Honey Bees Get Attention, But Native Bees Need Help

you haven't listened yet, definitely check it out. Business of Bees was hosted by Bloomberg Environments Adam Allenton, who covers agricultural issues here. Well, Adam just got back from Seattle, where he spoke about bees at the Annual Conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science also known as Triple AS. This is a really big event not just for scientists from all over the world, but also

companies and advocacy groups. So today we're bringing you Adams on stage discussion from Seattle about the current state of pollinators in the environment. Joining him is Peter Nelson, the director of a new documentary film called The Pollinators about commercial bee pollination, and Donna McDermott, a PhD student from Emory University studying the impact of pesticides on bumblebees. Let's

head over to Seattle right now to hear the discussion. Peter, I think like me In my podcast, I spent you know, quite a bit of time speaking to commercial pollinators and beekeepers, and I was curious how you got exposed to this interesting community of people and what your connection was, and why you decided to make a film about it. Yeah. So I'm a thirty plus year beekeeper backyard beekeeper in New York State, and then I'm also a cinematographer is my day job, and so it's kind of a combination

of passions for me. Got me interested in the story of moving bees, particularly with these commercial migratory beekeepers. The movement of managed bees was a story that a lot of people didn't really know, and how important it is to our food system was not really, I think, as well understood as it could be. So I decided to

take a crack at it. Indeed, it is quite the site to see how how these bees are moved around the country on these big semis, and they're put out in these fields and the you know, palettes of hives, you know, hundreds and hundreds and Donna, you know the same question to you, how did you get connected with bee research? And then I guess, what is it about the bumblebees that you study that makes them like an

ideal candidate for this kind of animal behavior study. So as an undergraduate, I started doing research in an animal behavior lab and that was fascinating the different ways that insects have this incredibly sophisticated cognition even though they're so small, And I decided that I wanted to apply that work to a study system that had some relevance to human needs and human well being, which is pollinators. So bumblebees are actually a great intersection of both really cool complicated

behavioral dynam and also really sophisticated cognition. So we can learn about how bees can count, or how bees identify one another and how that changes with the environment and Peter.

It should be noted that you know, honey bees, in relation to all of the best species you know, close to twenty thousand bee species in the world, honey bees are really, you know, the only ones who are able to exist in these massive communities, these massive colonies, and then also produce honey in the quantities that they do. And so you know, historically humans and bees got together way back, and you know, even the connection between putting bees and orchards and things is you know, goes back

hundreds of years. But tell me how this sort of modern pollination economy got started. Yeah, Well, it's important to note that honey bees are not native to North America, which is which is a key point. But the movement of bees around the country is really changed with the

simplification of agriculture post World War Two. They've moved bees for many, many decades, but post World War Two they really started amplifying the increase and betterment of transportation, better roads, and then the change again the simplification of agriculture, the more chemically dependent agriculture has kind of led to this combination of things to move bees around the country in

for pollination. And is there a particular crop that jump started this or what crops and specifically our honeybees sort of critical for well, right now as we sit here, there are over two million bee hives that are in almonds in California and Central Valley of California, and that's the biggest pollination event in the world, and the majority of those came from different parts of the country, from Florida, from Idaho, from North Dakota, and they're moved in on

trucks for that pollination. And it's kind of like the biggest monoculture that is dependent upon honey bees that we have, But they are about four hundred crops common crops, fruits, vegetables, and nuts in our diet that are dependent or very very important to be pollinated by bees. The statistic that I've heard quoted quite often is that you know, one in three bites of food that we eat is dependent

on pollination. But within those foods, you know, many of the fruits and vegetables and donna are bumblebees is overlapping on these agricultural landscapes in any way. Yeah, so bumblebees are actually commercially reared for greenhouse tomato pollination. They have a pollination technique where they vibrate their wings at the resonant frequency of a flower. This is the buzz pollination. Yes, I don't study bees in the field. I study them in the lab, but I get my bees from the

same company that supplies them to greenhouses. Well, that's an interesting jumping off point for you know, the ways that honey bees APIs malifera aren't the only species who pollinate flowers who are beneficial to agriculture. Are there other bees that are also acting in some of these fields, these orchards that are beneficial pollinators. Absolutely, There are thousands of bee species in North America, and many of them are more accurate or more persistent pollinators than honeybees on a

range of different crops. So some of those can be managed, like the blue orchard mason bee or bumble bees, but many of them live in wild plant arrangements, live in the dirt, and come out by their own initiative. But what's related to that is what makes honeybees. And I'm not a totally honeybee person, but the honeybees have that unique ability to be able to scale up their population really quickly in the warm time of the year, and they have the ability to be moved in massive amounts

without too much ill effect on them. So they kind of farmers, I think, look at them as an opportunity to bring in almost like an insurance policy to ensure pollination. Well, and you had mentioned almonds, which are you know as we speak, you know, in February is typically the time many bees throughout the country are not that active. So bees actually do not hibernate. They stay in their hives

