Honeybee Die-Offs

  • Researcher Dennis VanEngelsdorp says the rates of honeybee die-offs threaten the beekeeping business. (Photo courtesy of the NBII)

Beekeepers expect about fifteen percent of their bees to die every winter. But for the past few winters they’ve seen die-offs of thirty percent or more. Mark Brush reports on a new survey that’s keeping track of honeybee losses:

Transcript

Beekeepers expect about fifteen percent of their bees to die every winter. But for the past few winters they’ve seen die-offs of thirty percent or more. Mark Brush reports on a new survey that’s keeping track of honeybee losses:

This is the fourth year in a row that beekeepers have see die-offs this high. The survey was done by the USDA and the Apiary Inspectors of America.

Dennis VanEngelsdorp was one of the researchers who conducted the survey. He says the rates of honeybee die-offs threaten the beekeeping business – and that’s important because honeybees pollinate about a third of the foods we eat:

“If we want to produce fruits and vegetables in this country, we need to have honeybees and we need a pollination force. And without those, we won’t be able to produce those in this country. So we’re not going to starve, but certainly the variety in our diet will change.”

Most of the beekeepers blamed the latest deaths on bad weather in the fall and winter. VanEngelsdorp says you can add to that habitat destruction that hurts the bees’ food supplies; invasive mites that spread disease – and the still unexplained problem of Colony Collapse Disorder.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Native Pollinators in Trouble

  • Jeffrey Pettis says while honeybees are a concern because they pollinate crops, the wild plants that rely on native pollinators can be in trouble as well. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Honeybees have been dying by the millions because of colony collapse disorder. But government officials say it’s not just the bees that are in trouble. Lester Graham reports.

Transcript

Honeybees have been dying by the millions because of colony collapse disorder. But government officials say it’s not just the bees that are in trouble. Lester Graham reports.

Jeffrey Pettis heads up the USDA’s bee lab in Beltsville, Maryland. He says there’s a lot of concern about honey bees because they pollinate crops. But he’s also really concerned about wild native bees, butterflies, bats that pollinate plants in the wild.

“The wild plants that rely on native pollinators can be in trouble as well. So, there’s certainly should be concern for all pollinators in addition to honeybees, which I like to think of as a major agricultural pollinator.”

Pettis says habitat destruction is hitting nature’s wild pollinators hard, but bats are also dying because of white-nose syndrome, a fungus that’s spreading, killing bats by the millions.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Interview: The Incomparable Honey Bee

  • A Honey Bee. (Photo source: Erik Hooymans at Wikimedia Commons)

You could thank a honeybee for the last meal you ate. Bees help produce about one out of every three bites we eat. But worldwide bees are dying at a rate never seen in history. Lester Graham talked with Reese Halter about the decline of the honeybee.
Doctor Halter is a biologist and the author of the book The Incomparable Honeybee and the Economics of Pollination:

Transcript

You could thank a honeybee for the last meal you ate. Bees help produce about one out of every three bites we eat. But worldwide bees are dying at a rate never seen in history. Lester Graham talked with Reese Halter about the decline of the honeybee.
Doctor Halter is a biologist and the author of the book The Incomparable Honeybee and the Economics of Pollination:

Doctor Reese Halter: We do know that we have a problem. 50 billion bees are missing.

Lester Graham: What kind of economic benefit is the bee to food production in, let’s just say, the US?

Halter: Enormous. I’ve given conservative numbers for food, for medicine, for clothing. Directly, the honeybee accounts for, at least, 44 billion per anom. Now, if you go to the cotton growers’ main site, they’ll tell you that, in cotton alone, America does well over 100 billion in commerce. The cotton plant cannot exist without the bee.

Graham: Now, bees have been hurt in the last few decades. We’ve seen a couple of different invasive mites really decimate the bee population, and now we’re seeing this colony collapse disorder. Can you tell us what you think some of the causes might be?

Halter: There’s no one smoking gun. We’ve got a collision of events that have happened. We have insecticided, fumigated, miticided, pesticided ourselves almost right through oblivion. We’ve got electromagnetic radiation coming at them. We truck bees on semi-tractor trailers around our nation – they’re on, like, a Nascar circuit – where we don’t even allow them, for goodness sakes, to eat honey, we stoke them up with high-fructose and corn syrup, because it costs too much to feed them honey, for goodness sakes. And they’re sick. We’re overworking them. We’re losing billions of them. And we’ve reached a point now where there are mites, where there are bacterias and viruses, and, at the end of the day, not dissimilarly to human-beings, the bees’ auto-immune systems are shutting down.

