Where have all the bees gone?
MELISSA HIEBERT, STAFF
I have been stung by a bee twice in my life. The first time, I was about four and playing on a play structure, when the bee made its attack. I cried, and ran home to my mum.
More recently, the second time, a bee had become trapped in my shed, and upon the opening of the doors, it immediately flew out and stung me in the neck.
I don’t know why, but the second time, I was more shocked and delighted than anything. Maybe it was because after years and years of living in fear — of carefully avoiding my stripy and bumbling foe — I was relieved when the inevitable had finally happened. I no longer had to live in fear.
It did still smart, though. I went around to everyone, proclaiming, “The bee got the better of me!” until someone reminded me that after the bee stung me, it probably died shortly thereafter.
* * *
“Pollinators,” the report began, “are an essential part of natural and agricultural ecosystems throughout North America.”
There I was, lying in a patch of wild grass on a plot of land just outside the city. It was the perfect season of the year: when the feeling of the leaves turning colour is in the air, but not yet on the boughs. The kind of day that makes even the geese want to linger a little longer around their summer home, the prairies.
On one side of me there was a hill leading down to the bank of a river, the Seine, and behind me a field of sunflowers, wilted already at this time of year. To my right, there was a forest that I knew, from a previous exploration, contained a small number of beehives.
I had sunk down so far into the grass that only fragmented pieces of blue sky were visible through the crosshatches of the blades. Never has a patch of grass felt so soft.
Though, every so often, those words made their way through my mind, interrupting the otherwise thoughtless day “Pollinators,” they echoed again, “are an essential part of natural and agricultural ecosystems throughout North America.”
I had heard the faint buzzing of something to do with the decline of the bee population before, but never paid much attention. As often happens, with all of the other, more important things to pay attention to, bees are allotted nothing more than a subliminal reference in some picturesque mise en scene; a brief cameo in a euphemistic sexual allusion; an annoyed shooing to the side.
However, it was the following line that stung me: “This report,” the words drifted through my mind, forcing me to consider them. “Provides evidence for the decline of some pollinator species in North America.”
The echo came from a report entitled “The Status of Pollinator Species in North America,” compiled by 15 members from all across Canada, the U.S., and Mexico, with a representative expert from every field, from entomology to biology, genetics to botany. Its pages not only contained evidence for the decline of pollinator species (particularly bees), but also, without ostentatious indignation, suggested the implications of such a drop-off.
“About three-quarters of the more than 240,000 species of the world’s flowering plants,” the report subtly warned, “rely on pollinators to various degrees to carry pollen from the male and female parts of flowers for reproduction.”
And then not so subtly: “Despite its lack of marquee appeal, pollinator decline is one form of global change that actually does have credible potential to alter the shape and structure of the terrestrial world.” (Take that, global warming).
Before I looked into it, there were a lot of things I didn’t know about bees. I didn’t realize that most flowering commercial agriculture relies on the introduction of “managed pollinators” (non-wild bees) in order to keep up with the vast amount of pollination that needs to occur in order to have a successful, profitable harvest. There are other species that pollinate plants, such as birds (the euphemism makes more sense now, doesn’t it?), moths, wild bees, butterflies, and even bats, but the bulk of the pollination in commercial farming is carried out by the polylectic (will feed on anything) Apis mellifera, or rather, the common managed honeybee.
There are several suggested reasons as to why there is a slow and steady drop-off in the bee population. Two minor reasons are the increase of pesticide use, which may be deadly for the bees, as well as the alteration of natural habitats. One major cause for the decline in population though is the introduction of the bee’s vampirous enemy, the Varroa destructor (or Varroa mite) — a deadly parasite that can transmit a varying array of deadly diseases, that is, if it doesn’t suck the bee dry first.
The general implications of pollinator drop-off are simple to see, beyond a mere honey shortage, and the outcome is anything but sweet. No bees = no pollination = no new flowers = no plants that come from flowers = no food in tummy = a lot of hungry, hungry people. Naturally, the specifics are more complex, and unlike the trumpeting horsemen of the Global Warming apocalypse, the bee literature typically offers more measured, admittedly uncertain analysis.
While the conclusions drawn from the data may not be as brash or as provocative as their ice-melting counterparts, they ring with a tone of subtle cautioning: “Long-term population trends for the honeybee, the most important managed pollinator, are demonstrably downward.”
