Beekeeper Asks Growers To ‘Help Me Save My Bees’

(Photo credit: Randy Oliver)

(Photo credit: Randy Oliver)

Editor’s Note: Randy Oliver, a beekeeper in Grass Valley, CA, hosts the website ScientificBeekeeping.com. He wrote this article in collaboration with beekeepers, some of whom are also commercial fruit and vegetable growers — and pesticide applicators — as well as other industry leaders. For more from Oliver, See “Top 10 Ways To Help Save The Bees.”

Honey bees have gotten a lot of press in recent years, and fruit and vegetable growers may benefit by more fully understanding the issues involved.

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First, Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) appears to have been a virus/parasite epidemic that has largely run its course. But that’s not to say that we are out of the woods yet. Beekeepers are still experiencing profit-crushing rates of annual overwintering mortality — averaging 30%, but up to 80%. Compare that to the historical norm of just 5% to 10%.

The causes of this unacceptable rate of colony mortality continue to be debated, but the prime factors, in order of importance, appear to be:

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  1. The varroa/virus complex,
  2. Difficulty in finding nutritious summer forage locations, and
  3.  Pesticides (including those applied by beekeepers themselves in order to control the varroa mite).

Modern Problem
Growers should understand that it is the evolution of our agricultural system that has brought the pollinator issue to the fore. Back in the day, each farm benefitted from its resident pollinators, in the form of the native bees living along the fence rows, feral honey bees in the woodlots, and a few managed hives behind the barn. These bees supplied all the pollination needs for the orchard and other pollination-dependent crops, and ideally, the farmer would be careful with pesticides, since he wouldn’t want to kill his own bees.

But this is no longer the case — farming has gotten bigger and more efficient, leaving little room for pollinators. Let’s use the 1,300 square miles of almond orchards in California as an example. These orchards are bee paradise for about three weeks of the year. For the rest of the year, they are a desert as far as bees are concerned, since there is absolutely nothing for bees to eat once the bloom is over, due to the weedless orchard floors. And even if some bees managed to eke out a living from the few flowering plants in the ditches and field margins, they still stand a good chance of getting killed by insecticide applications.

Nowadays, due to the lack of resident pollinators, growers must contract with beekeepers to provide pollination services during the short bloom period and then get the bees the heck out of there as soon as their job is done. The beekeeper is left to find safe places to move his bees for the rest of the year — “safe” meaning pollen-rich.

Flower Power
Be aware that bees are only interested in crops that flower, cotton being an exception. They make honey from the nectar of those flowers, but far more important to colony buildup and health is the protein-rich pollen provided by a relatively few crops, such as most fruit and nut trees, cane berries, buckwheat, legumes, and canola and other brassicas.

In general, the most important forage plants in agricultural areas are clover and alfalfa, if not cut early for dairy or sprayed while in bloom, which the bees may find in pasture land and along fence rows and ditches. Honey bees, being an Old World species, get little nutrition from some New World crops — such as blueberries, cranberries, vine crops, and sunflowers. In fact, hives may come out of pollination of these crops in poorer shape than they went in.

Bees get nearly nothing of value from corn or grains, and scant pollen from citrus, soy, and cotton — which are notably problematic crops for bees due to insecticides. Although feeding our bees expensive protein supplements helps, there is nothing yet available that is nearly as good as natural pollen.

The surprising thing is that the job of pollination services for the entire country has been delegated to only about 1,000 large migratory beekeepers who manage the vast majority of hives in the U.S. In response to the demand from the almond industry, we have actually ramped up our numbers of hives in recent years. Growers of other crops owe it to the almond growers for keeping the supply of bees up.

Beekeepers Squeezed
But we beekeepers are in a tough situation. The varroa/virus complex continues to hammer our hives, and our industry is largely dependent upon only a single miticide, Amitraz, to which varroa is rapidly evolving resistance. The new intestinal parasite, Nosema ceranae, saps colony strength.

We’re forced to feed expensive supplemental protein to get them up to strength for pollination. Yet despite the greatly increased expenses to keep bees alive these days, since 1990 average pollination prices for tree crops other than almonds have only barely kept up with inflation. And this brings us back to the financial picture of beekeeping.

It is not the bee, but rather the commercial beekeeper, who is realistically faced with the prospect of extinction. The reason is that it is simply more difficult and expensive to maintain a colony of bees these days. Queens no longer live for three seasons — many don’t even make it through the first summer. We are spending far more on supplemental feed or long-distance transport to summer forage.

And this brings up issue No. 2: The loss of forage lands. As mentioned previously, growers have delegated the job of maintaining populations of pollinators to the commercial beekeepers. To do so, we are forced to be modern day nomadic herdsmen, trucking our bees to areas of good forage. This means that those growers who count on us to bring bees to pollinate their crops are indirectly dependent upon other farm owners to provide forage for those bees the rest of the year.

Work With Us
Commercial beekeepers are proud to be part of the agricultural community. But we can’t keep providing pollination services unless the rest of the ag community works with us. There are a number of things that fruit growers who pay for pollination services and other farmers upon whose lands bees may forage, can do to help keep from killing bees and other pollinators, including providing food and water. See “Top 10 Ways To Help Save The Bees.”

We beekeepers are struggling to supply pollination services to the agricultural community. We’re asking the rest of the ag community to be good environmental stewards in helping to make agricultural lands safe for pollinators. This message is really starting to resonate with the public, and the EPA is under intense pressure to restrict pesticides that harm bees.

We beekeepers are not asking for bans on pesticides; we are only asking that you apply them carefully and only when needed. You can help by practicing IPM, following the label, watching the timing of applications, and choosing products that are the least toxic to pollinators.

On The Web
For further reading on the beekeeper’s perspective, Randy Oliver suggests you check out the following articles, which are posted on his website:

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