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Bee Not AfraidThe disappearance of the honeybees isn't the end of the world.

By Heather Smith
Posted Friday, July 13, 2007, at 3:55 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

So what brought on this recent scourge of colony collapse disorder? Early news reports on CCD listed a plethora of suspects: pesticides, parasites, global warming, chilly larvae, ultraviolet light, not enough pollen, not enough rain, cell phones, and alien spaceships. Given the present state of the honeybee, any or all of these could have been the culprit. (Well, except for the cell phones and spaceships.)

It's even possible the mystery disease has already shown up in years past. An 1897 issue of Bee Culture magazine mentions the symptoms of something that sounds remarkably like CCD, as do a few case studies from the '60s and '70s. Before bees fell victim to varroa and the ensuing stresses of modern life, these afflictions would have been easy to bounce back from. Today, the same causal agent could have more serious effects.

But is CCD such a tragedy? The honeybee may be the only insect ever extended charismatic megafauna status, but it's already gone from the wild (and it wasn't even native to North America to begin with). Sure, it makes honey, but we already get most of that from overseas. What about the $14.6 billion in "free labor"? It's more expensive than ever: In the last three years, the cost to rent a hive during the California almond bloom has tripled, from $50 to $150.

Good thing the honeybee isn't the only insect that can pollinate our crops. In the last decade, research labs have gotten serious about cultivating other insects for mass pollination. They aren't at the point yet where they can provide all of the country's pollination needs, but they're getting there. This year the California Almond Board two-timed the honeybee with Osmia lignaria—the blue-orchard bee: Despite CCD, they had a record harvest.*

But these newly domesticated species are likely to follow in the tiny footsteps of the honeybee, if they're treated the same way. Varroa mites have already been found on bumblebees, though for the time being they seem not to be able to reproduce without honeybee hosts. And bumblebees used in greenhouse pollination have escaped on several occasions to spread novel, antibiotic-resistant diseases to their wild counterparts. If things keep going like this, we may soon be blaming spaceships all over again.

Correction, July 18, 2007: The original version misspelled the scientific name of the blue-orchard bee. (Return to the corrected sentence.)

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Heather Smith (e-mail) is a writer living in San Francisco.
Illustration by Robert Neubecker.
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Remarks from the Fray:

Just the end of a world. A creature that worked like the dickens because that's just what it did to fit into the natural world, being replaced by legions of slave bees worked virtually to death by professional bee keepers, trucked all night to new fields every day, unrelated to the natural rhythms of its life, killed off by the millions just to be replaced by another factory produced batch.

Hmmm, ask not for whom the bee bell toils......

It toils for thee.

--doodahman

(To reply, click here.)

I've kept my one hobby hive find for a few years now with no insecticide, no corn syrup, just serve-yourself flowers. I've heard organic beekeepers are not suffering from CCD.

The mites came from Asia, and like measles or smallpox introduced into a new population, they are devastating until the populations come into balance and develop some resistance; that's been happening for some years now. Varroa are no longer certain doom (I have a sticky board and keep catching a few varroa mites, but it has never got bad - maybe I haven't hit this 4-year rule). Certainly nothing was "over" for bees that I heard of when I started researching prior to getting my bees. Beekeeping is alive and well in Oregon.

Anything buzzing around your peanut butter and jelly was probably a yellow jacket, I've never seen a honeybee (or bumble or ground or mason bee) do that.

--LisaInOregon

(To reply, click here.)

The title of the honeybee article, as well as its tone, seems to suggest that the author has concluded that the disappearance of the honeybee from North America is unimportant and trivial.

I fully expect to witness this attitude applied to every extinction that occurs, right up until the moment that people realize humans are next. Come on, be serious - where else is this going except faster and faster towards the demise of our OWN species?

--pixie superhero

(To reply, click here.)

(7/15)

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