----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Peter L Borst" <[log in to unmask]>


>So the estimates are based in large part on data collected about bee 
>pollination in the fifties, sixties, and seventies!


And the changes in those years!

One background assumptions a lot of people (including some who should know 
better) make is that, if honeybees were to disappear, wild bees would 
recover and take up the slack in pollination.

Based on a lifetime of observation, I call that assumption nonsense. This is 
a mixup of cause and effect.

A key reason that beekeepers have become migratory and the pollination 
industry has explosively grown, is because of the loss of background 
pollination- which includes native bees and feral honeybees. These 
fluctuate, of course, but overall native bees are declining faster than  the 
sum total of honeybees.

Actually it stands to reason that this would be true; wild bees have no real 
protectors. Whatever limited protection honeybees have with pesticide 
labels, according to the South Carolina Department of Pesticide Regulation, 
wild bees are specifically excluded from label protection.

Furthermore, native bees also have parastites and disease, but hardly anyone 
is even looking at this; certainly no one is doing anything significant to 
deal with the pathogens.

As to whether honeybees compete with native bees, of course they do. But as 
to whether they have actually caused the decline of the native bees cannot 
be proven, except for a few cherry-picked examples. Overall, I have seen 
time and time again that where honeybees thrive, native bees do as well - 
often working on different species of flowers, sometimes the same, at the 
same location. Where you cannot find honeybees, native bees are scarce as 
hen's teeth.

I am convinced that the decline of native bees is primarily environmental, 
not because of competition, but of the overall loss of forage, nesting sites 
and environmental toxicity.

Of course we also know that the second key reason for the explosion of 
migratory pollination beekeeping is the concentration of crops in 
monoculture situations. That trend is not going to reverse and go back two 
or three generations.

Monoculture crops aren't going to get increased benefit by native bees, 
unless we can develop ways to culture and concentrate them at bloom time.

Note well: I am not badmouthing native bees. We need them every bit as much 
as honeybees. They pollinate a lot of the food for wildlife and provide a 
helpful supplement for quite a few of our food crops as well.

Dave 

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