As much as I love summer, there is one thing that always lurks in the dark recesses of my mind: bees. I hated bees. They never left me alone — constantly chasing me through the woods behind my house, pestering me when all I wanted to do was enjoy my outdoor hot dog or sneaking up on me as I walked barefoot through the grass.
OK, so I’m exaggerating. As evil as those little stinging buggers seem to be, all they’re doing is defending themselves. If the Pilgrims hadn’t brought over honeybees to the New World, our country’s flora would be drastically different. Honeybees are an incredibly intelligent and social species that do important things for our environment — and our food. Honeybees are used for pollinating thousands upon thousands of acres of crops all over the U.S.: apples, almonds, berries — any kind of flowering plant you can think of. A third of the food you eat depends on the pollination from honeybees, and that accounts for $500 million in Oregon alone.
But now the honeybees are disappearing.
Ramesh Sagili, associate professor in the Department of Horticulture at Oregon State University,@@http://hort.oregonstate.edu/faculty-staff/sagili@@ suggests that honeybee populations have been dramatically dropping since the late 1990s, but it wasn’t until the early 2000s that the media really started covering the mysterious disorder that kills entire hives.
I had the opportunity to listen to Sagili speak last Thursday at an event called Science Pub, which is regularly sponsored by the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry@@http://www.omsi.edu/@@ and hosted by Cozmic Pizza. This event features a different speaker each month from all areas of science. October’s lecture was about the disappearance of honeybees.
More research into the matter reveals that there is more than one thing that causes Colony Collapse Disorder.@@http://www.ars.usda.gov/News/docs.htm?docid=15572@@ According to Sagili, causes of collapse include either parasites, pesticides, malnutrition, migration, a lack of genetic diversity or diseases. One thing they know: These bees are not dying of starvation.
“My hives die, they don’t starve,” local beekeeper Tom Titus said.@@name reference?@@
One of the main indicators of Colony Collapse Disorder are the stores of leftover food found in the blighted colonies.
Pesticides are pretty easy to believe, but malnutrition? How does that work? Don’t bees just eat nectar? That’s what I thought when the lecture commenced, but bees eat more than just nectar. They actually eat pollen, too. Pollen is basically flower sperm, and the amino acids in the pollen are important for a bee’s nutrition. (For those who aren’t familiar with biology, amino acids are the building blocks of protein.) When bees are only subject to one type of pollen their whole lives, in the cases of large-scale pollination like swaths of berries or almonds, bees don’t get the variety of protein needed to stay healthy. Sagili suggests rotating colonies to different kinds of plants to keep them healthy. Anecdotal evidence demonstrates that the more diverse crops that bees have access to, the healthier they are.
The overall main cause of the disorder, by far, is a parasite called the Varroa mite@@http://www.ca.uky.edu/entomology/entfacts/ef608.asp@@. They’re little vampires that infect hives and suck the blood of honeybees. They’re also a vector for a virus that causes wing deformation.
Usually, the way to handle harmful parasites is to use in-hive pesticides. But lately, beekeepers have noticed that while the pesticides do a great job of killing the pests, they also end up killing some of the bees. A new trend of using organic or alternative in-hive pesticides is rising among beekeepers.
Although Oregon hasn’t had too many cases of Colony Collapse Disorder, some local beekeepers do have to deal with the Varroa mite.
Jonathan Loftin, @@http://www.orsba.org/htdocs/regionalbranch.php@@a local beekeeper for more than 30 years, has not yet encountered the mysterious disorder.
To conclude the lecture, Sagili offered ways that both growers and beekeepers can help fight against the virus. Growers should avoid spraying pesticides during major blooming periods and even plant hedge crops so the bees can get a variety of protein. Beekeepers can continue to use organic pesticides in their own hives.
So far, both Loftin and Titus have only had problems with the Varroa mite, but they’re both wary of an incoming struggle with the disorder.
“(We’re) white-knuckling it,” Loftin said. “Always asking, ‘Is it coming?’”