Demand for bees drives up rental fees for hives

Lock in of bee decline• To meet increasing demand, beekeepers continually

replace lost and diseased colonies• Incentive to do this is high rental fees • Bees (and beekeepers) have to work harder• This promotes conditions for more bee decline

Lock in of bee decline

• What is the next step in this sequence of events?1. Demand for luxury crops and potential profit2. More farmers plant and grow bee-dependent crops in

large monocultures3. Fewer weeds and wildflowers; more pesticides4. Bees work harder5. Ongoing declines in honey bees6. Declining crop yields per acre7. __________________________

• Also, as more land is converted, greater reductions in native pollinators and even more enhancement of dependency on honey bees

Lock in of bee decline

Only honey bees

Native bees and honey bees

Role of neonicotinoids in bee decline is more complicated

• Negative impacts of neonics dependent upon mode of dosing

• Dust release from planting of neonicotinoid seeds is highly toxic

• Sublethal exposures thru pollen and nectar hard to quantify but can cause mortality

• Proximity of neonic crops does not mean that bees are feeding on it (dilution effect).

• Honey bees exposed to many other chemicals• Wild bees may be more impacted than honey bees

(why?)

Role of neonicotinoids is more complicated

This is why. Honeybees have larger colony sizes, which can sustain higher losses of foraging bees before showing overall health effects. Yet this suggests another issue. Honey bees are the model organism used in toxicity testing for pesticides. This could explain why some studies have not detected negative effects of neonicotinoids on bees. Worse, this may also mean that native insects may be more greatly impacted.

Current large-scale hive losses have historic

precedents

(Underwood and vanEngelsdorp, 2007)

Multiple types of CCD occurring• Historic bee die offs occurred before varroa mite

and before neonicotinoids• In the winter of 2010-2011, the vast majority

(>70%) of reported colony losses were not attributed to CCD, as most dead colonies were not missing bee cadavers in the hive or apiary —the hallmark symptom of CCD.

• Status of the queen, forage availability, varroa mite are bigger challenge to beekeepers than CCD

Day-to-day factors more important

A greedy reductionist strategy also obscures:• The importance of other animal pollinators besides

honey bees

1. Obscures the role of other animal pollinators

• Three-quarters of global food crops rely on a broad group animal pollinators.

• Honey bees are important pollinators for only a third of North American crops

• 4000 native bee species in North America

Status of Pollinators in North America

• Long-term population declines for several wild bee species (notably bumble bees), and some butterflies, bats and hummingbirds

• Paucity of long-term population data and incomplete knowledge of taxonomy and ecology make definitive assessment of status difficult.

Status of bee and flower-visiting wasp species in United Kingdom

Need to address wild pollinator decline

• During past 50 years, animal-pollinator dependent agriculture and number of honey bee hives have increased 300% and 45% respectively

• These numbers also suggest renewed emphasis of practices that reverse declines in richness and abundance of wild pollinators

CCD as opportunity

• CCD has brought attention to bees and beekeeping

• Beekeeping skills now being passed on to younger generation

• CCD has catalyzed awareness and promotion of commodity chains for fair trade and organic honey

• Monofloral honeys produced by local, artisanal beekeepers sought after and sold at higher prices

Forest honeys produced by local beekeepers in rural Veracruz state, Mexico

• Beekeeping can also be promoted as form of development

A response to CCD

A three-fold response to CCD

1. Need to address more causally stable factors with broad policies• Neonicotinoids• Evidence is on the balance

negative - they are having a detrimental impact on bees and other insects and animals

• However, their banning may result in the use of older potentially problematic pesticides for which pests have developed resistance

2. More contingent causes require more contextual approach – no single quick fix possible

3. Address systemic issues arising from economic context – why are we so dependent upon honey bees and how can we lessen this dependence?

Electron micrograph of acute paralysis virus (APV) particles that infect honey bees