all year long, kind of buzzing and keeping warm. But we started moving them around and sort of waking them up because of almonds. And then after that, is it correct that other farmers found a sort of benefit in commercial pollination that they didn't know existed or that was sort of you know, you kind of hint at like an insurance policy. Talk a little bit about that if you could. Yeah, So once the almond pollination is done, we'll start there because it's the biggest and first big

pollination of the year. Once that is done, those orchards become basically a food desert for bees for any bee, and so the beekeepers have to move the bees out somewhere else so that they can live, or they have to feed them, and so they've sort of worked to

find other crops that bees will work with. So right after pollination of the almonds, then the beekeepers will move of them off to cherries, to apples, to plums, to citrus in different parts of the country, and they create these roots around the country that where the bees are moved, and some of them go directly into honey production, but a lot of them get moved into other pollinations, or

there's blueberries or cranberries. I think something a lot of people might be interested to hear is that these commercial pollination operations, you know, you know thousands of hives, you know, they don't even harvest the honey in most cases, that's kind of they leave it in the hives for the bees as feed. Was there a time when commercial beekeeping

stopped being about honey and started being about pollination. Well, a lot of the commercial beekeepers have a dual revenue stream, so they have the pollination services, which is the majority for many of them, sixty percent or more of their annual income, and then forty percent for honey production. Depending on the beekeeper, some of them go after almos, will

go directly in honey production. Other ones will go and do secondary or third pollinations or fourth pollination, so they do the kind of it depends on the bee keeper and who their clients are and where they live. But like almond honey, I asked people, I said, why almond honey? I've never even heard of almond, and they said, well, it doesn't really taste very good, so they don't really sell it, but they use that to feed the bees.

And you had mentioned this earlier, Peter, the fact that these bee hives which are put in orchards are then moved later on, and Donna, I assume that is obviously not true for the native bees who are living in these ecosystems. The farmers may wait to spray until the commercial bees are out of the field, but if you're a ground nesting bee, maybe you're out of luck. Right. They might be nesting in the fields themselves. And because of that, obviously, like many of these bees are exposed

to proesticides and chemicals, the honey bees aren't. And is there anything that we can do to manage against that or is it hard to maintain a ecosystem where native

bees have enough food to eat agricultural landscape. Well, I think the first challenge is identifying how many native bees are exposed to these pesticides and what the effects of that is the issue with many native bees in terms of research and understanding how to help with be conservation in that way is that they're really hard to find, and it's really hard to find their nests. Honey bees you know, it takes a couple of days, but you can find where honey bees are coming from, but you

can't do that with native bees. It's been explained to me that, I mean, in some sense, honey bees are almost like livestock. You know, we shelter them, we feed them, we take care of them, we build structures to put them in. You know, they're kind of like an agricultural animal, and we can grow their population as we need to. Peters, is that kind of the distinction that you see between native bees and honey bees? Oh, definitely. Yeah. The USDA

considers honey bees livestock, and so it is interesting. And I think that you know, the honey bees, the beekeepers have the ability to as you say, they feed them and take care of them and treat them for diseases, but the native pollinators really can't move away from that chemical exposure or the habitat loss through agriculture that affects a lot of the native bees. I think that's a

really important thing. I think this issue of the role of pollinators and bees in ecology and environmental issues actually really was triggered and came out during the colony collapse. Scare of you know around two thousand and six, two thousand and seven, I know that's when I sort of started hearing about bees a lot in relation to the environment. And so I'm curious, Donna, what if anything has really changed since that time. Have we learned more about the

link between either pesticides or agriculture and colony collapse? You know what causes it is? It's still an issue today from what I understand, honey bee losses over winter between

seasons are still happening and at quite high levels. But I think one of the best things that we got out of the colony collapse disorder, one of the silver linings was understanding that honeybees are a great indicator species because people are checking their numbers so often, but really they're only the tip of the iceberg for understanding how these changes in our environment are changing lots of different species. And we're going to pause things right there for a

brief moment to bring you this message. Okay, thank you, and now back to the podcast. And it should be noted, I mean, the colony collapse scare was an environmental issue specific to APIs malifera to honeybees, but that isn't to say that there isn't maybe some overlap between issues that impact honeybees and issues that impact native bees, right, Peter, would you say that there's some synergy that exists between the species that make them, you know, not entirely different

from one another. Oh, totally think that. You know, the as Donna said that, if you can look at it as a benefit, it was a money that came into pollinator studies as a result of the colony class, which scared everybody. And is there's still losses. There are still high these beekeepers. Depending on the state. I think the you know, their losses can go up to sixty percent. I think the average was just under thirty eight percent last year for an annual loss, which is pretty devastating

to think about what business can support that. But it's also it's led to, I think, to a general awareness about not only honey bees, but all the native bees. It's kind of like there's sort of a gateway insect in a lot of ways for many people. And I think that's it's kind of the honey bees are easy to study because they are movable and their population does.

