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Five Simple Ways to Save the Bees

Bees have a first-impression problem. We are delighted when a butterfly lands on our shoulder, but most of us would rather a bee keep its distance from us. The fear of being stung can ruin an outdoor experience and send us running back inside. Google “bees” and one of the first articles you will see is “How to Get Rid of Bees.” But bees are incredibly important to humans – they are responsible for approximately one in three bites of our food – and they work for free! We have a huge looming problem because the bee population has been dropping by 30% or more each year in the past 10 years which has led to one in four species of bee in the United States now being classified as endangered (at risk of going extinct), including Minnesota’s State Bee - the Rusty Patched Bumblebee. We don’t need to fall in love with bees, but if we intend on continuing to eat, we need to get over our first impression issues and help re-build their populations.

Pollination

Step one in saving the bees – getting people to care. Most of us love honey, but more importantly bees provide pollination services. For those non-gardeners, here is the low-down on pollination. Plant reproduction happens inside flowers, which have both male parts and female parts. The male part makes pollen. The female part makes eggs. Pollination is the process of moving pollen to the egg, which results in the creation of a seed.

A small number of plants are self-pollinated (examples include some legumes, soybeans, and peas). These flowers are specially designed such that the male parts and female parts are close enough together that they touch each other as the flower opens and closes each day. These plants can proliferate independently, certainly an advantage, but this also results in less genetic diversity. Essentially the plants are all the same. This is a problem if there is a new disease or a weather pattern changes. When changes occur, the most fit plants survive passing their unique genes to the next generation and thus evolving. But if all plants are the same, they can’t change quickly enough because there aren’t any unique genes providing one plant an advantage over the other. These plants can easily be destroyed in such a change, which is a problem if we are dependent on them as a food source.

Some plants are pollinated by wind (examples include grasses, wheat, rice, corn, walnuts, pecans, and pine trees). Plants that use wind pollination put a lot of effort into producing large amounts of pollen and design their female parts to be large and feathery shaped to catch the pollen. These plants are important within our food chain and are the reason we probably wouldn’t cease to exist as a species if all bees go extinct, but our diets would be very restricted. The main disadvantage of plants using wind pollination is allergies – these are the plants (like ragweed) that cause our high pollen alerts.

Approximately 80% of plants are pollinated by animals (primarily bees, but also ants, mosquitoes, butterflies and moths, bats, and hummingbirds). Plants produce nectar for no benefit of their own. Nectar is designed to attract animals into the flower, who then unintentionally pollinate the plants as they move around inside the flower.

Fruits vs Vegetables and Seeds vs Nuts

After pollination, the flower produces a seed, nut, or fruit. A seed is covered in a naturally removable shell. A fruit is the fleshy part that sometimes surrounds a seed, and a nut is essentially a hard-shelled fruit. If we want to eat seeds, nuts, or fruit, we need the flower to be pollinated before the plant can make it. These sources of food are 100% dependent on pollination. Could humans be pollinators? Of course, but at high cost of labor. Think of how much work it would be to climb into an apple tree and move pollen between flowers and across all of the trees in the orchard. We truly need bees and should appreciate they don’t charge us anything for their useful services.

What about vegetables? Technically we don’t need pollination for a plant to produce a vegetable. A vegetable comes from a different part of the plant than the flower – such as roots, stems, or leaves. The plant produces the vegetable without the aid of a bee. If bees completely disappeared, we could continue to eat this year’s crop of vegetables. But if we want to eat in the years beyond this, we are going to need the help of pollinators to create seeds for future plants.

Incredible Bees

There are more than 20,000 different types of bees, each with their own special characteristics. A fraction of these bees are honeybees. Honeybees live and work in colonies inside of a beehive. There is one queen who is responsible for laying eggs. The male bees are called drones. Their only purpose is to mate with the queen. Drones do not collect food or protect the hive. In the fall, the worker bees lead the drone bees outside where they will die in the cold. It’s tough to be male in the insect world.

The rest of the bees in the hive are worker bees. These bees are female, and they have stingers. Worker bees have several jobs. Scout bees are responsible for finding new sources of food. These bees dance to tell others where to find the flowers. Some bees are responsible for collecting nectar while they visit flowers. When they return to the hive, they pass the nectar to other bees who pass it to other bees. Each time the nectar is passed, it mixes with an enzyme which removes liquid and eventually turns it into thick honey. Other bees are responsible for collecting pollen from flowers. Pollen is a bee’s source of protein, necessary for bee development. The pollen is mixed into some of the honey and fed to the baby bees. Some bees work inside the hive, keeping it clean and carrying for their young.

A honeybee may fly 3 miles between its hive and a field of flowers and can visit 50-1000 flowers per day (making multiple trips). That bee is busy! It’s estimated that because of their pollination services, bees provide $15 billion in free labor to the US agriculture industry. It would seem that our federal agencies should be protecting bees, as we rely on bees to help plants produce food and our economy relies on their free labor. Do they? It’s more complicated than it should be. Keep reading.

