The Bees and The Bees

When it seems like all environmental news lately is bad, a recent story in the Washington Post caught my eye: America’s honeybee populations are at an all-time high. That’s great news! Or is it? Our problems are solved! Or are they?

For years we have been hearing about colony collapse, with the rallying cry of “No Bees, No Food.” Home gardeners and farmers alike worried that our watermelons, zucchini, and tomatoes wouldn’t be pollinated. Now, as more farmers (large and small) are raising bees, and more studies are going into preventing colony collapse, the numbers of honeybees are rising, dramatically in some places. 

That’s good news for agriculture in particular. Although honeybees are not native to the United States (they were brought here in the 1700s from Europe), they are noninvasive and incredibly efficient at pollinating huge fields of crops. Without them, sunflower fields, almond orchards, and many other types of agriculture would struggle. 

So when we read stories like the one in the Post, it’s easy to think our problems are over. But that’s not so. 

Eliza Grames, an entomologist at Binghamton University, put it this way in the Post article: ‘“You wouldn’t be like, ‘Hey, birds are doing great. We’ve got a huge biomass of chickens!’ It’s kind of the same thing with honeybees,” she said. “They’re domesticated. They’re essentially livestock.”’

Grames argues that if we continue to focus solely on the cultivation and preservation of honeybees, we ultimately risk losing the diversity we need for our native trees, shrubs, and flowers to thrive. There are around 4,000 native bee varieties in the United States, and about 400 native bee species in Maryland alone. Approximately 40 percent of them currently are vulnerable to extinction. 

Those native bees are also highly efficient pollinating machines. And often they are the only insects pollinating native plants. 

The other thing to remember: Not all pollinators are bees. Our native plants have a symbiotic relationship with native pollinators, and often specific plants rely on very specific pollinators. They can include bees, yes, but also butterflies, wasps, gnats, moths, beetles, birds, bats, and more. If native pollinators don’t have native plants to pollinate, they go into decline. If native plants lack native pollinators, they go into decline. We begin a death spiral of extinction, even as honeybees continue pollinating huge swaths of agricultural lands. 

The answer to this problem is the same as the answer to so many environmental problems. 

• Limit use of insecticides, particularly broad-spectrum applications. This benefits all bees and pollinators.

• Plant diverse habitats filled with a wide variety of native flora, including trees, shrubs, and flowers. Native plant guru Doug Tallamy recommends oaks to provide food and habitat for the most kinds of insects (and he notes that populations of oaks have declined 50 percent on the Eastern seaboard in the past 100 years). But there are lots of other great natives for home landscapes, pollinator meadows, and wetland areas, everything from button bush for moist areas to mountain mint and goldenrod for drier sites. 

• Leave plant debris and leaf litter in the fall for native pollinators to overwinter. Certain bees, for instance, burrow into the dried stalks of Echinacea and Rudbeckia. Others nest in leaves dropped at the base of trees. What we think of as tidy, pollinators find unlivable. 

• Provide water for birds, butterflies, and bees in the hot months of summer.