticides show up in the pollen and nectar of the plants presenting an ever present toxicity to the bees as they forage (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). The systemic pesticides weaken the immune system, impair digestive tracks, and result in progressive neurological damage. It can cause the bees to become confused and lose their way back to the hive. Bees cannot survive longer than 24 hours outside the hive (The Vanishing Bees, 2009).
Systemic pesticides such as Gaucho and Poncho came in to use in 2003 (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). The bees can be exposed to the pesticides and not have any symptoms for many months because the doses are sub-lethal. When symptoms of systemic pesticide poisoning do show up it is usually devastating. The bees are not getting a lethal dose of the pesticides, but they bring the pollen back to the hive, and feed it to the developing babies. As a result, the young are not developing correctly. The chemical companies are only required to test the pesticides on adult bees. They are not required to test the effects of the pesticides on the baby bees (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). The beekeepers are concerned about the delivery of sub-lethal doses of pesticide over long periods of time to the young. During the study that the USDA did there were large amounts of pesticide residue in the honey, in the wax of the hive, and in the bees themselves.
France and Germany banned the use of systemic pesticides because their bees were vanishing too. Those two counties decided it was safer to study the effects of the pesticides before they released them for use on the crops. America chooses to continue use of the pesticides until they are proven unsafe. Fifteen years ago, CCD appeared in France. The problems began in 1994 the same time farmers started using the systemic pesticide Gaucho (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). The French filmed the bees feeding on organic crops and crops treated with the pesticide. On the organic crops the bee worked steadily to collect pollen in a precise manner. On the crops treated with pesticide, the bee was disoriented and confused (The Vanishing Bees, 2009).
The French beekeepers rioted in the streets against Bayer, the company that makes Gaucho. They filed a lawsuit against Bayer, obtained proof through scientific studies that the bees were being harmed, and won the suit (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). The American beekeepers went to the French beekeepers conference to trade information about the studies that have been done. The difference between America and France is that the US still does not have the science to back up their claims that the systemic pesticides are harming the bees. Because of the lag time between exposure to the pesticides and the symptoms showing up, the beekeepers are having a hard time linking the cause to the effect (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). Britain followed France’s lead in protests and banning (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). Italy, Germany and Slovenia also placed bans on these pesticides (The Vanishing Bees, 2009).
The EPA approves a chemical based upon the projected risk to the public with very few preliminary studies to support the decision. It is not the EPA that does the research; it is the chemical companies. The chemical companies confirmed that they are only studying short term effects on adult bees and not the long term effects of residue build up in soil and bee populations over time (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). They are also mixing pesticides, which makes a more toxic cocktail, and they are not studying the effects of that (The Vanishing Bees, 2009).
“Whatever effects one directly, effects all indirectly… this is the interrelated structure of reality” Martin Luther King Jr. (qtd. in The Vanishing Bees, 2009). Over a billion pounds of toxic chemicals are used each year on crops that we eat (Pollan, 2009). We genetically modify and apply systemic pesticides to boost the production per acre and lower the cost of food. But it has yet to be determined whether this type of food will cost us more in medical bills and health issues than growing food the old way.
The way we are farming now is unsustainable. The bees are a good indication of how unhealthy our current farming practices are. Why is monoculture so bad? Monoculture farming is the practice of growing single crops over thousands of acres of land for a large number of consecutive years (Wikipedia.com). It is widely practiced because it allows for large harvests with minimal labor. Monoculture is one of the many reasons that honey bees are rapidly declining because bees do not get the right diversity of food which weakens their immune systems. Monocultures can lead to the quicker spread of diseases, where a uniform crop is susceptible to a pathogen.
We have the means to feed the world without the use of toxic chemicals. We still lose about 1/3 of our crops each year whether we use pesticides or not (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). It should be a moral decision about continuing to use pesticides. Instead it seems to be a financial decision.“Only when the last tree has died, and the last river has been poisoned, and the last fish has been caught will we realize that we cannot eat money” - Cree Indian Proverb.
The year 2010 looks like it will be the worst loss of bees since CCD started. The beekeepers are planning to relocate the bees to safe areas during pesticide application (The Vanishing Bees, 2009).
The NRDC sued the EPA in 2010 over the use of systemic pesticides. They stopped the sale of one kind of pesticide (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). In regions where systemic pesticides were not applied to crops (France) the bees bounced back in 12 months (The Vanishing Bees, 2009). In America several groups are practicing holistic, organic beekeeping and maintaining sanctuaries for bees. They advocate a return to a more sustainable approach to farming that brings back diversity and limited use of pesticides. Many small groups (hobby beekeepers) are growing in numbers and even in places like New York City, gardeners are keeping bees within the city.
At home, we can cut the use of toxic chemicals on our yards and gardens. Practice organic gardening, and buy organic produce (vote with your fork). If more people buy organic, more farming operations will grow organically. We can demand change by only buying what is healthy to eat. Join organic community gardens, and use them to educate children about organic farming practices.
Much of our food travels 1500 to 2000 miles and is close to a week old when it gets to our tables (Food Matters, 2009). Everything in the environment affects our food: fertilizer, pesticides, fungicides, deficient soils that produce weakened plants that are then susceptible to disease and pests. So even if we eat vegetarian commercial food, we have lost 40% of the nutrients to time and processing and the insults we introduce via chemicals so the food contains high levels of toxins too (Food Matters, 2009). Food is a living entity that contains enzymes designed to aid our digestive processes (Food Matters, 2009). Much of our current farming practices rob the food of those enzymes and nutrients, so the same processes that are weakening the honey bees are affecting humans as well. Even cooking food can activate white cell activity in the body because the act of cooking changes the structure of the food and the body cannot recognize it as food (David Wolfe, 2009). Add the toxic chemicals and genetic modification on top of that and you really have stress on the body (whether you are a human or a bee).
All the things that are affecting the bees, are affecting us as well. You nourish the body, and the body then heals itself (David Wolfe, 2009). It has its own healing mechanism. We can activate the body’s healing mechanisms by providing quality nutrition, clean air and water, adequate rest and shelter. We can provide quality nutrition by allowing nature’s system to function without interference in growing our food.
Like the canaries in the coal mines that warned miners when the air quality was compromised, the honey bees warn us that we are damaging our food supply, our soils, the water on the planet, and the air quality. As we add chemicals to our food, utilize unnatural monoculture farming procedures, genetically modify our seeds, ship bees all over the US to make up for the poor farming practices, feed the bees an artificial diet during shipment, limit their diet once they get to their destination, and limit the gene pool of the bees by artificially inseminating the queens we also guarantee that we produce food supplies that are deficient in the nutrients that we need to maintain human health. The bees are quietly telling us that we need to utilize common sense and return to more nature agricultural practices that support life rather than contribute to stress on the body of humans and the other organisms that we share the planet with.
References
Whitefield, P. “Monoculture” Wikipedia, 2002. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoculture
Dogwoof Pictures, Langworth, G., Henein, M. (2009). “The Vanishing Bees” (motion picture), UK, Hive Mentality Films.Producer.
Pollan, M. (2006). Omnivore’s Dilemma, New York: Penguin Group.
Pollan, M. (2009). Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual. New York: Penguin Group.
Ten Bosch, L., Colquhoun, J., (2009). “Food Matters” (motion picture), USA, Passion River Films Studio.
Stone, D. M. ”Honey Bee Life Cycle” Wikipedia 26 October, 2010. 14 April, 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_bee>
Wofe, D. (2009), The Sunfood Diet System, Berkley, CA: North Atlantic Books.