Bee-aware of the folkloric saying, “Where a honey bee can not live, man can not live.” Hold on honey! If that is true, and honey bees are disappearing at a rapid rate, is the colony of mankind facing a collapse?
The honey bee is one of the few creatures that has essentially not changed since prehistoric times. Preserved honey bees have been found in fossilized sap dating 40 million years ago. Their physical structure and appearance was about the same as it is today. These creatures, therefore, know something about survival. They have survived in their same form for millions of years.
Furthermore, honey bees pollinate about a third of all fruits and vegetables. 80 percent of the pollination performed by insects is carried out by the hard working honey bees. Orchard owners, farmers and gardeners depend upon honey bees for crops. Animals and humans depend upon honey bees for much of their food source…apples, oranges, almonds and squash to name a few. And, that is just what we know on the surface. There is so much more to the interplay between plants, insects and animals of which man has yet not a clue.
Wild honey bee colonies are about extinct in modern times. Increasing urbanization and pesticides have taken their toll. Commercial and backyard beekeeping have been necessary to keep honey bee colonies established.
But, now we are hearing stories of even the domestically kept honey bees dying. Now we have even more cause for immediate concern. Or, do we?
The colony collapse disorder so feared and now studied far and wide is on the rise. There have been numerous proposed reasons, none of which make any sense to me. Why? Because all of the proposed culprits would cause the honey bees to die at home, in the hive. However, the colony collapse disorder is signified by the colony leaving the hive, overnight, all at once, with no apparent reason.
For example, if mites were the cause, the honey bee colony would weaken over time and dead bees would be found in or just outside of the hive. Mites would not cause the colony to flee. Furthermore, mites are easy to diagnose and see.
If pesticides were the culprit, the honey bees would die in the field upon contact or while flying back to the hive or once in the hive, one by one. The colony would not flee, in its entirety along with the queen all at once due to outside pesticides.
The key clue is that the entire colony is leaving without a trace or reason. They take the queen with them. This behaviour mimics a colony split. A split is when the colony grows too large for the existing hive so it forms a new, second queen and splits itself into two. The new queen leaves with her loyalists in tow. The incumbant queen remains with her workers now reduced by half and life goes on.
The need for a split is signalled by crowded conditions. Honey bees may also leave with the queen if danger is inevitable, such as a forest fire. Otherwise, they stick it out and protect their home, very sweet, home.
The fact that the bees are leaving indicates to me that something neurological is going on that signals the bees to take the queen and flee. What could cause a neurological imbalance of such magnitude? I think it may be drugs and chemicals and, perhaps, genetically modified crops and re-queening practices!
By this, I do not mean chemicals or pesticides used by farmers or urban dwellers outside of the hive. Although these definitely take their toll on honey bee count. I am referring to chemicals used inside the hive.
It is a little known fact to the general public that 99% of beekeepers, in my estimation, regularly use approved chemicals in their beehives. In fact, I only know of one beekeeper, other than myself, who does not use chemicals inside the hive. It is such an accepted practice, that it isn’t even discussed much among beekeepers or thought about as a reason for colony collapse disorder! Fluvalinate, coumaphos (an ingredient used in deadly nerve gas), formic acid. fumagillin and terramycin are all used regularly to prevent and/or treat mites, protozoan diseases and bacterial diseases that affect conventionally kept honey bees.
Notice I say conventionally kept honey bees. That is because organically kept honey bees generally do not succumb to mites or disease or, for that matter, colony collapse disorder. In my opinion, honey bees kept organically for about 5-6 generations of queen renewal regain the original hygienic and immunological qualities of their ancestors. Humans, in an effort to ‘protect’ the bees and produce more honey have employed the use of chemicals. But, the cost of this over time has been the emergence of lazy honey bees who no longer know how to kill the mites themselves and no longer possess inherent resistance to disease.
My organically kept honey bee hives here at Candle Bee Farm™ have shown no signs of colony collapse. They are healthy and vital creatures who produce record amounts of honey per hive each year. So much so, that a friend of mine was envious and, thinking that this must be a most pristine and fertile area to produce such healthy and hard working bees, asked if he could locate 15 of his own hives here on the property.
I agreed and thus an unintentional experiment played out. Within a year he had lost all 15 of his bee hives. All 15 demonstrated colony collapse disorder over the course of a year. He did not keep his hives in a total organic way and fed a solution of refined sugar water to his honey bees in the fall and spring. Furthermore, his bees were not of organic genetics. I continued to keep my bee hives organically and I never feed sugar water to the bees, or any other creature under my care, myself included! My organically kept bee hives continued to thrive and are still thriving to this day, 2 years later although these were all within one quarter mile of my friend’s abandoned bee hives on the same farm.
Therefore, my long suspicion that the chemicals and refined sugars used inside of the bee hives by well meaning beekeepers are the cause of colony collapse disorder is, perhaps, substantiated. Why did my organically kept hives survive and thrive while my friend’s conventionally kept honey bees all abandon their hives and collapse? My apotheosis is because the chemicals and refined sugars have affected the neurological processes of the honey bees over time. After generation upon generation of using such beekeeping practices, the honey bees may have developed neurological disfunction that causes them to abandon the hive at inappropriate times to their demise.
Another proposed thought may be the current prevalent use of genetically engineered seed for crops. These unnatural plants may also have an effect on insects and animals, including we humans. There are no crop farms in the vicinity of Candle Bee Farm™, only horse farms around the perimeter. The advantage of having horse farms as neighbors is that they do not spray chemicals or plant genetically modified crops. The honey bees here forage as nature intended on field flowers and forest trees.
I also suspect that the practice of re-queening, or killing the hive queen each year to replace her with a new queen with more eggs, may affect colony genetics. This is another practice so widespread and accepted that I have yet to meet a beekeeper who believes I have thriving hives without employing such a practice. In my opinion, re-queening upsets natural genetic transference and the survival of the fittest philosophy. The genetically fittest queen does not win by battle, as in nature. Rather, a new queen is introduced by man, each year, who has no knowledge of her strength or immunological composition. Furthermore, these introduced queens often come from large stock commercial operations thereby reducing the overall honey bee gene pool. I think that creatures who have survived since prehistoric times will do fine to choose their own queens as necessary without my manipulation or input into the matter. I leave the queens alone and the best lady rules.
This seems so simple. But, there are many factors at stake. The research into the issue is primarily sponsored by the pharmaceutical companies that produce the chemicals that are used in the bee hives. This research is conducted toward the hope of finding a new chemical cure or quick fix. It doesn’t appear to be open to the fact that chemicals and conventional methods may have caused the problem over time.
My experience has been that it takes about 5-6 new queen production generations for the honey bees to regain their instinctual habits and immunological protection. Queens live and produce for 2-3 years. So, it takes a while for the gene pool to renew by natural means. Obviously, killing the old queen and replacing her with a new one from a conventional hive will not produce genetic results on an immunological level. This will have to play out over time with organic methods and a bit of ‘survival of the fittest’ methodology. If not undertaken by more beekeepers, the result may be no honey bees at all. And, then we are back to the consideration, or prediction, of the folklore, “Where a honey bee can not live…,” no longer so easily ignored.
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