One of America’s earliest food crops – almonds – is also
one of the most important for commercial beekeepers. Almonds depend on bees for
pollination, but the explosive growth of this bumper crop taxes the very
honeybees the industry needs to thrive.
California’s Central Valley produces over 80% of the
world’s almonds, valued at over $4 billion in 2012. The boom is poised to
continue, with new food products and expanding overseas markets increasing
demand to the point that no young almond trees are available for purchase until
2016.
Demand for almonds translates into demand for
pollination. So every year commercial beekeepers transport some 60% of all US
honeybees to California’s almond groves in February and March, when it’s still
winter in most other states. It’s one of their biggest challenges.
For one thing, bee colonies, especially those from
northern states, lack sufficient time to emerge from their heat-conserving
winter clusters. Some beekeepers thus maintain 20,000 to 30,000 hives. Each one
requires careful inspection for diseases and parasites – a meticulous,
Herculean task on such a scale.
Complicating the situation, beekeepers are trying to work
within a large-scale agricultural system, using an insect whose husbandry
practices have changed little since the nineteenth century. The larger the
commercial beekeeper’s stock, the harder it can be to tend them and recover
from financial setbacks in the form of lost bees.
Almond growers will need 1.5 million hives this year,
estimates Colorado beekeeper Lyle Johnston. “It takes almost all the commercial
bees in the United States,” to pollinate the almond crop, he says. The payoff
can amount to half an individual keeper’s yearly profit.
However, bees can come back from California “loaded with
mites and every other disease you can think of,” beekeeper Ed Colby explains.
That can often mean bee colony deaths. Last year, US beekeepers experienced an
average 30% overwinter bee loss; some lost 10% to 15% of their hives, while
others lost much more. It’s a normal cost of doing business, but it can be
painful.
Last year’s rate was higher than normal, and higher than
any keeper would want. But it was not the “bee-pocalypse” that some news
stories claimed. The real story is that efforts to identify a single unifying
cause for higher-than-usual losses have failed. Scientists are discovering that
multiple issues affect bee health.
Urban, suburban and agricultural “development has reduced
natural habitats, clearing out thousands of acres of clover and natural flowers,”
a 60 Minutes investigative report observed. “Instead, bees are spending
week after week on the road, feeding on a single crop, undernourished and
overworked.”
The migration itself is stressful, notes Glenwood
Springs, Colorado Post-Independent reporter Marilyn Gleason. “First,
there’s the road trip, which isn’t exactly natural for bees, and may include
freezing cold or scorching heat. Bees ship out of Colorado before the coldest
weather, and drivers may drench hot, thirsty bees with water at the truck
wash.”
The convergence in almond groves of so many commercial
bees from all over the country creates a hotbed of viruses and pathogens that
can spread to many hives. The varroa destructor mite carries at least 19
different bee viruses and diseases, causing major impacts on bee colonies.
Parasitic phorid flies are another problem, and highly contagious infections
also pose significant threats. The intestinal fungus nosema ceranae, for
example, prevents bees from absorbing nutrition, resulting in starvation.
The tobacco ringspot virus was likewise linked recently
to the highly publicized problem known as “colony collapse disorder.” CCD
occurs when bees in a colony disappear, leaving behind only a queen and a few
workers. The term originally lumped together a variety of such “disappearing”
disorders recorded in different locales across hundreds of years, as far back
as 950 AD in Ireland. Thankfully, as during past episodes, these unexplained
incidents have declined in recent years and, despite all these challenges,
overall US honeybee populations and the number of managed colonies have held
steady for nearly 20 years.
These days, perhaps the biggest existential threat to
bees is campaigns purporting to save them. Extreme-green groups like the Center
for Food Safety and Pesticide Action Network of North America are blaming an
innovative new class of pesticides called neonicotinoids for both over-winter
bee losses and CCD.
Allied with several outspoken beekeepers, the activists
are pressuring the Environmental Protection Agency, Canada’s Pest Management
Regulatory Agency and government regulatory agencies to follow Europe’s lead –
and ban neonics. Instead of protecting bees and beekeepers, however, their
campaigns will likely cause greater harm – because they ignore the multiple
threats that scientists have identified, and because a neonic ban will result
in farmers using pesticides that are more toxic to bees.
The European Union’s political decision to suspend neonic
use came because France’s new agriculture minister banned their use. That meant
French farmers would be at a distinct disadvantage with the rest of Europe, if
they were the only ones unable to use the pesticide, noted British
environmental commentator Richard North. They could lose $278 million per
season in lost yields and extra pesticide spraying.
So the French agricultural ministry sought an EU-wide ban
on all neonicotinoids. After several votes and a misleading report on the
science, the European Commission imposed a ban, over the objections of many
other EU members, who note that the evidence clearly demonstrates the new
pesticides are safe for bees.
Years-long field tests have found that real-world
exposures have no observable effects on bee colonies. Other studies have
highlighted other significant insect, fungal, human and other issues that,
singly or collectively, could explain CCD. Having analyzed scores of 2007-2012
bee death incidents, Canadian bee experts concluded that “…very few of the
serious bee kills involve neonicotinoid pesticides. Five times as many ‘major’
or ‘moderate’ pesticide-related bee kills were sourced to non-neonic
chemicals.”
In Canada’s western provinces, almost 20 million acres of
100% neonic-treated canola is pollinated annually by honeybees and tiny alfalfa
leaf-cutter bees. Both species thrive on the crop, demonstrating that neonics
are not a problem. Large-scale field studies of honeybees at Canadian
universities and a bumblebee field study by a UK government agency found no
adverse effects on bees.
Last October, a team of industry scientists published a
four-year study of the effects of repeated honeybee exposure to neonic-treated
corn and rapeseed (canola) pollen and nectar under field conditions in several
French provinces. The study found similar mortality, foraging behavior, colony
strength and weight, brood development and food storage in colonies exposed to
seed-treated crops and in unexposed control colonies. This also indicates low
risk to bees.
At least two more major, recently completed university-run
field research projects conducted under complex, costly scientific laboratory
guidelines (“good lab practices”) are awaiting publication. All indications to
date suggest that they too will find no observable adverse effects on bees at
field-realistic exposures to neonicotinoids.
Meanwhile Project ApisM., a partnership of
agro-businesses and beekeepers, has invested $2.5 million in research to
enhance the health of honeybee colonies. Switzerland-based Syngenta has spent
millions expanding bee habitats in Europe and North America, through Project
Pollinator. Bayer has built bee health centers in Europe and the United States,
and Monsanto’s Beeologics subsidiary is developing technology to fight varroa
mites.
None of that matters to the anti-pesticide activists.
They are using pressure tactics to make Canada and the United States copy the
EU. That would be a huge mistake. Science, not politics, should prevail.
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