Compounding Issues

Bees as Study object

Over centuries mankind has developed a strong relationship with Honeybees, unlike with any other insect.

European Honeybees are therefore the best understood and most observed insects by humans.

Our knowledge about their issues is much better than our knowledge about the issues of other bee species or other insects.

The European Honeybee has become a perfect study object.

Many other bee species and insects are facing the same or similar issues as our honeybees - unnoticed !

Many bee and insect species have disappeared - unnoticed !

Many bumblebee species used to exist in Europe, decimated to just a handful - unnoticed !

The existence of bees is threatened by the impact human civilisation has on the environment and the bee population is steadily declining. How we humans interact with nature does not always seem to be guided by wisdom but profitability, efficiency, and what is comfortable for us, e.g. spraying a weed killer instead of pulling the weeds by hand.

The major known issues

Human Activities and Interactions with the environment over the last fifty years have created the situation we are currently in. If not already extinct, many insects, including bees, are moving closer to the brink of extinction. This phenomena carries over to other animals, e.g. birds, reptiles, fish etc.

A major issue has been and still is the expanding of humans into ares of nature leading to irreversible habitat destruction, not only for bees. This has a direct impact on the bees who live in the wild. Bees kept by a beekeeper are provided with accommodation and being looked after.

The impact of climate change on bees is difficult to prove and not everyone acknowledges what climate change causes. An observation we all can make is the out-of-season flowering pattern of gum trees (Eucalyptus). Some Gum trees usually flowering in summer (December) are postponing their blossoms until winter (June) when it is too cold for the tree to produce some nectar and too cold for the bees to forage. As a result, bees don't find enough food in summer because the trees are not flowering and don't find enough food in winter when it is too cold to fly out

Toxic and harmful Chemicals

It's no longer a secret that chemical products are being used more and more in agriculture, municipal services in our urban areas, and by us all in our own backyards. As beekeepers, we should always keep a close eye on the impact these chemicals have on our little buzzing friends.

The widespread use of "insect killing" chemicals have had a toll on bees and other insects, most of them disappeared without having been noticed, silently. Scientific research is not necessary to get a good indication for the destruction of insect life.

When you took your car on a road-trip fifty years ago you had to stop after a while and clean the windscreen from splashed insects. These days, when you make a road trip for hundreds of kilometres your windscreen remains almost spotless - this is not because the insects have learnt to avoid the road!

What causes the issues?

To put it bluntly, the all-important bee population is declining because of human interference.

Too much concrete, too much tarmac, too many lawns, too many pesticides and weather changes as a direct result of our actions on this planet.

There are also too few bee-friendly plants and too few safe places for bees live.

Just ask yourself; how many meadows are there in your area?

The existence of bees is threatened by the impact human civilisation has on the environment. Over the past fifty years human actions have created issues for our bees they would otherwise not have.

On a smartphone or a computer that not performing well anymore you can recreate a clean system by executing a "Factory Reset". Unfortunately such an option doesn't exist for the environment we have created; there is no "Reset" option - we cannot turn back the time and reverse our mistakes!

We should have the intelligence to learn from mistakes though! Hopefully, and not too late, we might eventually make the right decisions, guided by insight and our wisdom rather than by ignorance, productivity and profit maximisation and greed! Meanwhile we all can help our bees to master the challenges of the existing modern world and the problems we have created for them.

Insecticides, Pesticides and other harmful chemicals

Among the major issues bees are facing are caused by us humans using chemicals in agriculture, in particular insecticides or pesticides, but also fungicides, herbicides and fertilisers are harmful to bees (and other life forms).

Insecticides have been developed to kill insects !

Bees are insects. It should not come as a surprise that bees get killed by insecticides. How effective can an insecticide be, claiming to be "safe for bees" ? - safe for insects? - a contradiction in itself !

A question that deserves an answer is: What effects do insecticides have on other life forms?

The use of insecticides in agriculture, particularly required for mono-culture farming, is an attempt to reduce the damage to crop by insects. But by killing those "crop-damaging" insects we also eradicate a great variety of other insects, among them our bees.

With the ongoing development of new chemicals, more powerful products are released on the market to "do their job", the threat to bees is always present - and the list of these products is getting longer every year.

Insects, including bees, are getting killed by some of the most powerful "weapons of mass destruction", neonicotinoids - simply by walking on the plant that has been treated with such a chemical, e.g. Clothianidin or Imidacloprid.

