Honey Bees Have Gone From Endangered To Dangerous - And That Is A Science Journalism Problem

By Chuck Dinerstein — January 29, 2018

It has been a tough decade for the honeybee; first they were suddenly dying due to something called Colony Collapse Disorder and when that was shown to be just the kind of blip they have had in deaths since the first recorded notes on domesticated beehives, they have been implicated in a Science editorial as damaging the environment, because there are too many of them.

How can this bee?

First, some information. Our beloved western honey bee, Apis mellifera, is a pollinator, but it is one of just over 25,000 bee species. We don't even know how many there actually are because only just over a handful of bee species have hives and can be readily estimated. But domesticated honeybees are involved in the production of over 70 percent of global crops. That, rather than honey, is their agricultural driver. We cultivate western honey bees just like chickens, cows, and pigs. In some ways, their prominence among the tens of thousands of pollinator species speaks to our use of them as ‘monocultures.’ And it is this human use that is the subject of new environmental concern.

Counting the bees is not possible

The authors make the point that the recent concerns about the collapse of pollination, used to inspire our environmental spirit (i.e. donations), is more an “issue of agricultural rather than environmental importance.” They assert that our use of honey bees as an agricultural tool, moving them from pollination site to pollination site, is equivalent to introducing a new, extensive species into each area. The authors speculate that with each conquering invader the indigenous wild species lose their share of resources and may be further afflicted by disease carried by the honey bee “invaders.”........To Read More.....