The Environmental News Network is conducting a poll today alongside the
article on Jerry Bromenshenk's work that asks the following question:
"Is it dangerous to move hives of bees around the world where they might
interact with other bee species?"
   The response? 82% yes. 18% no.

   The intense negative focus on honey bees is apparent in the phrasing of
the question to only cover the honey bee species (hives of bees), without
broaching the question of moving around other bee species, like leaf-cutter
bees (recently introduced in Australia) or bumblebees. A bumblebee will chew
out the base of a flower evolved to be pollinated by another creature to
steal the nectar and leave the flower unpollinated.
   Here's a clip from a recent post on the Bombus discussion group from Jim
Cane:
   "Escaped Bombus terrestris have a solid foothold in Japan, as I
understand it, and have established in Tasmania in the past several
years (see papers by Andrew Hingston).  Colonies sold by an Israeli
vendor are active in Mexican greenhouses as you read this, greenhouses
which I am told lack screened vents, and I gather that several South
American countries are to receive colonies from that same source this
year.  There is hope that the colonies shipped to South Africa last year
did not establish any feral populations."
   Interestingly, the generally upbeat feature on honey bees is illustrated
with a picture of a bumblebee. Perhaps they have purged honey bee pictures
from their photo files, which seems to be the case with many gardening
publications that only show pictures of "native" pollinators these days.

Where do these ideas come from?
   Here's a quote from the New York Times garden column (June 1st, 1997) by
Anne Raver in an interview with Gary Paul Nabhan, co-author of "The Forgotten
Pollinators."

   "Honeybees are nasty competition for the native pollinators -- because
of their famous wiggle dance," he (Nabhan) said. "As soon as they find a
tree, they dance their brains out, and soon 40,000 to 50,000 sisters are there
 -- tens of
thousands of little mouths sucking up the nectar."

   This is hyperbole. I can't remember the last time I saw 40,000 to 50,000
honey bees pour over one tree. And as we've seen in a study in "The Hive and
the Honey Bee" (Chapter 11) beekeepers report most of their bees' forage
comes from introduced species, not natives. As described by Buchmann and
Nabhan, honey bees seem to have more in common with cattle, sheep and plagues
of locusts, than with other bee species.
The article continues with the other author:
   "Everybody thinks about honeybees, but there are 5,000 species of native
bees," Dr. Buchmann said. And they pollinate many crops far more efficiently
than the honeybee, which is an import from Europe.
   "Blueberries, cranberries, eggplants, chilies, kiwis and tomatoes are all
buzz-pollinated," he said. The anthers, those doodads that hold the pollen,
"look
like saltshakers with two holes," he said. A female bumblebee grabs hold of
the anther with her mandible. She "curls her body around it, and the pollen
comes blasting out the holes," he continued, adding, "It can harvest pollen
five times faster than a honeybee."

   Some of the alternative pollinators are also imports from Europe (alfalfa
leafcutter bees), and many others are imports from somewhere else—whether its
from Japan or Asia or from west of the Rockies to east of the Rockies. We are
a nation of pollination immigrants.
    If bumblebees can harvest pollen five times faster than a honeybee,
imagine what competition it is to native pollinators when it is introduced
outside of its native range. With its propensity to rob nectar and damage
flowers without accomplishing  fertilization, and its ability to sequester
pollen resources with great speed, the bumblebee species deserve much closer
attention than they are currently getting as potentially harmful invasives.