There has been increasing hype in the media lately about the decreasing honeybee population. Since 2004, the size of the average US honeybee colony has shrunk by 90% in most beekeeping operations. Honeybees pollinate about one-third of the food we eat. This includes almonds, raspberries, pears, onions, cabbage, soy beans, apples, blueberries, and more. In fact, about 35% of the average person’s calories are derived from food pollinated by honeybees. Honeybees also play a contributing factor in pollinating the plants used to make cloth for our clothing and feed for our livestock and other animals.
In past decades, America’s food came from large family farms, which could be pollinated naturally by wild bees. However, today much of America’s food comes from large corporate farms which are typically too large to be pollinated naturally. Instead, honeybee colonies are shipped by truck to the corporate farms around the time the crops are expected to be blossoming. With fewer and fewer bees available to pollinate America’s crops, this presents a pending catastrophe for America. Even home gardens more and more are failing to produce fruits and vegetables.
This is not just an American issue, either. Other countries such as Spain, Portugal, Germany, Poland Greece, the UK, Croatia, China, and counties in South and Central America are now being affected. Some in the UK believe honeybees could be extinct in that location around 2018. The crisis is widespread and could cause major global issues in the near future, with increased food and clothing prices and shortages increase.
While theories about why this is occurring have run the gamut since the hives first started disappearing in 2004, the majority of scientists have pinpointed the main cause of the decline to a virus which leads to colony collapse disorder. With colony collapse disorder, honeybees leave the hive and simply fail to return. The size of the colony decreases rapidly, and this effect is widespread. While a virus is believed to be the main factor, there may be other contributing factors as well, such as pesticides, global warming, stress and poor nutrition.
In addition to affecting the US food supply, it also affects the U.S. economy to the tune of close to $15 billion dollars per year. In fact, 87 of the top 115 cash crops are those that are pollinated by honeybees. Scientists have spoken before Congress on this issue, but funding for additional research into the matter has not yet been approved. Major corporations are also getting involved such as Ben & Jerry’s, Haagen-Daz, and Burt’s Bees. In the meantime, this leaves beekeepers and scientists scrambling to find a solution to this problem.
While a cure to the illness is unlikely to be found in the near future, genetic diversity and providing safe environments for honeybees may help ease the problem. In the meantime, some farms are taking matters into their hands. Several farms in China have hired humans to systematically go through their fields acting as human honeybees and pollinating the crops by hand with a feather.
Sick honeybees will affect the general consumer with limited produce or alarmingly higher priced produce at the supermarket, as well as higher costs in meat and clothing. Food shortages may be just a few years away. For home gardens to be productive, the additional step of hand pollination may be required for even those small gardens to thrive. If colonies continue to decline in size, larger corporate farms may be forced to hire workers to hand pollinate as well. While the effects of the declining honeybee population seem drastic and the pending possibility of human honeybee’s hand-pollinating crops would cause crop prices to skyrocket, this is a reality the country could be faced with if this problem is left unchecked.