Graham: What can we do about that?

Halter: In a nutshell, I think we need to step back here, and we need to look at all the different problems. And I think where I get really excited, Lester, is corporate America – corporate America – gets this. And they get it with Sam’s Club, they get it with Safeway, because organics – organics – you know, we can grow stuff. We can grow anything without having to nuke the Earth with petro-chemical-derived fertilizers and insecticides. When we ramp the scale of economy up, as we’ve done throughout America, in our supermarkets, and, incidentally, organic foods and organic products are the fastest growing in the United States of America. 24 billion last year. So when it ramps up the price per unit goes down. And there are all these organic bays in almost every food store now. So, please, consider supporting it. Certainly buy organics in season. And, it is very affordable.

Graham: Reese Halter is the author of ‘The Incomparable Honeybee’ published by Rocky Mountain Press. Thanks for talking with us.

Halter: Thank you, Lester.

Related Links

Bee Colony Collapse Mystery

  • Brownish-orange bumps on the backs of these bees are Varroa jacobson mites, a possible cause of the disappearing bees. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

Scientists are scrambling to find out why honey bee populations are
collapsing. Lester Graham reports, there are a lot of theories. Some
of them are getting more attention than others:

Transcript

Scientists are scrambling to find out why honey bee populations are
collapsing. Lester Graham reports, there are a lot of theories. Some
of them are getting more attention than others:


Recently, beekeepers have seen entire colonies of worker bees leave and
never come back to the hive. It’s called Colony Collapse Disorder.
Some news reports have suggested wireless phones or cell phone towers
might be throwing off bees’ navigation.


Barry O’Connor is Curator of Insects at the University of Michigan’s
Museum of Zoology. He says so far, that’s just a theory:


“This phenomenon has been seen in a lot of places where there aren’t
cell phone towers. And so it’s not the whole story if it’s even a part
of the story.”


Other theories for the collapse include stress from moving bees around
to pollinate crops, a newer class of nicotine-based pesticides, a
genetically modified corn with a built-in insecticide, or a combination
of environmental problems.


Growers say food production could drop a lot without honeybees to
pollinate crops.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Mysterious Disappearing Bees

  • Brownish-orange bumps on the backs of these bees are Varroa jacobsoni mites, a possible cause of CCD. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

Millions of honeybees across the country are dying
mysteriously. Entire hives or colonies of bees are
collapsing. Scientists say it’s some new threat. They’re scrambling to find answers.
As Bob Allen reports, bees are crucial in pollinating billions of dollars worth
of crops every spring:

Transcript

Millions of honeybees across the country are dying
mysteriously. Entire hives or colonies of bees are
collapsing. Scientists say it’s some new threat. They’re scrambling to find answers.
As Bob Allen reports, bees are crucial in pollinating billions of dollars worth
of crops every spring:


That fresh crisp apple you bite into for lunch comes from
a bee pollinating an apple blossom, but honeybees in the
U.S. are under tremendous stress. A new threat is
devastating them. It can wipe out entire colonies.


There’s plenty of honey still left in the hives to feed
the bees, but the bees have vanished. Scientists are
baffled. They’re calling it “Colony Collapse Disorder.”


Dennis van Englesdorp is bee inspector for the state of
Pennsylvania. He says the disorder first showed up in his
state last fall. But it’s now threatening the entire
beekeeping industry:


“We could not sustain the level of loss we’re seeing this
year several years in a row. And there are crops that are
90 to 100% reliant on honeybees for pollination. You need
bees for apples. And if you don’t have bees you don’t have
apples.”


A research team at Penn State University has given
themselves until fall to come up with some answers.


On a hilly farm in northern Michigan, Julius Kolarik raises
apples, cherries and honeybees. It’s a sunny day with the
temperature nudging near 50 degrees:


“So, no, it’s a beautiful day for bees. Makes you feel
good when you see bees flying. Makes me feel good
(laughs).”


This is the first time Kolarik has checked his bee yard
since fall. He uses his hive tool to pry the top off each
three-foot high colony to see how the bees are doing:


“We can see that they’re alive and that’s the main thing.”


It used to be considered an embarrassment if a beekeeper lost more
than 10% or so of his bees annually, but things have
gotten a lot tougher in recent years.


Parasitic mites have infested honeybees just about
everywhere. They’ve weakened the bees and left them
vulnerable to diseases and that’s meant annual losses
double what they used to be.


Now on top of that, there’s this new disorder. But Julius
Kolarik is not so sure how new it is. He’s been
raising honeybees since he was a kid:


“We’ve seen some of the same symptoms, so uh, through the
years. Even before we finally said that we have mites, uh.
We were getting unexplained losses. But now it’s come back
again. ‘Cause other years guys have lost whole yards but
left one or two hives.”


