Lisa Roper. The Ancient Art Of Apiary When describing an individual who works hard and is constantly productive in the task at hand; whether they be a colleague or an industrious child focussed on their play, it’s not unusual to tag them with the description of ‘busy bee’ or ‘worker bee’ to convey their single-mindedness in their mission and you can immediately picture someone completely absorbed in their project, unwilling to rest until their target is met or completed. To put this into context a bee’s wings will beat two hundred times a second at a speed of approximately fifteen miles per hour visiting several thousand flowers in one day, over a radius of around four miles. The facts are staggering when you put them all together and the art of beekeeping is a passion, an ancient form of food production that dates back thousands of years. So why are bees dying in their billions and what will that mean for us? Why Are Bees Dying In Their Billions? The lifecycle of a bee is a few weeks in the summertime during which it will travel between four hundred and five hundred miles. Their beautifully symbiotic ways, working in harmony with nature, provide us with a natural food product with almost miracle-like properties such as beeswax, propolis and bee pollen, it is liquid gold. But they are in trouble and no-one is exactly sure why, although there are three big contenders. Bees are sensitive to weather and weather extremes; temperatures of below fourteen degrees and excess rain mean they won’t leave their hives. This also effects their reproduction, which can produce bees that are unable to survive even mild winters. Parasites such as the Verroa (destructor) mite, is truly devastating to the bee population, as well as many others. Finally there are the pesticides (neonicitonoids) used in agriculture, which amongst other issues hamper the bees vector and landscape memory so they get lost and are unable to return to the hive. Unfortunately the consequences of losing this vital link in the insect chain can often be underestimated. The Consequences Will Be Devastating Bees are essential to modern agriculture. Their skill in accurately pollenating vast quantities of fruit, vegetables and flowers is essential not only to agriculture but also to our economy in the shape of retail markets and other industries that may not immediately spring to mind. Imagine feeding your family a breakfast that did not require the help of bees in its production. A recent BBC study did just that and served up a choice of white or brown bread and black tea; hardly a banquet! Obviously the fruit and vegetables would go, but consider this; animal feed is made by bee produced yields so meat and dairy foodstuffs would at best become scarce. Add to that the potential health and healing benefits of propolis, another bee by-product, and their loss starts to become incalculable. A cost analysis was done into the viability of introducing hand pollenating to replace the service of bees; the astronomical costs further highlight how crucial the function of the bee is to our ecosystem; and also how precise their job is because hand pollenated products have a higher potential of being defective and misshapen and so putting off buyers. What Is Being Done To Prevent The Decimation Of The Bee Population? Unsurprisingly the common thread is human interference. The importation of bees from one continent to another has dispersed parasites globally, resulting in the development of pesticides. In addition agriculture has changed, resulting in ‘green deserts’ which are uninhabitable by bees. Whilst biologists and scientists argue the merits and problems of pesticides, one thing is clear; a total ban of all pesticides may do more harm than good as it will take many years to be eradicated into the food chain. One thing that they all agree on, and as any student of biology textbooks will be aware, is that in addition to being of benefit to food crops, insect pollinators are of momentous importance to the whole natural ecosystem. Valuable biological research is being done into manufacturing an alarm pheromone produced by aphids to warn others of danger which would then be produced naturally by genetically modified plants which would not affect bees who are unreceptive to it. Is The Future Bright? There are many more years of research ahead before this solution can become a reality and it is evident that changes in our agricultural systems could result in dual benefits for the bees in providing a home and for the farmers by increasing yield. Whilst predictions of human extinction following the extinction of natural pollinators seem grossly overstated, it is clear to see that the repercussions of a continuous decline will affect everyone.
Posted on: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 23:30:50 +0000