Greetings!
May 10, 1998, Sunday
Section: Connecticut Weekly Desk
The Silence of the Honeybees
By CATHY SHUFRO
HOWARD BRONSON JR. used to enjoy listening to the hum of the
honeybees
flying among the blossoms in his apple orchard in Roxbury. ''On a
nice quiet day
during bloom you could stand real still and you'd hear the bees
working,'' Mr.
Bronson said. ''When you walk in there now, you have to look for a
bee.''
A garden center owner, Charles Paley of Sharon, has also noticed
the dramatic
loss of bees. For years, when he received his spring shipment of
the flowering
Andromeda shrub, swarms of bees would appear ''out of nowhere.''
''That just
doesn't happen anymore,'' he said. ''I don't think there are any
wild bees left.''
The honeybees have fallen silent in many parts of Connecticut, and
across the
nation. Even open fields of clover are bereft of the bees that
gathered in clouds
only a few years ago. The honeybees are casualties of two
persistent mites and
the mites are rupturing an indispensable link between plants:
without the pollen
transfer pollen provided by bees (and other pollinators) there
would be no apples,
pumpkins, blueberries, zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes.
To keep their bees alive, beekeepers must now control the mites
with chemicals,
making beekeeping more complicated and more expensive. As a
result, one out of
three of the state's beekeepers closed down its hives between 1993
and 1997. The
number of registered beekeepers dropped to 497 from 734, while the
number of
managed bee colonies fell to 2,400 from 3,500, according to the
state's Agricultural
Experiment Station.
Since a healthy managed colony consists of 70,000 bees, the loss
represents 77
million bees in Connecticut alone. (Similar losses have been
reported nationwide
since the mites were discovered in the South in the mid-1980's.)
Perhaps even more serious is the death of most of the state's wild
honeybees.
These feral colonies usually develop from swarms that break off
from a beekeeper's
thriving colony to settle in tree hollows or holes in buildings.
Besieged and
weakened by mites, wild colonies no longer survive the winter,
succumbing to the
cold. If enough die -- say a quarter of the bees in a colony --
the survivors cannot
maintain a large enough winter cluster to keep warm. The entire
colony freezes to
death.
The number of wild bees lost in Connecticut is astronomical. Until
the mites began
to take their toll in the exceptionally cold winter of 1995-1996,
Connecticut had
about 11 colonies of wild bees per square mile, according to the
deputy state
entomologist, Carol R. Lemmon.
Those bees -- nearly a half million per square mile -- would cover
a radius of three
miles searching for pollen and nectar. Now few wild colonies
survive the winter,
Ms. Lemmon said.
Backyard gardeners may feel the loss of the wild bees most
intensely. Farmers and
fruit growers have always depended on domesticated bees anyway,
and if they
now have to pay more to rent bees or work harder to keep them
healthy, they still
get their crops pollinated.
But Ms. Lemmon reports that small-scale gardeners are beginning to
notice
failures of pollination. ''Most people never had to worry about
bees to get their
garden pollinated,'' she said. ''Now all of a sudden at least 80
percent of those wild
bees are gone, so these gardens are not getting pollinated. It's
very frustrating if
you plant rows and rows of squash and you only get blossoms.''
Ms. Lemmon thinks some small gardeners have quit out of
frustration, perhaps
without realizing they owed paltry harvests to poor pollination.
Gardeners
themselves gave mixed reports.
Shrdlu Ashe of New Milford has noticed the dearth of bees in his
garden, but he
thinks other wild pollinating insects have filled in. He still
gets plenty of
vegetables. ''I was kind of worried, but I haven't noticed any
difference,'' he said.
In contrast, Raymond Booth of Roxbury has noticed a marked decline
in
production in the past few years. ''There just was no
pollination,'' said Mr. Booth.
''The apple trees laid right off -- nothing like it had been.''
Mr. Booth lives close to Mr. Bronson, so he may have benefited
from Mr.
Bronson's bees. When all nine of Mr. Bronson's colonies were
obliterated by mites
three years ago, Mr. Bronson gave up beekeeping. He didn't want to
take on the
task of controlling the two kinds of mites: the Varroa mite and
the tracheal mite,
both tiny spider relatives. To kill the Varroa mite, Mr. Bronson
would have to treat
his colonies with a chemical miticide twice a year. The mite feeds
on adult bees and
sucks the blood of bee pupae, deforming the developing bees. Mr.
Bronson would
also have had to use menthol each fall to control the microscopic
tracheal mite,
which lives inside the bee's two breathing tubes, reducing the
flow of oxygen and
weakening or killing the bee.
Applications of both chemicals must be timed to coordinate with
the bees' life
cycles and to avoid contaminating honey that will be eaten by
humans (as
opposed to honey left to sustain the bees themselves).
Mr. Bronson decided not to shoulder the extra work.
''The bees used to take care of themselves,'' he said. Now he pays
$160 each spring
to rent four colonies and must buy -- rather than harvest -- the
honey he sells at
his farm stand.
The invasion of the mites led to near-disaster for a commercial
beekeeper, Vincent
Kay of New Haven. After the winter of 1995-1996, he estimates, he
lost nearly half
of his 400 colonies. He found himself digging out shovelsful of
frozen bees from
the snowbanks around his hive boxes.
''I contemplated going out of business just from the sheer labor
of cleaning out so
many hives,'' Mr. Kay said, ''you're talking about hundreds of
thousands of dead
bees.''
Now Mr. Kay must add the cost of miticides to his expenses. He
said he passed on
only a small proportion of his added cost to the orchards with
which he has
pollination contracts. He said the best hope for beekeepers was
the development
of a mite-resistant bee.
The quest for resistant bees has led Federal Department of
Agriculture researchers
to experiment with bees that have endured the mites longer,
including ones from
England and Central Europe. The mites infiltrated European bee
colonies first and
then were accidentally brought across the Atlantic. North American
honeybees
themselves came originally from Europe, introduced in Virginia by
colonists in
1621 for their wax and honey rather than as pollinators. They have
proven most
useful as pollinators since then; the value of bee-dependent crops
in the United
States is estimated at $10 billion annually. Ms. Lemmon, the
entomologist, believes
the few surviving wild bees might develop resistance on their own,
faster than will
domesticated bees, which are stressed by human management and the
harvesting
of their honey. In any case, she said, ''This is going to take a
long time.''
An orchard owner, John Lyman 3d, said growers are concerned
aboutthe fate of
the bees.
''Anything that can harm the population of pollinators, we worry
about,'' Mr.
Lyman said. He rents more than 100 colonies each spring to
pollinate the apple and
pear trees and the blueberries on his family's 350-acre orchard in
Middlefield.
A beekeeping supplier, Dominic Gaeta of Brookfield, sees a hidden
benefit to mite
damage. He said beekeepers are keeping a closer watch on their
colonies and
learning more about their complex social systems. In addition, he
said, more and
more backyard gardeners are learning to keep bees.
''It's broadening their experience as gardeners,'' he said, noting
that people become
attached to their bees. ''You get to know them. It's almost like
they can talk to you.
You see they're getting along better because of your help. That's
a good feeling.''
Ms. Lemmon agrees about the bond. ''It may sound strange, but
these creatures
are very dearly loved by the beekeepers.'
Herb
Holly-B Apiary
P.O.Box 26
Wells,Maine 04090-0026
http://www.cybertours.com/~midnitebee
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