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Closer Look: Honeybees

There are currently 20,000 species of bees around the world. To date, only

one of these bee species has been domesticated, Apis mellifera, the

honeybee. In fact, the honeybee was one of the first animals to be

domesticated approximately 7,000 years ago in Ancient Persia. At the time,

nomadic peoples had begun the dramatic shift to sedentary lifestyles which

are dependent on the domestication of food plants and animals. Since many

plants rely on the pollinating work of

insects to bear fruit, the honeybee,

valued for its reliability and efficiency

in pollination (Figures 1 and 2),

continues to have a central role in our

food system today.

According to the United Nation’s Food

and Agriculture Organization (FAO),

90% of the world’s food supply comes

from approximately 100 crop species.

71 of these crops rely on honeybees

for pollination, including fruits, nuts

and vegetables. In the United States, honeybee activities in apple orchards,

Figure 1: Honeybees pollinating flowers. By foraging for nectar, honeybees carry pollen dust from one flower to another, delivering the pollen from the male organs (pistals) to the female organs (stigmata) in the process.

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almond groves, pumpkin patches and alfalfa

farms, among a variety of other places,

generate $15 billion in revenue each year.

A Superorganism

Modern scientist, William Morton Wheeler

coined the term “superorganism” in 1928 to

help describe the high level of organization

achieved by eusocial insects like

honeybees. The “super” in superorganism

refers to an advanced level of functioning,

which the honeybee colonies exhibit in their

highly organized structural and social order.

Each individual honeybee performs a multitude of tasks throughout its

lifespan, such as nursing larvae (Figure 3), making wax, guarding the hive

and foraging for nectar and pollen. However, a honeybees’ individual life is

Figure 3: Honeybee larvae from hatched eggs in the honeycomb cells (left) to the stages of larval development (right).

Figure 2: Michael Pollan, an American author and journalist who

writes about the intersection of nature and culture, fondly refers to

the honeybees (such as the one pollinating a flower in the image above) as the “legs of the plant

world” because of the central role they play in food production through

pollination.

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meaningless outside the context of the

hive to which it belongs. A beehive

(Figure 4), or nest, is an enclosed

structure in which honeybees live and

raise their young.

Honeybee hives operate as a collective,

selecting nesting sites, reproducing,

swarming, and coordinating travel to

flower patches and water sources.

These processes rely on the whole

colony functioning as one

superorganism. No single bee can carry

out all of these tasks, but together the

bees cooperate to build a successful

community.

Honeybees have mastered this art of

social cohesion in ways that allow them

to pollinate vast areas with maximum

efficiency and produce surplus honey

(that is, more honey than they need to

survive). Most interestingly, the social

cohesion of honeybees also allows them

to develop relationships with human

beekeepers (Figure 5). It is through this

Figure 4: Close-up of a honeybee hive.

Figure 5: Beekeeper Gunther Hauk, shown here holding a honeybee comb, is the

founder of Spikenard Honeybee Sanctuary in Virginia, US, where natural and sanctuary beekeeping methods are

promoted that emphasize the important reciprocal relationship between beekeeper

and bees.

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ability to have a relationship with humans that makes honeybees such reliable

and effective participants in agriculture and food production systems.

The critical role that honeybees play within our food system links human

survival to the continued survival of honeybees. However, honeybees are

particularly sensitive to the environment, requiring specific and complex

environmental conditions to flourish. The needs of this indicator species

include stable climate, clean air, clean water, diverse forest ecosystems and

healthy flowers for pollen and nectar. Because of this, honeybees are very

susceptible to changes in the environment.

As we have learned throughout Healing Earth, human agricultural practices

impact the natural world in many ways, and this is especially the case with the

honeybees. The spraying of herbicides and pesticides, for example, has a

dramatic effect on the bees, who cannot discriminate between flowers that

have been treated with chemicals versus those that have not. Systemic

pesticides, such as neonicotinoids (dubbed “neonics”), which have been

genetically inserted into many plants used in modern landscaping, have a

deleterious impact on honeybee function. A member of a family of chemical

neurotoxins, neonics affect the neurological functioning of insects. At low

levels of exposure, neonics do not normally kill bees directly; however, they

impact bees’ ability to successfully forage for nectar, learn and remember

where flowers are located, and impair bees’ ability to find their way home to

the hive.

Pesticides and herbicides, along with other environmental factors such as

global climate change, can compromise the health of honeybees, making

them more vulnerable to diseases, fungi and parasites, reducing their ability to

survive in their natural habitats. With their immune systems weakened by

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external factors, internal sicknesses

and vulnerabilities are becoming

increasingly more devastating for

honeybee populations. The outbreaks

of the varroa mite (Figure 6), tracheal

mite, and European foulbrood are

examples of internal sicknesses that

have resulted in dramatic losses

among honeybee populations. These drivers have collectively caused the

widespread deaths of entire bee colonies worldwide, a phenomenon known as

‘colony collapse disorder’.

An extensive 2014 study conducted by the European Commission documents

that nearly all native bee species are in global decline. While climate change,

widespread pesticide use and general environmental degradation are

responsible for a significant portion of colony loss, the most important cause

of decline in honeybee populations is industrial beekeeping practices. For

more than a century, beekeepers have been asking bees: “how much can I

get out of you?” (Figure 7).

Like with most technological advancements in agriculture, nearly all of the

modern advancements in beekeeping technology have been centered on

increasing yields of honey and preventing bee colonization swarming. The

‘success’ of a modern beekeeper has typically been measured by these two

factors: honey production and swarming prevention. As a result, the health,

vitality, and strength of the bees themselves have declined.

Figure 6: Honeybee larvae with varroa mites, on a plastic comb structure.