Why Are Bees Dying?

Since the late 1990s, beekeepers globally have been reporting high rates of bee death. Within the past 10 years in the US alone, the bee populations have been declined 30% each year. The known reasons for this high rate of mortality are:

1. Climate Change

2. Habitat Loss and the Corresponding Loss of Genetic Diversity

3. Disease and Parasites

4. Pesticide Usage

How Does Climate Change Impact Bees?

An eco-system describes the complex interdependencies of organisms that live in the same area. Eco-systems are delicately balanced, and when something shifts, like the average day the ground thaws in the spring, if species that depend on one another for survival respond in different ways, a few days can make a big difference. Worker bees and their queen live in their hive throughout the winter. When it warms up enough, the scout bees and those that collect nectar and pollen leave the hive. They need to be able to find blooming flowers. As the winters are slowly becoming shorter, bees and flowers are adjusting their times of emergence and blooming. If flowers bloom later, bees will not have any food those first days, and if they bloom too early, bees won’t have the same source of nectar when they emerge. Both scenario is problematic for our bees.

Dandelions are some of the earliest blooming flowers in colder climates

Climate change is also leading to warmer highs in temperature. This can lead to hotter beehives, which for a species which might perhaps already be living on its upper temperature limit, could result in extra stress on the bees or death. Additionally, flower scents can change when a plant is subject to stress which can result from drought, another impact of climate change. Changing flower scents can confuse bees, resulting in less nectar and pollen being collected.

How Does Lost Habitat Impact Bees?

One bee visits between 50 and 1000 flowers each day throughout multiple trips back and forth between flowers and the hive. To support an entire hive, within a three-mile radius of the hive, there needs to be about 22,500 flowers blooming each day. As we cut down trees, pave parking lots, and add buildings, we can quickly eliminate a beehive’s ability to find 22,500 flowers.

Another problem with habitat loss is limited genetic diversity. If there are only enough flowers to support one beehive in the three-mile radius, a queen will only mate with drones that are her offspring. This results in the bees having very similar DNA, which makes it hard for the population to survive as elements in the environment change. There isn’t enough uniqueness for one special gene to have randomly mutated into an advantage, where bees with this one special thing would be more likely to survive.

How Do Diseases and Parasites Impact the Bees?

Each of the reasons of bee decline is tied to the other reasons. As diseases and parasites impact a beehive, without genetic diversity, the chance that one bee’s DNA leads to a random event that increases the chance of survival over another bee is less. So low genetic diversity as a result from habitat loss is an issue here as well, as diseases and parasites are continually evolving, bees need to keep evolving their defense mechanisms.

It’s not known if Colony Collapse Disorder is due to a disease or parasite or some other issue, but CCD is a related factor tied to bee decline. CCD occurs when several of the worker honeybees leave the hive and disappear at the same time. They don’t return to the hive. They leave behind plenty of food to eat but without the necessary infrastructure of worker bees that is needed to adequately care for the queen and baby bees.

How Do Insecticides Impact Bees?

Let’s start with the obvious question – why would a farmer, gardener, or homeowner use an insecticide if there could be a negative impact on bees, our primary pollinator? Most likely people don’t know just how harmful these chemicals are to bees but there is some type of easily observable benefit for use – increased crop production, healthier plants, a prettier lawn.

The most widely used type of insecticide is neonicotinoids, which began commercialized usage in the late 1990s. The benefit to using a neonicotinoid is that it’s a type of chemical that can be applied directly to the plant or the surrounding soil. It does not drift through the air and travel to your neighbor’s crops – you can imagine being a farmer and not wanting to be blamed for harming your neighbor’s crops.

The plant absorbs this insecticide and then it moves throughout the entire plant, including its nectar and pollen. Neonicotinoids contain nicotine, which blocks parts of the nervous system of insects and can lead to confusion, tremors, and death. This type of insecticide can impair the bee’s learning and memory, reduce their honey production, and can reduce their ability to fly. These types of insecticides are 10,000 times more toxic to bees than chemicals that were previously used. To make it even worse, this chemical does not break down and continues to exist in the soil after one application, meaning that seeds planted in the infected soil will continue to absorb the insecticide years after initial application which will continue to impact future bee generations. It seems more than a coincidence in timing that the bee populations began to drop in the late 1990s, at the same time these insecticides first became commercialized.

To protect bees, the European Union has significantly restricted the use of neonicotinoids on crops that attract bees. The United States Environmental Protection Agency, however, has taken a different approach. On July 12, 2019, the EPA announced expanded use of a different type of insecticide, Sulfoxaflor. Sulfoxaflor isn’t a neonicotinoid, it’s a sulfoximine. What’s the difference between a neonicotinoid and a sulfoximine? The chemical companies get to come up with the name of the class of chemicals. I’ll pretend to be such a company and I’ve developed two types of insecticides: Neds and Saras. Neds have been studied by environmental groups since the 1990s and have been shown to have a negative impact on bees. Farmers are not buying Neds anymore and in fact Neds are banned in some countries. I can change enough of Ned though to have it recognized as something new and call it Sara. Sara hasn’t been studied as thoroughly by environmental agencies because it’s new. And farmers don’t yet know if Sara will have a negative impact on bees, but it will immediately help yield more crops. Farmers buy Sara, and everyone wins, except the bees.

