SHARE THIS SHOW:
RECENTLY ON TOL:
TOL Our Town
- A tumblr site dedicated to the people and places that make up Oregon and Southwest Washington.
TAGS:
It's well known that bees are dying off, and scientists still can't explain exactly why. Likely causes include parasites, diseases, and pesticides. But in many cases, the bees simply vanish, never to return to the hive. Whatever the causes, the consequences are major. In the U.S., beekeepers on average lost 29% of their honey bee colonies last year.
Since farms depend on these commercial bee colonies to pollinate their crops, there's a lot at stake. In fact, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that bees are responsible for $15 billion worth of crops every year. To put that in perspective, the USDA says, "about one mouthful in three in the diet directly or indirectly benefits from honey bee pollination."
The future of commercial beekeeping is uncertain, and it's not clear that today's farms can be sustained without it. One possible alternative is to rely on native bees from the area surrounding a farm, rather than renting vast numbers of hives. But native bees don't currently exist in numbers large enough to take over the amount of pollinating that we've come to need.
Are you an Oregon farmer who relies on bees to pollinate your crops? How does this decline in the bee population affect you? How might farming need to change, in order to adapt to the loss of honey bees?
GUESTS:
- Roy Malensky: President of the Oregon Berry Packing Company
- Charlie Mock: President of Mountain Meadow Honey Inc.
- Ramesh Sagili: Assistant Professor of Horticulture at Oregon State University
- Mace Vaughan: Pollinator Program Director at the Xerces Society
Photo credit: da100fotos/ Flickr /Creative Commons
-
As I understand it, native bee species are not around in large enough numbers to take over for the european honey bees primarily because of agribusiness' preference for monocultures. To be abundant, bees need a steady supply of pollen all season long, and that usually requires a diversity of flowering plants. Domestic honey bees would need the same thing if their hives stayed in one place.
Admittedly, the european honey bees has become so popular because they out produce native bees by a wide margin, in pollenation, diversity of plants they will pollenate, and in honey production. But we could bring back native bees (and birds, and other wildlife, and probably improve our air and water quality too) by reintroducing some "old fashioned" practices like hedgerows.
-
European honey bees are NOT native to this continent. I hope they all get wiped out so we can bring back the amazing mason bees.
The European honey bees don't belong here. They are aggressive. They get into the walls of buildings and create a mess.
Goodbye Euro-Bees. Hello mason bees.
-
I'm a farmer and organic beekeeper in WA. So many of the problems with bees could be helped by changing our approach to build bee health rather than using the 'bigger, cheaper, faster' rules so common to commercial projects. Bees are not commodities, they are living beings. We need to alter how we care for them.
Let them eat their own honey rather than replacing it with sugar water and genetically modified high fructose corn syrup as is common with commercial producers. Let them propagate their hives by swarming instead of preventing that because the bees know best when they need to expand their hive. Let them raise their own queens rather than using commercially raised queens that don't have the genetic diversity of strong drones. Stop their exposure to chemicals both inside the hive and on flowers. Give them the vast variety of foods they need - wild and weed flowers rather than the monoculture migratory bees are exposed to. Let them self-medicate with flowering herbs as they do in nature.
Not everyone wants to be a beekeeper, however, everyone CAN help bees. The easiest is to plant flowering herbs in their yard or you can set a small dish of water high and near bushes that the bees can visit.
I hope this is helpful. I teach a class called "Bees: The OTHER Way" that is my attempt to make a difference in creating healthier bees.
warmly, Jacqueline Freeman
www.FriendlyHaven.com
-
Thank you for doing this show. I need bees for my garden and my fruits and berries and have been thinking about raising my own. One question: I know that I've heard that almond pollen is somewhat toxic for honeybees. I've heard that's one of the stressors. Your guest just said that they're very healthy after feeding on almond trees. Can he explain this discrepancy in information? Thanks.
-
I have a small lavender farm and I have noticed that I don't have as many honey bees on my flowers. However, my plants are loaded with bumble bees, as well as other varieties that I'm not as familiar with. I'm wondering if pollination can't be done without the honey bees and how essential they are or if the other varieties can't fill the gap?
-
This is what we'll be getting to in the second half of the conversation! I think the short answer is: other pollinators CAN fill the gap... but only if there are enough of them.
