Stop Trying to Save Honey Bees

Also: The Middle Ages’ most accurate world map, Ireland’s most polite bank robber, the problem with Zoom, and more.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

I read two articles on beekeeping this weekend, and, in different ways, both are about how the effort to save honey bees is misguided. First, in The New York Times, David Segal writes about beekeepers in Slovenia who would like it if you would please stop trying to save honey bees since “there is a competition for natural resources” and bees “push out other pollinators, which actually harms biodiversity”: “I would say that the best thing you could do for honey bees right now is not take up beekeeping,” one beekeeper said. More:

There is a widespread and now deeply rooted belief that the global population of honey bees has been running dangerously low for more than a decade. The notion has spurred a boom in beekeeping, most notably among corporations eager to demonstrate their green bona fides.

But the urge to acquire a hive comes from the simplification of some complicated facts, says Scott Hoffman Black, executive director of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation in Portland, Ore.

A malady originally dubbed disappearing disease had been afflicting honey bees for decades. In the fall of 2006, an American beekeeper named Dave Hackenberg checked on his 400 hives and found that in many, most of the worker bees had disappeared. Other beekeepers started to report that they were losing upward of 90 percent of their colonies. The phenomenon was renamed colony collapse disorder. The cause remains unclear, but experts tend to blame pesticides, an invasive parasite, a reduction in forageable habitat and climate change. An alarm was sounded, and “save the bees” became a rallying cry . . . While techniques for nurturing hives have improved, honey bees remain vulnerable animals. As of a few years ago, nearly 30 percent of commercial honey bees still did not survive the winter months, says the Environmental Protection Agency. That’s a large number and one that puts a financial strain on commercial beekeepers.

“But that’s an agriculture story, not a conservation story,” Mr. Black said. “There are now more honey bees on the planet than there have ever been in human history.”

Figures from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations underscore the point. The number of beehives around the world has risen by nearly 26 percent in the last decade, to 102 million from 81 million. Still, the save-the-bees narrative persists.

In The New Yorker, Sam Knight writes about “natural” beekeepers who intervene very little in the hives they keep because bees don’t need our help:

Natural beekeepers leave their bees alone. They seldom treat for disease—allowing the weaker colonies to fail—and they raise the survivors in conditions that are as close as possible to tree cavities. They fill their hives with swarms that come in on the wing, rather than those which come from dealers who trade on the Internet. They treasure the bees for their own sake—like a goldfinch that nests in the yard—and have an evangelical spirit, as if they have stumbled on a great secret. They are disdainful of conventional beekeepers. “They’ve completely lost sight of the creature,” John told me.

Honey is a touchy subject. John said that he harvests only an absolute excess—after the bees have enough for two winters and a wet summer—and even then he won’t take money for it. “It’s not my honey to sell,” he explained. Another natural beekeeper, who abstains from taking honey altogether, referenced When Harry Met Sally to explain his position: “There was this line, ‘Sex always gets in the way of friendship.’ I think honey always gets in the way of us appreciating bees.”

Well, there is no reason eating honey and appreciating bees need to be mutually exclusive. That said, I like the easy-going spirit of these natural beekeepers. More:

During the next twenty-seven days, Seeley found eight bee colonies in the Arnot Forest, but in a smaller area and in less time than he had in 1978—suggesting that the wild population was just as healthy as it had been before varroa. “How can this be . . . . ?” he asked in Bee Culture, the following year. Seeley aired three possibilities: the bees in the forest had been sufficiently isolated to escape infection; they had been infected, and were about to die; or—his hope—the bees had been exposed to varroa and had developed some form of resistance.

“None of us knew at the time how strong the selection would be in the wild,” Seeley told me recently. “It turned out that the bees had the variation needed to develop the traits to resist the mites.” While beekeepers were experimenting with chemical treatments and hive designs, the bees in the forest were changing genetically. Their life styles helped them, too. “Colonies living in the wild have many things going for them,” Seeley said. The bees lived in smaller groups, relatively far apart, which made it harder for varroa to spread. They swarmed every year, which broke the reproductive cycle of the mites. (If a colony swarms, the nest is left without bee larvae, which is where varroa mites take hold.) Wild nests were hygienic and coated in propolis. Their Nestduftwärmebindung was on point. Seeley shared his findings in books and papers, but they weren’t what most beekeepers wanted to hear. “My phone didn’t ring off the hook,” he said. Seeley is gentle and plainspoken, but his conclusions were totalizing. “As I see it, most of the problems of honey bee health are rooted in the standard practices of beekeeping,” he told me in an e-mail, “which are used by nearly all beekeepers.”

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In other news, Netflix ends its DVD mailing business by sending users up to 10 random discs: “According to one Twitter user, the Netflix DVD team sent an email to subscribers announcing the news and inviting them to sign up for their chance at a slice of the proverbial cake. It reads, ‘After 25 years of movies in the mail, we're approaching the end of our final season. We really appreciate that you're sharing movie nights with us until the last day. Let's have some fun for the finale!’ The message notes that subscribers can decide by Aug. 29 if they want to receive extra DVDs with their next—and final—rentals, allowing them to get ‘up to 10 extra discs in your mailbox.’”

The Middle Ages’ most accurate map of the world: “Around 1450, the Venetian government commissioned a monk named Fra Mauro to make a mappa mundi, a map of the world. His map is a circle nearly 7 feet in diameter, crammed with illustrations and annotations; the work took several years. When it was done, it was the most detailed and accurate map of the known world that anyone had yet made. Fra Mauro’s map survived in his monastery on the Venetian island of San Michele and is now displayed in the city’s Museo Correr.”

Ireland’s most polite bank robber: “There should really be a special word for it: that vicarious fragility you feel when hearing of a minor decision with catastrophically heavy consequences, as if a falling acorn had tipped a boulder. In the case of John O’Hegarty, the subject of the engrossing podcast I’m Not Here To Hurt You, the catalyst for disaster was a quick short cut the wrong way down a one-way Dublin street while working as a bicycle courier. It would ultimately lead him – an academic with a master’s degree in psychology – into heroin and crack cocaine addiction, followed by a stint as a bank robber and eight years in prison.”