It is much harder to get those native bees and figure out where they live and how they because their life cycle is very different as solitary bees or semi social bees like bumble bees, it's much harder to study them. And the threats that are aligned against bees are it's

not just pesticides. This is something we've learned about colony collapse that it could be multiple threats, pesticides, habitat loss, and also invasive species like the varroa mite, an invasive mite from Asia that has really devastated commercial beekeepers specifically.

Is there a connection at all between these different issues that may be explaining some of these higher than normal losses because in the eighties beekeepers told me, you know, it was normal to see ten percent annual die off and now we're seeing upwards of forty in some cases.

So could there be a link in that case? Well, you mentioned habitat loss, and I think that that must be huge in terms of both loss of places for bees to forage, so wildflowers and things like that, and also places for bees to make nests, particularly these wild bees that nest in the ground, or nest in rotting logs, or nest in you know, plant stems. Those are the kinds of things that a lot of people clean up out of their and Peter, same question for you Veraes.

I'm assuming since you sort of spent this time so much time with commercial beekeepers, that was something they must have talked a lot about. Yeah, every beekeeper has a problem with vera might unless you live in Australia, and it's a it's a it's a big problem for all beekeepers and if you don't treat for it, you're basically out of business. And what and what do the mites do?

I mean do they kill the bees? Out right? They feed out the fat body of the bees, so it's kind of like they sort of suck the liver out, if you will, almost of the of the bees. And so it weakens them. And if you don't treat them, if they get to a certain level. And they also transmit viruses, which is very important. They transmit viruses to the bees, and so that when when bees are exposed to pesticides which maybe weaken their immune system and then

they're exposed to viruses. Plus the feeding on the of the veram and poor nutrition which is another factor of a diversity of nutrition for pollenant for bees is really important. So all those things conspire and it creates this sort of feedback loop that is really difficult for bees to handle.

And here we are taking in some cases, you know, ninety percent of the commercial beehives in the country and putting them all together in one spot, kind of creating the ideal way to spread a virus, right, very true. Something that scares me is like when you have one species that we're dependent upon in one place at one time. I mean, we've seen that with other things with potatoes famously in Ireland, bananas in the past. So it's really

kind of makes me nervous. Donna. I know you're not an environmental toxicologist, but talk a bit if you could, about the difficulty of sake treating for mites and you know, trying to in a sense kill a bug on a bug. It must be very difficult to do. Sure well, and you know there are treatments for varroamites, but I've been told quite difficult to kill them outright, Yeah, totally. It's they've there's some new work that's I just read about that they're working on the gut biome on vera might

which looks very encouraging. But it's interesting to know that the veroa is a mite that jumped from one species of honeybee, the APIs serana, onto APIs malifera, which is

an Asian thing. So the Asian serrana has dealt with vera might for a long time and it sort of co evolved and learned how to deal with it, and Verroa malifera, the European honeybe is still trying to figure that out, and so they're not really prepared or they haven't gotten there yet how to do it, and they're working on it with genetics that make bees that are better at grooming off the veroa mite and things like that,

but it takes some time. And you had mentioned viruses obviously, Donna, if a bee is weakened by, say, a virus, does that make it more susceptible than to the impacts of pesticides? Could you talk a bit about that, Oh, sure, in the same way that if a human is weakened by a virus, they maybe are not necessarily as good at collecting food for themselves or overcoming a particularly cold warning. And in terms of pesticides and agriculture, there is a big shift right maybe about you know, in the last

twenty years away from older insecticides. The organophosphate insecticides which were quite toxic not only to insects but also to some mammals, to this newer generation of systemic insecticides called neonicottonoids. Could you talk about how neonicotinoids or neonics differ in their motive action compared to some of these older pesticides.

So these neonicotinoids are doing a more specialized thing in the insect brain, which is really effective in getting rid of insects and as you said, less effective in killing

other animals. But even if these pesticides have a lot of sublethal effects on bees and on other insects that are harder to pin down, right, So sublethal effects is not killing the bee outright, You don't see these massive die offs that you know outside of beehives, but maybe impacting their ability to sort of navigate or is that what talk about how your research is trying to assess

the impact of neoniks specifically on be behavior. Yeah, So I study bumblebees, and bumblebees do a thing where if they're foraging, they look for what flowers other bees are visiting, and they follow that social queue to go visit the flower. But when bees, when I expose bees to neonicotinoid pesticides biomathox sam Specifically, they totally ignored social cues from other bees, which takes away, you know, a handy shortcut that they might otherwise be using to identify the best flowers and

peter these neon a contonoids. It should be noted that like these are the most common class of insecticides and agriculture today, and I mean there's been they've been called the bee killing pesticide by some people. The people at the at the pesticide and chemical companies would disagree. They would say that the way these chemicals are applied is actually a much more targeted way of applying pasticide since in many cases they're actually coated right on the seed

that seeds planted in the ground. Does that negate the impact of these chemicals on bees, Well, it's kind of a different thing. I mean, because one thing that's interesting about the neonix is they're safer for humans to handle. It's one advantage of them. But they also work systemically, so they go through the vascular system of the plant, and so if a pest bites on the plant, it would pick up the neonicket to noids and theoretically die.