-
We have the same experience. We do not need honey bees here in Oregon.
They are an invasive species. We see native mason bees and bumble bees doing the work that needs to be done.
-
If this IS a normal cyclical issue, could part of the problem be that we have reduced our acceptable margin of error to a dangerously low level? In other words, we now need ALL our bees to function at peak productivity ALL the time, so something that would have been a seasonal problem in the past, becomes a crisis.
-
I am a home gardener on Cooper Mtn. in Aloha, OR. I have seen less and less bees over the years, but this year there has been a massive return to my fruit, berries and lavendar plants!
-
Portland actually encourage bee disease. They consider bees as stinting insects causing anaphylactic shock. Their permit requirement of 100% written permission from all residences within 150' is ignored by almost all bee heepers in Portland. The problem is that should a new beekeeper decide to give up they let their hive go into disrepair. That hive will become diseased. If a hive is in a 2 mile radius a healthy hive it will rob the honey and bring the declining hives disease to the healthy colony.
-
I don't keep bees (but have thought about it), what does a beekeeper do is they are not able to keep up their hives?
-
I am a second year bee keeper. I have two hives in my back yard. My neighbors love it as their gardens and fruit trees are loaded due to my bees. Supporting the honey bee is important to farmers and to the food you recieve on your table. Remove the honey bee and you remove our main pollinator.
-
As a homeowner and a parent involved with my children's elementary school, what can I do to help? We don't use pesticides at our home, and have installed some bee-friendly plants at home and at the school. My biggest hurdle at the school is an unfounded fear of bees. I understand that from people who are allergic, but the teachers and parents tend to think that bees are dangerous. Any good resources out there for teaching about pollinators to elementary age kids (and their parents!)? I think I also need to learn more about mason bees. It sounds like installing a mason bee house in my yard might help? I do not have the time to actually 'keep bees' though. Would a mason bee house at the school be appropriate?
-
There is a natural solution for the loss of European honey bees, albeit without the hones - mason bees and leafcutter bees. I have both of these and they are easy to manage and good polinators. Mason bees are early spring bees that can be raised in very large numbers, are good polinators of early fruit and crops, and don't have to be "kept" throuhgout the year. After a few weeks in the spring the adults die and the next generation develops in the holes/tubes. They overwinter as adults and come out when the temperature is right. For later crops, there are leaf-cutter bees that come out, in Portland, about the time the mason bees die and continue most of the summer. For the cost of a few holes in your plant leaves, they do a great polination job.
Both can be raised commercially. Leafcutters are used extensively in the alfalfa seed industry in Montana (those odd huts in the fields). I established my colonies by just putting out tubes in the spring. Both were already in the area, and in fact I have 2 different types of leafcutters. The advantage if these bees include that they rarely sting, are not going to attack anyone, and don't hybridize with Africanized honey bees. I also have healthy bumblebee colonies, at least 2 species, and they add to the redundancy of my system.W
-
I'm a food writer who has been very interested in colony collapse disorder for the past few years, and as a result, I've been very conscious of what I grow in my garden. last year it *did* seem as if we had very few pollinators, and many of my food crops had very poor yield; after I read about the lack of nutrition for bees thanks to modern lawn care we dug up our lawn and stopped pulling dandelions. this year I grew big quantities of borage (known as "bee bread" in Europe), sunflowers, strawberries, blueberries, calendula, apples and a variety of herbs and let the beneficial weeds grow and the early food crops (lettuce, spinach, kale, etc.) go to seed.
the results have been phenomenal -- I don't know if it's due to the great bee food I provided, or all the renewed interest in vegetable and fruit gardening in Portland this year (I've seen garden boxes pop up in front yards and parking strips all around my SE Portland neighborhood), or the number of people who've started beekeeping nearby, or just the good growing season this year, but I'm thrilled. every time I see a pollinator on one of my flowers (which is often), I get a jolt of happy adrenaline.
one note on the almond crop problem: I believe that the almond monoculture is unsustainable and a big cause of the problem. agriculture can't possibly survive with this sort of artifical construct. I've stopped eating almonds entirely and exist happily on local, sustainably-grown hazelnuts. if the almond industry changed to a smaller, less intensive polyculture, wouldn't the supporting honeybee industry change so that it was less stressful and more nutritious for the pollinators?
