OP Spotlight - The Commercialization of Food
What Are The Bees Trying to Tell Us

"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."

Albert Einstein, (1879-1955) Theoretical Physicist

The Cost of Human Interference - The Domino Effect

Bees are vital to humans. Since the dawn of humanity we have prized their honey and beeswax for their nutritional and healing properties. Today, these natural products have become a rare and expensive commodity because the bees are disappearing.

The affect of their disappearance is wide reaching. As bees disappear, so do many naturally grown fruits and vegetables. Aside from the food they pollinate, they are also integral to the reproduction of many plants and flowers that benefit other species. With bees vanishing, it is not only the bee but the whole complementary chain linking animal to plant life that is being disrupted.

The rapid disappearance of bees also strikes us economically. Scientists theorize up to a quarter of what we eat is dependent on honeybees. Cornell University estimates that's worth more than $14 billion in seeds and crops in the United States alone.

No Answers

Researchers are scrambling to find answers to what they are calling one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world. There has been a range of theories to try to explain the bees' disappearance. Mites and the pesticides used to control them; viruses, fungi or poor bee nutrition; radiation from mobile phones interfering with bees' navigation systems; solar flare activity; even the geomagnetic orientation of the earth. But none of these theories can exactly identify what or why these famously home loving species stray or why their disappearance has become a global phenomenon.

The Cost of Human Interference

Follow me to a story that broke in 2005, but has been under study since the mid 90s. Rogue elephants, first in India then Africa started attacking villages. What made this so unusual was they were using human intelligence to carry out the assault, like blocking escape routes and pinning down humans before goring them to death. What's more, the pachyderms displayed other psychological traits only observed in humans.

The reason for the meyhem? Researchers think it's an emergent species-wide emotional breakdown. The result from human interference over long periods of time, the consequence of which has lead to the destruction of important social bonds for the elephants.

Bees, like elephants are highly evolved. In fact, genetically speaking humans and honeybees share a common ancestor estimated to have lived 600 million years ago. While our ancestors evolved into fish and then moved on land, the honeybee's ancestors evolved into crustacean-like ocean-dwelling animals, some of which moved ashore and became insects. Bees have given rise to thousands of descendant species, some of which live a solitary life and others that lived in colonies.

The honey bee is one of the earth's most social and ecologically important creatures. Beside making honey, they pollinate over 80 per cent of the world's crops. They live in societies that rival our own in size and complexity. A single hive may contain as many as 80,000 bees, which together build the hive, gather food and feed the next generation. They find flowers to gather nectar by merging many sources of information including the position of the sun and the subtle nuance of a flower's scent. When they come back to their hive, they waggle out a dance to indicate where other honeybees can find the flowers. And they manage all this with only a million neurons in their head--a thousandth the number we have.

Plant Friendly

Fruit flies and many other insects have an antagonistic relationship with plants. They devour the leaves, stems and seeds of the plants, depriving the plants of reproductive success. Bees, on the other hand, are in a friendly relationship with flowers, which depend on them to spread their pollen. And while many other insects must find food as larvae (think caterpillars munching tomato leaves), bees grow up in hives eating the nectar which is delivered by their aunts.

Why Bees Are Taking Flight

Sadly it seems that the bees too are experiencing a species-wide emotional breakdown. Over the past 30 years, various pathologies affecting bees have spread all over the world. Their environments have been dramatically manipulated by humankind resulting in the breakdown of their societal order. Stressed to their breaking point, instead of fighting back like the elephants, the bees are leaving.

Cause and Effect

In many cases commercial bees are so domesticated, they can no longer live without human support. They are stored in air tight containers where pathogens grow destroying the hives from the inside out. They are artifically fed sugar water and trucked about in big rigs, travelling thousands of miles in short periods of time, in order to maximize pollination benefits to farmers. Aside from the continual exposure to a myriad of insecticides and pesticides, these constant relocations create enormous stress on the hive activity.