If you read the EPA’s Decision to Register New Uses for the Insecticide Sulfoxaflor, it states that this type of chemical is required to be labeled “This product is highly toxic to bees and other pollinating insects exposed to direct treatment or to residues in or on blooming crops or weeds.” Yet the EPA’s decision to support this new insecticide seems in contradiction with the labeled claim. “Sulfoxaflor poses no significant risk to human health and lower risk to non-target wildlife, including pollinators, than registered alternatives. Sulfoxaflor is an effective tool for growers that has a lower environmental impact because it disappears from the environment faster than widely-used alternatives like neonicotinoids.” How can you say there’s no risk to bees when the product has to be labeled that it’s toxic to bees? Confused? Me too….

5 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Bees

To make a dent in this problem, we need to combine actions that we take, our ability to influence our friends, family, and neighbors to take similar action, and reach out to both Congress and the EPA to take legislative and executive action to suspend the use of pesticides that impact bee survival. While you are on the phone with your representatives, also ask them to create financial incentives for farmers to plant bee-friendly plants to increase bee habitats across our country.

While you are waiting for Congress to act, here are actions that you personally can take which will make a big difference.

1) Leave Your Dandelions Alone (especially the first dandelions of spring)

In colder climates, dandelions are some of the first flowers to bloom, in addition to flowering trees. As climate change alters when bees come out of their hive in the spring, they need those early blooming flowers. Just the simple act of leaving your dandelions in your lawn can help at the beginning of the season. Throughout the rest of the summer, feel free to mow them down or pull them from the ground.

Dandelions can be quite pretty - they have a first impression problem too…

2) Don’t Use Pesticides or Herbicides on Your Lawn or Garden

I know I know – everyone wants the perfect lawn with the fake manicured look, like we have somehow conquered nature. And if we have a beautiful lawn it must mean that we have everything else in our lives perfectly under control. Here’s the secret though – it’s not possible to have a perfect-looking lawn without using chemicals. And the chemicals are killing the bees and poisoning our water supply. Plus, it costs money to use these chemicals and even more to hire a lawn service. You can save your money and protect the bees and our water supply if you realize that weeds are also green. If you keep your grass mowed, no one knows there’s weeds in it as they drive past. If your neighbors complain, you can remind them that grass is technically a weed too…

3) Plant a Bee Lawn

Sorry, I’m not done picking on your lawn quite yet… Consider that loss of bee habitat is one of the key reasons the bees are dying. Collectively in our society, where do we have the most available space that could be converted to bee-friendly habitat? Our lawns. Bee lawns are a combination of grasses and low growing perennials (white clover, creeping thyme, self-heal, and ground plum).

The plants used in bee lawns have deeper roots than traditional grass, which means the plants can reach further into the ground to access water in a drought. Essentially this means you won’t have to water your lawn as much. The plants also grow at a slower rate than lawn grass, which means you will not need to mow as frequently either. One more benefit – states like Minnesota will be providing funding for homeowners to reseed their lawns into bee lawns, so you can do this for free.

One negative to a bee lawn is that the plants are not quite as tolerant to high traffic (being walked or played on). For my family, this means we plan to keep our backyard as is, but the front and side yards are infrequently used which makes them prime areas to try out a bee lawn next spring.

4) Plant Native Flowers

I love to garden. Caring for 400+ seedlings each February is one of my main methods for coping through a long Minnesota winter. As I add plants each year, I pick more and more native perennials to specifically attract bees. Good choices for pollinators include wild geraniums, clover, black-eyed susans, butterfly milkweek, bee balm, lupins, cone flowers, sedum, and sunflowers.

5) Support Local Organic Farms

Organic farming means that food is grown without the use of pesticides, fertilizers, genetically modified organisms, antibiotics, or growth hormones. Organic farmers are experimenting with conditions that optimize soil fertility and diversity within their crops to not deplete the soil of necessary elements. We love these farmers that are caretakers of our planet! Support them! It’s easier to pay someone to lay down fertilizer and chemicals that will provide consistent crops than it is to experiment with natural options because growing crops is complex and there isn’t a one fits all solution. This is much more trial and error, but it results in sustainability. Remember these farmers when you head to the grocery store the next time.

You don’t have to fall in love with bees, in fact you can still be nervous if one decides to rest on your arm, but we do need to value bees and how they pollinate the plants which produce our food supply. We need to understand why they are dying so we can step in and help re-stabilize and then re-build their populations. Our health depends on their health – we share the same eco-system.