The Problem With Honey Bees
To many people, honey bees symbolize prosperity, sustainability and environmentalism.
Although they are important for agriculture, honey bees also destabilize natural
ecosystems by competing with native bees — some of which are species at risk.
Native bee species at risk . . .
It was thought that concern over their health and prosperity would
spill over onto native bees, benefitting them, too. While this may have happened in some cases,
evidence is mounting that misguided enthusiasm for honey bees has likely been to the native bees’
detriment.
The 4,000 wild bee species in the United States have evolved over millions of years to
pollinate plants endemic to biodiverse regions. Studies show they consume up to 95
percent of local available pollen. The specialized foragers have already suffered steep
declines in part due to climate change, pesticide use, disease, and habitat loss.
Scientists warn that the millions of introduced honey bees pose a risk to native species,
out-competing them for pollen and altering fragile plant communities.
For some reason, maybe because they are small, honey bees are not generally viewed as
the massively distributed livestock animal that they are. There are millions of honey bee
colonies in North America, 2.8 million of which are in the U.S. Approximating around
30,000 bees per colony, that’s roughly a billion honey bees in Canada and the U.S. alone
— almost triple the number of people.
Nearly 40 federally listed threatened or endangered species of bees, butterflies, and flower
flies depend upon pollinator-friendly plants for their survival. Now, in areas that were once refuges
for these species and others, native bees increasingly face competition from millions of
domesticated honey bees during pollinating seasons.
“Honey bees are super-foraging machines and they are literally taking the pollen out of the
mouths of other bees and other pollinators,” said Stephen Buchmann, a pollination ecologist
specializing in bees and an adjunct professor at the University of Arizona. “They have
huge extraction efficiency — with the waggle dance and how quickly they can mobilize —
and they can very quickly take down the standing stock of pollen and nectar.”
About half of 72 studies addressing competition between managed bees and wild bees analyzed
in a 2017 literature review found managed bees negatively impacted native pollinators by
consuming limited floral resources. Of 41 studies that looked at the potential effects of managed
bees on wild bees through changes in plant communities, 36 percent reported negative impacts
and 36 percent positive results, with the remainder finding mixed or no impacts.
For some reason, maybe because they are small, honey bees are not generally viewed as
massively distributed livestock animal that they are.
The rise in hobby beekeeping, now a trendy activity for hundreds of thousands of Americans,
followed strong awareness campaigns to “save the bees.” But as a species, honey bees are
least in need of saving. Media attention disproportionately covers them over native pollinators,
and murky messaging has led many citizens to believe they are doing
a good thing for the environment by putting on a beekeeper’s veil. Unfortunately, they are probably
doing more harm than good.
“Beekeeping is for people; it's not a conservation practice,” says Sheila Colla, an assistant
professor and conservation biologist at Toronto’s York University, Canada. “People mistakenly
think keeping honey bees, or helping honey bees, is somehow helping the native bees, which are
at risk of extinction."
Private honey beekeepers are increasingly eyeing public lands as sources of flower nectar for
their commercial honey operations when their spring and early summer crop pollination business
winds down. Their desire for low cost public land use is due, in part, to pesticide use on private
lands and in part to the withdrawal, for a number of reasons, of historic honey pasture lands in
the upper Midwest.
Many public lands lie within the historic distribution of several rare species of native bees which
are being considered for listing as threatened or endangered. These species are at a great risk
from honey bee invasion. There is already evidence that the honey bee passes the debilitating
twisted wing virus to bumble bees.
1. Diverse native bee species are instrumental in maintaining ecosystems.
Native bee species have evolved as pollinators of our diverse flora and are
instrumental in maintaining the integrity of our ecosystems. They pollinate the native plant species
with which they have evolved, thereby enabling the production of fruit and seeds for wildlife and
making possible future generations of the plants from which our ecosystems and watersheds arise.
2. Non-native honey bees are dominant competitors with native bee species.
Honey bees though invaluable as crop pollinators, are not native to the Americas
and have evolved novel social and foraging behaviors which make them dominant competitors of
native bees for the pollen and nectar all bees require as food. Their unique forager recruitment
behavior enables honey bees to outcompete and displace many native species.
3. Native bee species are more effective in pollinating native plants with which they have
evolved.
Native bee species do a more effective job of pollinating the diverse native flora with which they
have evolved than do honey bees. Honey bees vary not only in their pollination effectiveness
from plant species to plant species but also in their flower preferences. Numerous studies
have documented the preference of honey bees for invasive flower species (weeds).
Displacement of natives by honey bees will thus change the mix of seeds produced by resident
plants and increase the seeding of unwelcome invasive plants.
4. Honey bees and native bees are exchanged debilitating diseases
Honey bees are currently under
pressure from various disease agents which have impacted the number of hives nationwide.
Although research on disease spillover between honey bees and native bees is in its infancy,
already several studies have shown that pathogens can be passed to native bees at flowers and
elsewhere and that some of these diseases are debilitating to natives.
5. Federally listed rare and endangered species are threatened by honey bee colonies.
The historic distribution of several rare species of bumblebees in Wisconsin, including the
Rusty Patched bumble bee, are at risk. These species are threatened from a honeybee
invasion as there is already evidence that the honey bee passes the debilitating twisted
wing virus to bumblebees.
But think about them we must . . .
It was thought that concern over their health and prosperity would
spill over onto native bees, benefitting them, too. While this may have happened in some cases,
evidence is mounting that misguided enthusiasm for honey bees has likely been to the native bees’
detriment.
Durant, J. L. 2019. Where have all the flowers gone? Honey bee declines and exclusions from
floral resources. Journal of Rural Studies 65: 161-171.
Carril, O.M., Griswold, T., Haefner, J. and Wilson, J.S., 2018. Wild bees of Grand Staircase-Escalante
National Monument: richness, abundance, and spatio-temporal beta-diversity. PeerJ, 6, p.e5867.
Griswold, T., Parker, F.D. and Tepedino, V.J., 1997. The bees of the San Rafael Desert: implications
for the bee fauna of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. In Learning from the Land,
Biology Section. Grand StaircaseEscalante National Monument Science Symposium Proceedings,
Cedar City, Utah.
Cane, J.H. and Tepedino, V.J., 2017. Gauging the effect of honey bee pollen collection on native bee
communities. Conservation Letters, 10(2), pp.205-210.
McAfee, A., 2020. The Problem With Honeybees, Scientific American, November, 2020.
Plants had to solve a problem: they needed to find ways to spread their genetic material.
Flying pollinators were nature's solution. Nectar is made as a reward for pollinators.
Take this quick quiz and see how much you know about bees—our favorite essential pollinators
working around the world. This quiz is intended for fun, in a random-facts-can-be-cool kind of way.
Spring begins andhungry pollinators are on the wing, looking for food. From
the moment emerge in spring to the time that they hibernate or migrate in the fall, pollinators
need to eat.