Now add the wild bees. Yep, they're disappearing too. Scientists at University of Leeds compared a million records on bees from hundreds of sites in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands before and after 1980. They found that bee diversity has declined nearly 80 percent at tested sites. In the southern Indian state of Karnataka, once a major honey producer, up to 90% of the indigenous bee colonies were destroyed by an imported virus in the early 1990s. In Rimouski, Quebec, the bee populations have also been decimated. In Iraq, the toxic effects of the Gulf War (smoke due to burning oil wells) that have destroyed 90% of the bee colonies.

Neurotoxins

From malformations, nervous system problems and disorientation to behavioural problems, bees are manifesting all sorts of symptoms that reveal a fragile state of health. Some bees cannot find their way back to their hive after leaving it. Others are rejected when they return because they are not recognised by the rest of the group.

The new insecticides introduced in the 1980s are neurotoxins which are spread when crops are sown (sunflower, soy, etc.) and serve to protect them against their various predators. Studies are showing that the toxic chemicals remain on the plant throughout its growth cycle right through the flowering period. The nectar eaten by bees also contains chemical residues that are deeply harmful to them. Hence, honey production has dropped by a third generally, and by up to 90% in some areas.

Our urban foot has also taken a terrible toll on a honeybee's natural state. Pollinators work on a limited range of flowers. But they have to fly further and further afield to gather the pollen because their supportive environment is disappearing. This has a disasterous effect on bees in particular because while most pollinators pick up the fertilizing spores by accident while trolling flowers for nectar, bees collect pollen for their young.

The Domino Effect

But what the Leeds study goes on to say is even more disturbing. It turns out the decline in bees is linked to a decline in plant diversity. Where bee diversity has decreased, so too have the wildflowers that require specific insects for pollination. The phenomena, called the domino effect, triggers a chain reaction disrupting the interrelation of animals and plants. In short, the decline in bees trigger a cascade of local extinctions.

Where Did The Songbirds Go?

Apparently, the wolves were trying to tell us something too. The Domino Theory became reality in Yellowstone Park in the 1920s. In 1914, the United States Congress approved funding to destroy the wolves in the park and surrounding areas to help ranchers protect their livestock. The wolves were systematically killed- the last known wolf pack disappeared in 1926. Sixty years later the Gray Wolf was listed as endangered.

But what happened in the regions where the wolves disappeared shocked everyone. The forests went quiet. The systematic removal of wolves tipped the domino effect. Over the following decades, adverse changes occurred in the park that scientists couldn't explain including the disappearance of songbirds. They ultimately discovered wolves effect elk, elk affect aspen and willows, aspens/willows affect beavers and beavers affect trout and songbirds.

The scientists at Oregon University analysized subsequent data to show a clear and remarkable linkage between the presence of wolves and the health of an entire streamside ecosystem, including two species of cottonwoods and the important roles they play in soil erosion control, stream health, and nurturing diverse plant and animal life.

Given this evidence, it is perfectly logical to assume the disappearance of bees could very likely damage the prospects of associated species. Perhaps that's the most sobering of all because in the environmental game of dominos humanity is the last tile.

Yet Another Extinction?

As our self-sufficiency declines and our material consumption rises, we are taking a direct hit to our future wellbeing. We have a long history of continually changing the environment to suit us, literally pushing out other lifeforms. And while we are sadden by yet another story of species extinction, previous to the bees disappearing, we haven't been directly affected. But this time, we are destroying a social structure that is essential to our own.

Where Did The Bees Go?

The strangest part of the missing bee mystery is by far the most interesting. There are no dead bees. There are a few dead soldiers scattered on the ground, but we're talking millions and millions of bees here. They're not in the hive, at the hive, or closeby. Many abandoned hives full of honey. So where did they go? Perhaps the honeybees had enough of our interference. Perhaps they know where we're headed and just prefer to fly away.

Until next time, TLR

 

 

 

 

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