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New technologies and practices such as sugar

feeding, plastic comb- substitutes (known as

plastic foundations), queen excluders,

artificial queen breeding/production, and

migratory beekeeping are just some examples

of industrial methods that are in widespread

practice today.

Beekeepers resort to sugar feeding typically

during the winter when the hive honey has been

extracted by the beekeeper, and the bees need

food and fuel to keep the colony alive through the

cold season. However, sugar lacks the nutritional

benefits of honey, and weakens the health of the

colony.

Honeybees naturally build wax combs (Figure 8,

top) as nurseries for their larvae and to store

honey and pollen. Industrial apiaries provide

plastic foundations (Figure 8, bottom) for bees to use in constructing their

comb. It is thought that if the bees spend less energy making wax for the

honey comb, then they will be able to divert more of their energy into making

additional honey.

Figure 7: Beekeepers who use modern technologies to

increase honey profits largely ignore the natural instincts and

well-being of the bees. Beekeepers who respect the

bees’ well-being in their practices do not require the

sting-protective clothing common to industrial

beekeepers.

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Figure 8: Honeybee wax combs: (a) a naturally constructed honeycomb on a tree branch, (b) close-up of naturally constructed honeycomb, (c) plastic foundation (comb-substitute) used by industrial beekeepers, (d) close-up of bees working on a plastic comb- substitute.

https://pxhere.com/en/photo/503415

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Queen excluders and artificial queen

breeding are ways to keep a bee colony

from undergoing its natural method of colony

expansion, a phenomenon called swarming

(Figure 9). When a colony begins to outgrow

its hive or box (beekeepers create artificial

bee hives using wood boxes, see Figure 10),

the queen will leave the box and fly to a

nearby roost (usually a tree branch), where

she will sit and wait for her worker bees to

follow. Typically about half of the colony will

follow the queen, while the rest will stay in

the old hive, awaiting a new queen. The

bees that leave the old hive and follow the

queen to a new roost will cluster together in a mass around the queen,

forming a swarm. A beekeeper can

then climb into the tree and capture

the swarm in a new box, resulting in

two colonies from the original one.

Industrial beekeepers do not feel this

is an efficient way to expand bee

colonies, and they do not like the

dangerous work of chasing swarms,

retrieving them, and shaking them into

a new hive box. Therefore, to prevent

swarming altogether, beekeepers will

insert a selective screen-like barrier

Figure 9: Honeybee swarm.

Figure 10: Beekeepers keep bees in artificial hives called boxes.

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into the hive, which allows worker bees in and out, but blocks the queen bee

from leaving the hive. While these queen excluders can maximize honey

production, they are very disruptive to the honeybees’ natural life rhythm. In

addition, industrial beekeeping techniques include killing the queen each year,

and bringing in an artificially bred queen to “reset” the hive with the idea of

focusing the colony’s energy on honey production and not reproduction. This

practice is very disruptive and disorienting to the colony. As a result, these

disrupted colonies have become much more susceptible to environmental

stressors like climate change and pesticides, as well as internal disease, fungi

and parasites.

In order to recover the devastating worldwide loss of honeybees that has

taken place over the past few decades, more sustainable stewardship of the

honeybees is required. Maximizing profit has become too high a priority for

many beekeepers, who often see honeybees solely as honey-producers, and

not as creatures with intrinsic value and environmental benefits of their own.

Instead of asking how much profit can be made from bees, beekeepers today

must ask a new question: “how can we help bees to be healthy?” Sustainable

beekeeping requires an environment free of pesticides and rich in honeybee

forage (flowering trees, shrubs and forbs). It requires that the beekeeper

learn the life history of the bees, and assist the bees in their colony

development without controlling it through disruptive artificial methods. Most

importantly, it requires the patient beekeeper harvest only honey that is in

surplus of what the bee colonies need to survive, making sure to leave

enough honey behind for the bees to survive the winters.

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IMAGE SOURCES:

Figure 1- honeybee pollinating a dandelion- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pollination_Bee_Dandelion_Zoom.JPG

Figure 2- bee pollinating red flower: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey_bee

Figure 3 left- honeybee larvae in comb: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bienenwabe_mit_Eiern_und_Brut_5_larva.png

Figure 3 right- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Drohnenpuppen_81b.jpg

Figure 4- close-up of a honeybee hive- http://maxpixel.freegreatpicture.com/Honeybees-Frame-Bees-Bee-Closeup-Honey-Hive-Wax-2286123

Figure 5 beekeeper Gunther Hauk- https://spikenardfarm.org/the-bees/bee-gallery/

Figure 6: bee larvae with mites- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Drohnenpuppen_mit_Varroamilben_71a.jpg

Figure 7: Beekeeper in protective gear- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beekeeping

Figure 8: Honeycombs

Top right and left- naturally created honeycomb on tree- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeycomb (top left is

the same photo as top right, but it is just a close-up of a portion of that same photo)

Bottom left- plastic foundation-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeycomb#/media/File:Bienenwabe_Ausbau_der_Mittelwand_79a.jpg

Bottom right- bees working on plastic honeycomb- http://maxpixel.freegreatpicture.com/Beekeeper-Bee-

Hive-Inspections-Apiary-Honey-Bee-643877

Figure 9 honeybee swarm- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Swarm_of_Bees_in_hedgerow_-_geograph.org.uk_-_416400.jpg

Figure 10: bee boxes

top image:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj2-

qi82b3UAhVS1GMKHRI2DdQQjRwIBw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2Fphotos%2Fusually_melancho

ly%2F9464790072&psig=AFQjCNEmt0c1mIe9M5LAwN0Sh0vfg-a_gQ&ust=1497541983898428

bottom image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beehives_in_Mankato,_Minnesota.jpg