Get Even More Visitors To Your Blog, Upgrade To A Business Listing >>

Are honey bees becoming extinct?

As usual the media has hyped up the "news" to the point of sensationalism. The Honey Bees are dying, the honey bees are dying. Bunk. The story should read: "Managed Colonies of Honey Bees Are Dying Off At An Alarming Rate." Or better yet: "No New Beekeepers To Take Care Of Crop Pollination In America." Which brings us into the problems of beekeeping as it exists today.
Why are managed colonies of honey bees dying? This is a complex question but one key factor stands above the rest. The gene pool of "European Bees" is surprisingly shallow. Many of the bees that commercial beekeepers use come from just a few sources. The Italian honey bee was imported long ago from just one place and only a few queens made the journey to America. From just these few queens thousand, maybe hundreds of thousands, of subsequent bees were produced. As any geneticist will tell you as new generations are interbred genetic maladies increase exponentially until finally the species collapses on itself-dead from disease. Italian bees aren't the only bee managed in America though. We have the Caucasians and Carniolan, Russian and Yugoslavian and a few others. All were introduced in North America with very limited numbers. Hence they all are experiencing the same fate as the Italian bee. What bee now thrives in America, almost totally free of disease? The African "Killer Bee". Why? The answer is simple. As Killer Bees migrate to new territories they breed with whatever species of bee is there creating hybrids. The result? A genuinely hardy bee able to handle diseases and parasites with ease. Nature, it seems, will always find a way to bring about a balance. Our path becomes clear- stop meddling with nature and start moving with it. Maybe it's time again to start gathering wild swarms as we once did in America and stop being afraid of the Killer Bees.
Which brings us to the next problem in beekeeping. No new beekeepers. And why would there be? The hours are long, the work is immensely hard, and the pay is abysmal. We as Americans are just not willing to work like this anymore. Generational farmers are going out of business because they can't find the labor pool they once had from the rural high schools to throw hay bales or clean out the stalls. Fruit growers and Vineyard managers are turning to "migrant" workers to prune and harvest their fruit. They say things like, "you just can't get the kids to do this work any more." What does this say about our society? More importantly, what does this say about the perceived value of beekeeping? Many people don't realize that every third spoonful of food they eat comes directly or indirectly from honey bee crop pollination. Yet there are no subsidy programs from the great nanny government we now have. Honey prices are currently below 1970 prices while expenses to manage the bees has risen to the point where there may be NO profit for keeping the bees in a given year. The world of commercial beekeeping continues to decline and beekeeping as a hobby has become so expensive that only the very dedicated continue. What are we to do? One, the economy itself may solve the generational work ethic problem. As "service" jobs decline due to mortgage failures and outsourcing the upcoming generation may have no choice but to work with their hands to feed and shelter themselves. Two, as a world economy develops, the "cheap" honey that's exported to America will have to come more in tune with production costs. We may yet see a time when there is a profit to be made with honey production and crop pollination- only time will tell.
Are the bees dying? Yes. But there is a solution. Get out of the way. Allow nature, and the bees, to find a balance. As with almost everything we humans meddle in we have screwed it up. Just stop.


This post first appeared on Florida Bee Removal, please read the originial post: here

Share the post

Are honey bees becoming extinct?

×

Subscribe to Florida Bee Removal

Get updates delivered right to your inbox!

Thank you for your subscription

×