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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