Relocation of Beehives for Pollination

In areas highly populated by humans the existence of feral bee colonies is often not tolerated. Nevertheless, bees are required for the pollination of our food produce in those areas or nearby. Beekeepers, providing bees for pollination where and when needed can meet this demand by relocating beehives to the pollination areas and remove them again when the job is done.

Decline in the number of Beekeepers

Not only the number of bees is declining, the number of beekeepers is on the decline as well. Less beekeepers means less support for our threatened bees. As a result there might not be sufficient numbers of bees nearby where crop is grown. It also means, in order to fill the demand for pollination, the existing beekeepers providing this service have to increase their number of beehives, leading to bee farming.

It is a far better approach and closer to nature to have 1,000 beekeepers with two hives each, rather than one beekeeper with 2,000 hives.

Decline of Natural Habitat

As the human population is growing, natural habitats of other species are declining. The natural nesting site for a colony of European Honeybees is a sheltered, darkened enclosure, like a tree hollow or other cavities found in nature. As these natural habitats are gradually disappearing bees seek shelter in residential areas as well. When bees settle in house walls, letter boxes, meter boxes, compost bins, chimneys etc. it often clashes with the existing residents and as a result the bees get removed, often destroyed.

Mono-culture Farming

One problem currently affecting honeybees is modern farming, which often involves mono-culture farming leading to malnutrition for bees. It is our mono-culture approach to agriculture where crops of the same kind are grown in large, concentrated areas. If the only source of food the bees can get is from the one crop grown in an area, it can lead to malnutrition. One might argue that the pollination period is only for a short time, between three and six weeks, and during that time bees have also access to the pollen already stored in their hive. This argument weakens though when beehives are moved from one farming region to the next to pollinate large areas of mono-culture crop at a time. The Almond farms in the Robinvale area (Victoria) required 145,000 beehives for pollination in August 2014. To meet demand, beehives need to be transported on trucks over long distance, even over 1,000 km.

Bee Farming

Growing crops in large, concentrated areas has in some countries lead to inappropriate beekeeping methods, i.e. bee farming, where hundreds or thousands of beehives are kept and managed with an industrial approach to service the pollination demand. Bee Farmers with 2,000 or 20,000 hives cannot provide the same attention, love and care for their bees than beekeepers with only two, eight or twenty hives. One can only imagine that it causes stress for the bees when they are handled as a commodity rather than living creatures. One might also argue that with bee farming the focus for the beekeeper shifts towards "what is efficient for the operation" as opposed to "what is best for the welfare of the bees".

The impact of Human Development on Bees

The existence of bees and other life forms is progressively threatened by the impact civilisation has on the environment. Natural habitats are constantly destroyed and converted into commercial farmland - not only in Brazil.

For higher efficiency and maximising the yield, large areas are established as a mono-culture operation, i.e. no crop diversity, limiting the food availability and variety for bees.

As a result the bee population in the wild is steadily declining. And it does not stop there - other insects and life forms are under threat as well. Insects, including our bees, are the food for birds, frogs, fish, lizards etc. When the number of insects is declining those insect-eating animals don't find enough food in the wild and their population declines as well. In the wild this phenomenon propagates through the entire food chain.

When it reaches the civilisation more of Nature Habitats are getting converted into industrial farmland and more insecticides and herbicides get applied to the new and also the existing mono-culture farms. Just killing more insects and dependent life forms.

Some of the issues have been caused by activities associated with beekeeping and one might argue bees would be better off when left alone and not kept and managed by beekeepers. However, without the ongoing attention to bees and their issues by beekeepers, bees might have already vanished, silently and unnoticed.

Honeybee colonies managed by beekeepers are regularly monitored for colony strength, pests, parasites and diseases as fundamental part of successful beekeeping. This is part of the reason we beekeepers are aware of the bees' issues and their challenges.

Did you know that mono-culture farmland covers most of the fertile land we have? And that's not all - heavy use of fertilisers over a long period of time can transform the soil in infertile land - wasteland. Are you worried?

Has the future already begun?

Our past and present actions and non-actions have created issues we are facing now and indicate what we might be dealing with in our future. How can we turn around and avoid the worse?

The amount of fertile land will come to a limit. Heavy use of fertilisers has transformed the soil in infertile land. More Mono-culture farmland is being created by destroying Natural resources.

Shortage of beehives needed for pollination on mono-culture farmland, due to malnutrition and the spread of the Varroa Mite.

Only crops with a permit are allowed to farm, leading to limited diversity of food for the bees.

Genetically modified crops treated with Neonicotinoids - the impact needs to be critically and honestly investigated

Limited diversity of food for us humans, due to insufficient pollinators.

To be continued