Bee researchers say previous outbreaks of colony collapse
were isolated incidents. This time it’s spread across the
country.


Tom McCormick’s small beekeeping operation supplies honey
to local markets in western Pennsylvania. That is, it did
until two years ago. That’s when he says collapsing
disorder killed half his colonies, so he bought more bees
to replace them. They did OK last year, but this spring
he’s looking at an 80% loss:


“To me it doesn’t make sense to go buy more bees and throw
them right back into the same situation without any idea
what the cause is.”


McCormick says two of his beekeeping friends have been
totally wiped out. And they’ve been seeing more than one
thing going on in their hives:


“One, we see hives full of honey and no bees. Totally
gone. We see other situations where we have a nice large
cluster of bees with honey all surrounding them and the
bees dead.”


When he reported this two years ago, he says, state
officials ignored him. Pennsylvania state beekeeper Dennis van Englesdorp admits
he thought McCormick had a serious mite problem at first.


But now researchers at Penn
State are checking other possible
environmental stresses that could be killing honeybees.
van Englesdorp says pinpointing the cause can be just
as difficult with bees as it is with humans:


“You can get a heart attack if you don’t eat well, if you
drink too much, if you smoke, you’re genetically disposed
to a heart attack. It could be one of those factors. It
could be a lot of those factors combining together.”


For this year, he says, the disorder means the number of honeybee colonies will be lower,
but he expects there to be enough to meet pollination
demands.


For The Environment Report, I’m Bob Allen.

Related Links

Important Pollinators in Decline

There could be trouble for the nation’s food crops. Rebecca Williams reports researchers say some important pollinators are in decline in North America:

Transcript

There could be trouble for the nation’s food crops. Rebecca Williams reports researchers say some important pollinators are in decline in North America:


Without bees, hummingbirds and bats, many plants can’t reproduce.


A new report from the National Academy of Sciences says some of these pollinators are in trouble. Especially honeybees – their numbers have been dropping since the 1980s. That’s partly because non-native parasites are attacking the bees.


Allison Snow is an author of the report.


“Pollinators are so important for plant reproduction, for example: pumpkins and cranberries, almonds, strawberries, and in addition pollinators are important in the natural world because most flowering plants and shrubs and trees are visited by pollinators.”


Snow says diseases, parasites and habitat loss are some of the threats to pollinators. She says much more research is needed, especially on the smallest pollinators that tend to fly under the radar.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Biologists Find Deer Devouring Rare Flowers

  • Largeflower bellwort (Uvularia grandiflora) is one of the wildflowers declining at many of the sites studied by University of Wisconsin researchers. (Photo courtesy of Dave Rogers, UW Herbarium)

Most of us think of the white-tailed deer as a graceful and cherished part of the natural scene. But it turns out when there are too many deer, it’s bad for some of the plants in the forest. New research suggests deer may be a prime culprit in a worrisome loss of rare plants in the woods. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:

Transcript

Most of us think of the white-tailed deer as a graceful and cherished
part of the natural scene. But it turns out when there are too many
deer, it’s bad for some of the plants in the forest. New research
suggests deer may be a prime culprit in a worrisome loss of rare
plants in the woods. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie
Hemphill reports:


Gardeners in many suburbs and rural areas know deer are good at
mowing down hosta, tulips and other favorite plants. In the woods,
deer munch on the small plants that live on the forest floor… plants
such as orchids, lilies, and other wildflowers.


Fifty years ago, researchers at the University of Wisconsin surveyed
hundreds of acres in the state, and made careful records of the plants
on those sites. In those days, the deer population was a lot lower
than it is now. In the last couple of years, two biologists went back to
many of those same sites and counted the plants living there now.


Tom Rooney says at most sites they found fewer different kinds of
plants.


“It tends to be the same species occurring over and again on the site.
You’re losing the rare species and picking up more and more
common species.”


He says they tried to link the decline in rare species to the fact that
the forest is getting older. But they found no evidence for that.
Instead, lead researcher Don Waller says the evidence points to
deer, which have increased dramatically over the last fifty years.


“The worst changes we’ve seen, ironically were in a couple of state
parks and a protected natural area, that showed losses of half or
more of species in 50 years. However, in these sites there was no
deer hunting, implying high densities of deer may be causing a lot of
the effects we see in the woods.”


