----- 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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