Cylindrical hives like the ones in the picture above from the tomb of Pabasa (7th century BCE) were made of clay and stacked on top of each other
Honeybees have been part of human civilization since the pyramids of Giza rose from the desert. In fact, Egyptian rulers, or pharaohs, were given the name “Bee King” as one of their innumerable titles of office.
It is no wonder then that much of mankind’s agricultural development, and most of its success with both human and animal food crops, devolves to that miniscule yet extraordinary creature known as a honeybee. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or USDA, 33 percent of the food that humans eat comes from plants pollinated by honeybees, and as Albert Einstein once (rather ominously) noted: “If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live …”
That end may not be far off. Beginning in 2006 or even earlier, depending on who you talk to, colonies of honeybees in the United States began dying from what some supposed was a pesticide problem. Others blamed genetically modified (GM) food crops like corn, even though corn is not exclusively dependent on honeybees for pollination.
The honeybee epidemic quickly acquired the name of Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, and researchers blamed it for the loss of more than one-third of honeybee colonies in the U.S.
The problem was not confined to the U.S., either. Similar diebacks took place in Germany and other European nations, and even afflicted honeybee hives as widely separated as Brazil, Australia and Israel.
Colony Collapse Disorder itself was ascribed to many causes, including cell phones, cell phone towers, EMFs (electromagnetic fields), pesticides, Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV, or APV) and other formerly unknown viruses. In one notable instance, it was even attributed to a fungus interacting with a virus. This last discovery was a joint effort of the U.S. Army and the University of Montana at Missoula.
At one point, researchers even targeted the honeybee’s ancient enemy, varroa mites, formerly kept under control by “designer” drugs used specifically to treat honeybees. Researchers noted that these bee drugs were beginning to fail, in much the same fashion that antibiotics no longer worked against certain human infections like MRSA, or methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus.
Colonies attacked by CCD, whatever its cause, would leave hives abandoned, and the larvae, pupae and queen unattended. The adult bees weren’t found in piles inside or outsides the hives, but simply disappeared. It was the human equivalent of The Rapture, and just as disconcerting, at least as far as dedicated beekeepers were concerned.
Brownish-orange bumps on the backs of these bees are Varroa jacobsoni mites. Credit: USDA, a free picture service by the U.S. government.
The pesticides implicated included clothianidin and imidacloprid, both neonicotinoids produced by Bayer AG beginning in 1991, and both implicated in massive bee deaths (up to 70 percent in France, with massive dieoffs in North Dakota in 1995).
The French banned the import and/or production of both from 1999 to 2003. The Germans waited until 2008, the height of the honeybee debacle, and followed suit. Bayer has always insisted that farmers were at fault because they used the neonicotinoids without first applying a chemical fixative which causes the pesticides to stick to individual corn tassels and rapeseed blossoms rather than bee’s feet or bodies — from whence it gets tracked into hives and distributed colonywide.
Deaths declined in Europe, but remained steady or rose in the U.S. In 2010, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on the continuing decline of honeybees in Marin County — long considered wine country, California, and not far from the fertile Central Valley which provides almost half the fruits, nuts and vegetables eaten in the U.S. Again, the culprit identified is excessive crop chemicals, namely pesticides, fungicides and herbicides. In Virginia, bee losses now exceed 66 percent.
Like any really bad plague, however, CCD had other likely contributing factors as well, all of which created a perfect storm of opportunity for destroying the American beekeeping industry through its best workers, the bees themselves. One of these, Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus, or IAPV, was first identified in Israel in 2004 but spread rapidly around the world, migrating to U.S. hives via Australian honeybee (and honeybee queen) imports.
Add to this at least four newly discovered viruses, and it was all uphill for U.S. honeybees. Trouble is, honeybee colonies are host to all kinds of bacteria and viruses, both beneficial and lethal, just like the human body, but the balance goes awry when you throw in excessive use of chemicals (on crops and on bees), poor nutrition (using old honey or, worse yet, corn syrup, to feed spring and winter hives), and global warming, which allows some persistent pests like varroa to winter over at latitudes where it formerly died back.
Facing that kind of predation, the honeybees didn’t need the added aggravation of cell phones and cell phone towers (or electromagnetic frequencies, EMFs) which, according to at least one report, caused worker bees to “pipe”. This piping, or signaling, warns other members of the hive that it is time to swarm or abandon the hive. To imagine how disruptive this in a honeybee colony, just think of the recent flash mobs in London.
And of course there is the ongoing debate about genetically modified (GM) foods like corn and alfalfa causing honeybee dieoffs via the Bt (bacillus thuringiensis) genes inserted to control crop pests. Bees carry this genetically contaminated pollen home and feed it to the hive, where it does exactly what it was designed to do — solidify the intestines of larvae so that they starve to death. This, even though the Bt toxin is aimed at Lepidoptera, or butterflies, and not Hymenoptera, or bees (a classification that also includes ants and wasps). And this is because the Bt toxins targeting beetles, flies and mosquitoes are perhaps capable of a little intelligent engineering of their own. No one is quite certain yet just how dangerous GM might be, to bees or to humans.
In the end, though, there is always this final consideration: is the bee decline a result of chemicals, pests, or misfiring plant genes, or is it all part of a bigger picture in which climate change is causing a decline in the earth’s biodiversity?
Other pollinators, like this monarch butterfly, are also in decline. Credit: Istockphoto
The United Nations Environmental Programme, or UNEP, seems to think the latter scenario is the truth, at least judging by a 2010 study. If they are right, the crisis is not just among honeybees, but among pollinators in general. This includes wild bees, butterflies, bumble bees, honeybees and even some birds — a conclusion further supported by a 2009 PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) report.
Was Einstein right? Will humanity end four years after the last pollinator? No one knows, but the thought of a world without them (or us) makes me sad. Honeybees are remarkable creatures, even recognizing their owner’s faces (a supposition now confirmed as fact by a researcher from the university in Toulouse, France).
As a former beekeeper, I — like Lori Cuthbert (who writes about bee recognition in Homesteading Adventures.com) – welcome that first warm day of spring, and the happy bees which “dance” in front of our eyes to remind us that life is sweet, and worth preserving.
Watch a video of Lori Cuthbert’s bee raising adventure: Let it Bee: Amateur Beekeepers Keeping Bees Healthy