-
this may be a naive question but wouldn't it be benificial to feed bees what they would naturally eat rather than sugar surup?
-
Rudolph Steiner mentioned in the 1920s that in 80 to 100 years bees would die out as a result of queen breeding and artificial insemination.
I am the producer for a feature-film in development in the Portland area, "Queen of The Sun" [ http://www.queenofthesun.com ] from the director of "The Real Dirt on Farmer John" about the problems facing the honeybee right now which will cover the long history of bees and man all the way up to the recent issues facing the commercial beekeeper, focusing specifically on the myriad of problems that comprise "CCD".
I think Prof. Sagili touched very briefly earlier on the issue of genetic diversity. How big of an issue is it that we are doing intensive work developing a specific type of bee in laboratories vs. letting bees naturally swarm to refine their own genetics. Has this been talked about in the CCD argument? We have talked to a number of beekeepers and queen breeders on the issue and I was wondering if Ramesh or any one else can shed some light on this topic.
It's great to hear such a compelling show covering many of the key issues on OPB.
Warmly,
Jon Betz
jon@collectiveeye.org
Producer, Queen of The Sun
http://www.queenofthesun.com
Collective Eye, Inc.
-
I find it interesting that no one has referenced a new book about CCD by Michael Schacker "A Spring without Bees" (ISBN 9781599214320). He makes a compelling argument that pesticides containing neonicotinoids or IMD -- a nerve agent is the main cause of CCD. He references the experience the French had and that their hives recovered after banning IMDs. He blames Big Oil and Bayer Chemical for causing the ignorance in the US. And he blames the USDA and EPA for failure to do due diligence before allowing a new pesticide into the environment.
-
Gentlepeople,
Thanks for so many great programs, today's really struck a chord.
In many ways, CCD resembles humanity. Would anyone claim that constant war (2000+ years and still counting), swine flu, drunk drivers, global warming, rampant overpopulation (Hello, Malthus. Can't wipe off that I-told-you-so smirk, can you?), wretched excess - Asia can't reduce its addition to global warming until we/US quit demanding its crap (walmart, go away) - gridlock, etc. don't stress the planet's citizens?
CCD is, in many ways, a microcosm of the world which surrounds the hives.
Geoff Godfrey godfreykitty@yahoo.com
-
Oh, I missed that observation. I focused too closely on the small picture. Thank you for making the point that bees suffer CCD, and frogs are born disfigured all over the world. Early bellweathers of Koyaanisqatsi. We may have more and bigger issues than whether bees (and humans) thrive.
-
One thing I have noticed with the honey bees in my yard in Portland is that the oregano flowers are abuzz with activity, compared to any other plant. Oregano oil is an antimicrobial and I am wondering if the bees are using it as medicine. One previous post references plant medicine for bees but I wonder if it has been studied. It might be a great plant for hegerows because it's so hardy.
-
Just to get things out in the open, who am I? I am no one of importance. No vast education, no pile of wealth. There is something, however; an opinion and an omonous feeling. I see this colapse of the bees as a symptom of larger things looming on the horizon for the inhabitants of Planet Earth.
Global warming, the uncontrolled pollution of our atmosphere and oceans, unbridaled greed; can we be sure that these are all seperate things and have nothing to do with each other? I cannot believe that. As a species, we have to have a paradigm shift if we wish to inhabit a planet that is hospitible to us. We may even be effecting the local 'steller neighborhood' as well with what we are doing. We need to stop. How? Like I said earlier, Im not THAT smart.
I do think that the bees are another 'canary in the coal mine' that's trying to scream out a warning that we may not be smart enough to hear.
-
Comments are now closed.
I am a plant scientist based in Oregon. I work for a global vegetable genetics and seed production company. My job is to conduct research leading to more reliable vegetable seed harvests. We depend on honeybees and other insects to pollinate our crops.
This year, I've had the opportunity to witness pollination of onion and carrot seed crops throughout the west. Pollinator activity has been excellent in all areas. Numerous native and endemic pollinators are active in Oregon. Farmers are aware of the fragile bee situation and are implementing measures to conserve and protect bees. I also visited a very active bed of alkali bees on a farm. The three generations of farmers proudly described their conservation measures to me.
There's hope for bees and other native pollinators!