Plants that rely on insects for pollination declined more than other
types of plants. Waller thinks it might be because the insect-
pollinated plants have showy flowers, which could catch the eye of a
wandering deer. As the flowering plants decline, the insects and
birds that rely on them for food could decline as well – bees, moths,
butterflies, and hummingbirds.


Waller says it’s worrisome because scientists don’t know how
particular insects and plants work together to support each other.


“As we’re losing parts of the ecosystem, we’re really not sure what
their full function is, they might play some crucial role we’re not aware
of and only too late might we become aware of the fact that this loss
led to an unraveling or threats to other species.”


Waller says the only places they studied that still have a healthy
diversity of plants are on Indian reservations. The Menominee Tribal
Forest in northeastern Wisconsin is pretty much like it used to be fifty
years ago.


(forest sounds under)


In this forest, there are only about ten deer per square mile. That’s
about as low as the deer population gets in Wisconsin. It’s not that
the tribe is hunting more deer; it’s the way the forest is grown.


Deer find lots to eat in young aspen woods; there’s less for them to
eat where pines and oaks and maples grow. Don Reiter is the wildlife
manager here. He says in the 360 square miles of the Menominee
forest, there’s really four different types of woods.


“We have pulpwood, we have northern hardwoods, white pine, red
pine, and again, the forest ecosystem as a whole, there’s plenty of
food out there for the deer.”


And because there aren’t too many deer, young pines and hemlocks
– and orchids and lilies – have a chance to grow.


In the upper Great Lakes states, wildlife officials have been trying to
thin the deer herd for several years. That’s because state officials
have been aware deer were causing problems by eating too many
plants. The recent study provides dramatic evidence.


In Minnesota, for instance, hunters are shooting four times the
number of deer they shot fifty years ago.


Steve Merchant is forest wildlife program consultant for the
Minnesota DNR. Merchant says the agency has liberalized its rules,
to encourage hunters to kill even more deer. But the number of
hunters hasn’t gone up in recent years. And lots of private
landowners post no-hunting signs.


“We need to have some help from people, people still need to get out
and hunt deer, and landowners need to provide that access for
people to harvest deer.”


Merchant says Minnesota is gradually trying to restore pine forests,
which were cut down for lumber and replaced with fast-growing
aspen. More pine forests could cut down on the deer population…


“But as long as we still have the strong demand for the aspen
markets that we do, and we manage those aspen forests in a
productive manner for wood fiber, we’re going to create a lot of good
white-tailed deer habitat.”


Merchant says it would take decades to change the woods enough to
reduce the deer population. And in the meantime, we’re losing more
and more of the rare flowers.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

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Mite Zapper Might Help Bees

Beekeepers in the Midwest and elsewhere are turning to innovative ways to protect their hives from tiny, blood-sucking mites. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports, farmers depend on the health of commercial honeybee colonies:

Transcript

Beekeepers in the Midwest and elsewhere are turning to innovative ways to protect their hives
from tiny, blood-sucking mites. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports,
farmers depend on the health of commercial honeybee colonies:


Apples, cherries, and cucumbers are among the crops that depend on bees for pollination. But in
the mid-80’s, a parasite called varroa wiped out wild honeybees in the U.S. And the mites have
also taken a toll on commercial colonies as well.


The problem is especially serious in California. Almond growers there have had difficulties in
the last few years getting enough bees to pollinate their half-million acres of almond trees. But
Zachary Huang, a honeybee researcher at Michigan State University, says beekeepers in the
region still have about twice the number of bees needed to meet farmers’ demands.


“It’s not so bad yet that we’re having trouble getting bees to pollinate our fruit trees.”


Chemicals have been developed to kill the mites. But so far, they’ve proved only partly effective,
or the mites become resistant. Huang has patented a device called the “mite zapper” that kills the
parasites in the hives. He hopes to be able to market it to beekeepers next year.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Sarah Hulett.

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Modified Crops Swap Genes With Weeds

Genetically modified crops are planted throughout the Midwest, but some scientists are concerned genes from these crops could escape and work their way into weedy plants. With these genes, weeds could become more vigorous and harder to kill. New research shows this can happen between closely related crops and weeds. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Cristina Rumbaitis-del Rio prepared this report:

Transcript

Genetically modified crops are planted throughout the Midwest, but some scientists are
concerned genes from these crops could escape and work their way into weedy plants. With
these genes, weeds could become more vigorous and harder to kill. New research shows this can
happen between closely related crops and weeds. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Cristina
Rumbaitis-del Rio prepared this report:


Genetically modified crops have been around for quite a while. In the U.S. last year more than 88
million acres were planted with genetically modified soybean, corn, cotton and other crops. Some
of these plants are engineered to be more resistant to herbicides, making it easier for farmers to
get rid of weeds without damaging their crop. Others are engineered to resist plant-eating insects.


