For the bees to feed us, first we need to feed them
More than one third of the world’s crops are dependent on bee pollination.
Apples, avocados, blueberries, cherries, cranberries, and sunflowers are 90% dependent on pollination from honey bees. Cucumbers, kiwi fruit, melons and vegetables are pollinated by honey bees. The dairy and beef industries are also dependent on insect-pollinated legumes (alfalfa, clover, etc), and honey bees play a large role in this pollination. (National Honey Board)
Bees feed us, and yet their populations are diminishing.
QUEEN OF THE SUN: What Are the Bees Telling Us? is a profound, alternative look at the global bee crisis.
In order to make sure all of our crops within our California and Mexico based agricultural system are pollinated, bees need to be transported in big trucks while they go on a “pollination tour” across the country to pollinate these various mono-cultured crops. This transportation causes a massive amount of stress to the bees, and the hive’s population may be cut in half by the end of the trip.
The scale of almond mono-culture alone demands that most of our nations bees (1.5 million out of an estimated 2 million total) be transported across the nation to pollinate this one crop.
I first learned about the transportation of bees across the nation to pollinate after watching the documentary Queen of the Sun: What are the Bees Telling Us? back in college. I’ve also seen More Than Honey, another great one that dives into the “mystery” of the colony collapse epidemic. There is a lot of really incredible information in these two documentaries. I highly recommend watching one or both of them if you’d like to deepen your understanding of the intelligence and importance of the bee within our eco and agricultural system.
A honeybee colony can actually be considered a super organism where the colony is the organism and it is comprised of 40-50,000 individual bee organisms. We’ve all heard the term hive mind. The intelligence of the hive mind is able to come to collective decisions, divide labor, and communicate where food is without any central authority. Bees even have a healthcare system that has kept them thriving. Some bees within the hive are able to locate and weed out sick individuals, which keeps the colony healthy. They also create what we call propolis by collecting sticky resins from plants and take them back to the hive to cement them into the structure of the nest. Humans have used propolis as a natural disinfectant and antibiotic for hundreds of years, but only recently did we discover that it is of equal benefit to the bees. It kills bacteria, mold, and pathogens— protecting and boosting the health of the hive. (Marla Spivak)
These defenses have kept bees healthy for over 50 million years, but in the last 15 years, bees have been dying at alarming rates. The defenses that have protected them for so long unable to protect them from this. So.. what is this? What is happening?
“Bees dying reflects a flowerless landscape and a dysfunctional food system…. Bees have been in decline since World War II. We have half the number of managed hives since 1945. The reason is after WWII we changed our farming practices. We stopped planting cover crops. We stopped planting clover and alfalfa, which are natural fertilizers that fix nitrogen in the soil. Instead we started using synthetic fertilizers. Clover and alfalfa are highly nutritious food for bees… We started using herbicides to kill off weeds in our farms. many of these weeds are flowering plants that bees require for survival. We started growing larger and larger crop mono-cultures.. the very farms that used to sustain bees are now agriculture food deserts… since WWII we have been systematically eliminating many of the flowering plants that bees need for their survival” Marla Spivak explains in her TED Talk, which includes a ton of astounding information about bees, the intelligence of their social structures, and an in-depth explanation for the disappearance of bees wrapped up in an intriguing 15 minutes.
Honeybees have thrived for 50 million years, each colony 40 to 50,000 individuals coordinated in amazing harmony. So why, seven years ago, did colonies start dying en masse? Marla Spivak reveals four reasons which are interacting with tragic consequences. This is not a simple problem because bees pollinate a third of the world's crops.
What can we do?
Know where your honey comes from, and I don’t just mean read the label. If you don’t have a direct source for your honey, meaning if you aren’t getting it from a farmers market or an individual that you’ve personally met that has their own hive, I would not recommend using honey in your diet. Why does this matter?
Honey production can be incredibly inhumane. Buying from a grocery store supports these large commercial honey makers, in turn supporting their inhumane practices. Honey is an animal product, and as with all animal products, there is neglect and inhumane treatment in order to maximize profit and reach quotas. Honey producers may cut off the queen bee’s wings so she can’t leave the colony or have her artificially inseminated on a bee-sized version of the factory farm “rape rack.” Instead of leaving what the bees need to get through the winter, operations may harvest the colony’s entire supply of honey and replace it with sugar water. If an operation considers it too costly to keep the bees alive through the winter, they destroy the hives with cyanide gas. This is just a small sample of the abuse that bees undergo to produce the mass amounts of honey the United States consumes, which is estimated at nearly 450 million pounds per year — equating to about 1.3 pounds per year per person.
Much of the honey in the United States is actually FAKE. or processed to the point where it wouldn’t be considered honey on other country. The numbers on exactly how much of the honey on the American market is a little controversial, but at this point there’s no denying that it’s totally a thing. Here is a really great article that goes pretty in depth on the topic if you’re interested in reading more.
What is fake honey?
Honey sauces and syrups that are mostly corn syrup with a bit of honey added for flavor, sometimes called honey fructose
Blended honey that is 30-70% honey and the rest is high fructose corn syrup
Honey with added sugar
Fake honey is basically just sugar, which totally negates any of the health benefits you get from real raw honey. You may as well just buy corn syrup.
Pesticides - Bees are now also exposed to a myriad of pesticides that they then bring back to the hive. Every batch of pollen that a honeybee collects has a least 6 detectable pesticides in it (Penn State University research). Even if your honey is organic, the bees are most likely feeding on flowers and crops that have been sprayed with pesticides, whether it’s from sprayed dandelions in a suburban area, or crops on a non-organic farm.
2. Create a pollinator garden! Plant flowering plants in your yard and garden to provide bees with food. Some plants that bees love include:
Lavendar, Mint, Sunflowers, Lilac, Poppies, Honeysuckle, Snapdragons, Pale Purple Coneflower, Borage, Bee Balm, Milkweed, Sage, Black-eyed Susans. Oregano , Thyme, and many more!
3. Don’t use pesticides or herbicides, and if you must - use only natural ones!
4. Grow your own food! Limit your consumption of mono-cultured crops with massive food miles by growing your own food. Many small-scale local farmers plant pollinator gardens. At your local farmers market or farm stand, start a conversation with the growers about pollinator plants and how we can maximize food for bees. Get curious. Which ones do they plant?
5. Talk about it! Share with your friends and family what you know. Share seeds. Encourage your loved ones to start a pollinator garden.
For some more really great information, here are some links to 7 Tips to Create a Bee Garden, and Grassroots Gardening: 21 Flowers that Attract Bees from thehoneybeeconservancy.org
If you love the bees, if you’d like to see them recover and thrive, please share this article. Spread the word. Consider your choices. Every part of our ecosystem effects the rest of the system. We are part of that ecosystem. Our choices effect every other being on this sacred planet.
““If bees ever die out, mankind will have only four years left to live”. - Albert Einstein”