Amidst all of this talk about apiary and honeycomb, I thought of a professor I had back in first-year philosophy, Phil Veldhius, who happened to be a beekeeper on the side (or is that a beekeeper who taught philosophy on the side?). I decided to buzz him and see what he had to say about all of this.
Essentially, he confirmed everything that I had read about bees. Yes, the bee population was in a steady decline. Yes, the Varroa mite is killing a lot of bees, and becoming pesticide-resistant, at that. Yes, bees are an important part of our natural environment, and we would be facing potentially serious problems without them.
“Did you know,” he said, “that about one in five mouthfuls of food that you eat a day has been pollinated by a bee? Imagine, if the world lost one-quarter of its food supply (its healthy part, at that). We would be in a lot of trouble.”
One of the reasons that he thought bees were “cool” (I had to ask) was that he was amazed that such a little creature can shock people with what they can do.
He was speaking in terms of honey production as I recall, but the same goes with every aspect of these invertebrate. Little yes, but within those fuzzy “black-and-yellows” potentially resides the power to send the whole freaking food chain toppling down on itself. For, after all, “pollinators are an essential part of natural and agricultural ecosystems throughout North America.”
Back in the field, contemplating whether or not sunflowers required pollination for breeding (I checked later; they do), I remembered an experiment that my bee-friendly prof once told our class about.
The experiment, conducted by a Harvard professor named James Gould, involved placing a supply of sugar water close to a hive, and every day slowly pulling it away. Typically, bees perform a type of dance to alert the other bees as to where unpollinated flowers lie, expressing both the distance to and the direction of the flower. This is known as the “waggle dance.” Every day, a few scout-bees, as usual, would communicate to the others, and they would all fly out to the supply. Eventually though, he put the sugar water on a boat in the middle of the lake, expecting the bees to respond as usual. However, this time, after the scout performed the dance, the other bees refused to fly to the location.
A seemingly meaningless occurance, but one with great implications. The bees knew that there was typically no food available in the middle of a lake, and knew it would be foolish to fly all the way out there. This, among other experiments that Gould performed, seem to suggest that bees actions could not just be chalked up to mere biological processes, but rather, they had the ability to “cognitively map” their surroundings.
Are bees smart? I wondered. Can they think? Rationalize? Maybe we’re not so different after all.
I called an entomologist to learn more about bees, about cognitive mapping and such, but he was off to class and couldn’t talk at the moment. I said I would call back later, but I never did. He seemed too busy, I thought. Busy like a bee. Teaching a hive of other busy bees. So I let him “bee.”
Back at the field, the sun was setting and the air was becoming cooler; time to leave the bees to my left and the sunflowers behind me, and the river to my right, which the bees apparently recognized as being there, too. I walked back down the path, watching, and listening carefully for a faint buzz.
“Did you know ‘Melissa’ is Latin for honeybee?” my professor wrote, in the postage script of an e-mail once. I actually did know, but always thought the bee was a ridiculous thing to have as a namesake.
That is, until now, when I finally considered the bee more carefully. For one, bees don’t kill a single organism to survive. Quite the opposite, in fact — when they feed, they propagate life. Potentially lurking in their tiny bee-brains is a sophisticated cognitive ability. That combined with the busy, busy, busy mentality and the tendency to colonize, leads me to think that perhaps there’s not much separating us from the bees.
Except for the fact that they don’t typically rely on us, and, though we often don’t notice it, we so heavily rely on them. While we tread loudly and declaratively, forcing others to acknowledge, they flutter around, barely exerting their existence other than in the form of an occasional prickly reminder, as if to occasionally alert us to all that we owe them. The tiny flowers that were mixed in the patch of wild grass in which I lay; the wilted sunflowers; the apple I had for breakfast; the livelihood of thousands; the food supply of millions; all of these things rely on the subliminal, barely there buzzing of one of the most important building blocks of our food chain, of our “terrestrial world.” While they don’t currently create quite the buzz that global warming does, their gentle humming may eventually work its way through our subconscious, demanding to be heard. How loudly the buzzing becomes, however, has yet to be seen.
Who knows — perhaps one day a bee will sting me again. Only next time, it won’t be with its stinger. And though it may still end up dying shortly thereafter, maybe next time it truly will get the better of all of us.