The problem for bees is that it goes into the nectar and into the pollen, and so the bees pick it up. Even if it's on corn, that corn blows onto other stuff and bees do use corn pollen, and so they pick up sometimes lethal doses and sometimes sublethal doses, often sublethal doses. But the application on coated seeds is

really important because that's not considered a pesticide application. So if it's coated on the seed before it's put in the ground, and that's interesting, and so the dust that comes off of that during the application sometimes can lead to you know, byproducts because it's they're very lethal for bees and even you know, in high amounts. But the sublethal does is something that's really interesting and also much

more persistent in the environment itself. Even if you plant it below the ground, Donna, these chemicals are getting into the water table, into neighboring plants, and into the soil where they could potentially come into contact with native bees. Again, this is a threat that they're exposed to sort of on a consistent basis, right if they're getting into the nectar, if they're getting into the pollen. In the time, we have left. I've wanted to sort of touch on policies

that may help us protect bees. You know, in twenty seventeen, the EPA listed or added the rusty patch bumble bee, the first bee was that was added to the endangered species list, which is kind of a big, big moment for bee conservation. But bumble bees are quite different, and say a gray wolf in a national park. You know, they're everywhere. So are there things we can do to

help provide the habitat they need? Sure? Actually, I was just talking to a good friend of mine who is an environmental consultant, and since the rusty patch bumble bee was placed on the Endangered Species list, that's now a species that she needs to look out for when consulting with companies that want to do construction. But it's such a different animal from most other species on the list that you know, they don't know how to find the rusty patch bumblebee, or if they do find it, how

big of an area that limits construction on? Right, I mean, it's it's not a simple question of establishing a preserve and then helping that species sort of slowly grow, right, Peter Like, Unlike a lot of environmental issues, which seem very big and overwhelming at times. Helping bees is something we can all do, right, you know, Is there a

way you can do that on your own property. Yeah, there's so many things that people can do, and you know, personal use of pesticides and fungicides on your lawn, getting rid of your lawn is a huge thing, because that is a monoculture, right, It's the biggest monoculture I think we have in North America. And so you could introduce other species like clover and time flowering time into a

lawn to make that better. Getting involved in policy on a state level is important Washington where we are right now, as a pollinator protection for habitat, for establishing native plants and establishing those floral resources even if they're weeds, which is really important. Herbicides are a big factor because when they spray the side of a road, you're killing forage and therefore good nutrition for bees by killing what is weeds,

you know. So that's really something everybody can do about this. In fact, that seems to be the case in a lot of cities now are becoming these pollinator refuges right downa where weedy areas and meetings and so forth are being converted into the habitat. Yeah, so people become interested in making corridors so like a string of gardens that bees can move along, or patches that support be nesting and be foraging. We're almost out of our time here, but you know, a lot of people are into beekeeping

and backyard beekeeping. But it's just the thing I find that's so interesting is the ways that bees, honeybees and native bees are both these really charismatic animals that have these very fascinating life cycles, and how the two are kind of doing a lot of the heavy pr work, if you will, for some of these issues imp impacting insects. Well, so I wanted to thank you both so much for coming here and talking to me about this. Thank you, Thank you all so much for being here. Thank you.

That was Adam Allenton speaking in Seattle at the annual meeting of Triple As. If you're into this kind of thing, definitely check out Business of Bees, our six part podcast breaking down everything going on with pollinators. We also have much more about pollinators and lots of other topics at

our website News dot Bloomberg, Environment dot com. If you want to chat with us on social media use the hashtag parts per B. That hashtag, once again is parts per B. Today's episode of Pars Pavillion was produced by myself along with Marissa Horn, Jessica Coombs, and Josh Block. Music for this episode is a Message by Jazzar and It's That Simple by Frank Novon, Peter Bento and Jim Harbor. They were used under a Creative Commons license. Thanks for listening.

The cases and controversies is all about the Supreme Court. Come on, come on, well, I agree you serious. We sit down with leading practitioners and scholars to break down these cases. I mean, I'm glad you brought that up so I didn't have to. But that's interesting. I guess my imagination is running wild. Tune in every week for our Deep Dive and Sneak Peak episodes wherever you get your podcasts. As always, check out the latest Atnews dot Bloomberg, Law dot com