But some scientists worry about the ecological effects of these crops. Allison Snow is a professor
of ecology at Ohio State University. She studies genetically modified sunflowers. Snow says she
got involved in this research when genetically modified crops were first being introduced because
she was afraid no one else was looking at the environmental effects of these crops.


“It was kind out of a fear factor for me of wanting to make sure that someone was watching to see
what the environmental effects might be.”


The sunflowers Snow studies have a gene added to them, which produces an organic insecticide
that kills insects feeding on the plants.


According to Snow, the problem with these pesticide-producing sunflowers is the insect-killing
gene can be transferred from crop sunflowers to their weedy cousins, which are often growing on
the edges of fields. Bees, flies and other insects can transfer the gene to the weeds by cross-
pollinating the plants, which are close relatives. Snow’s research shows once the gene gets into
the weed population, the weeds become insect-resistant as well.


“The new gene worked really, really well in the weeds. It protected them from the insects. And
because they were protected, they had more energy to devote to making seeds.”


Snow says the most startling result was the number of seeds these weeds were making.


“In one of our study sites, they made 55% percent more seeds per plant – just because of one
gene. Which is kind of unheard of. We’ve never seen a result like that – where one gene would
cause the whole population to suddenly start making 55% more seeds.”


The gene might make weeding a more difficult task, but Snow says she wouldn’t quite call them
“super weeds,” a term some environmentalists have used.


“We might see that the weedy sunflowers become worse weeds, I wouldn’t call them super
weeds, because to me that would imply that they have many different features instead of just one
that causes them to make more seeds. But I could imagine in the future there might be enough
traits out there that could turn a regular weed into something much more difficult to control – like
really would be a super weed.”


Snow says she will have to do more research to see if the extra seeds made by the weeds will turn
into more weeds and hardier weeds in farmer’s fields.


But, she might not be able to finish her research on sunflowers because the companies that make
the crop have decided not to renew her funding and won’t give her access to the sunflowers or the
genes.


“It was all about stewardship and responsibility.”


Doyle Karr is a spokesperson for pioneer hi bred, one of the companies which makes the
sunflowers. He says the company realized a few years ago there wasn’t enough demand for the
product to justify commercially producing it. As a result, he says, the company couldn’t continue
funding sunflower research, and doesn’t want to be held responsible for keeping the gene safe
while the research is being conducted.


It’s an issue of a biotech trait that we are not pursuing and not bringing to the market, and if we’re
not bringing it to the market, we can’t justify taking the responsibility of having that trait out
being worked with, with a third party.”


While some academic researchers argue the universities take on legal liability when they work
with genetically modified plants, Karr says the university’s liability is often limited by state law.
He says the company is ultimately held responsible if only by the court of public opinion.


“Should something happen with this gene that was not expected or a mistake happened – that
would ultimately come back to those who initially made the gene available.”


While this issue remains unresolved, Snow is continuing her research. Genetically modified
sunflowers are not the only crop to study. Snow is now working in Vietnam where weedy species
of rice grow naturally, and where genetically modified rice might be introduced in coming years.
She’s concerned the traits of the genetically altered rice might be transferred to the wild species
of rice, just as happened with the sunflowers.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Cristina Rumbaitis-del Rio.

Creating Fragrant Flowers

When was the last time you got a bouquet of flowers that had a
fragrant smell? While there’s no shortage of beautiful looking flowers
for
sale, many have little if any scent anymore. As the Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports it’s a problem one scientist has
gotten a whiff of:

Transcript

When was the last time you got a bouquet of flowers that had a fragrant smell? While there’s no shortage of beautiful looking flowers for sale, many have little, if any, scent anymore. Ast he Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports, it’s a problem one scientist has gotten a whiff of:


Flowers have lost their smell as flower growers have bred them to be big and brightly colored. Eran Pichersky is a biologist at the University of Michigan. He studies the smell of flowers. Pichersky is focusing his genetics research on whether it’s possible to bioengineer a flower’s scent.


“We actually have some collaboration with biotech companies who are trying to use some of the genes and enzymes we’ve isolated to put them back into plants so that the plant makes more scent, or even new scent that they didn’t make before.”


But it’s not florists who are interested in this work, it’s farmers. Pichersky’s research means it might be possible to alter the smell of flowers in ways that entice bees to visit crops more often, or even attract other insects to do the pollination work. That increase in pollination could mean an increase in crop yields.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamar Charney.