----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Barry Digman" <[log in to unmask]>


>>Reports continue to appear in the press about huge losses of honeybee 
>>colonies, particularly among commercial pollinators. Each news story 
>>reporting these losses invariably includes the commonly accepted notion 
>>that approximately 1/3 of our diet depends on honeybee pollination.

>>If the reports of losses in the range of 30%-50% of honeybee colonies in 
>>the US are correct, and the reports that 1/3 of our diet depends on 
>>honeybee pollination, shouldn't we have already seen a significant impact 
>>on food grown in the US? I don't recall any reports of crop failures or 
>>even reductions due to a lack of pollination.

>>Can someone help connect these two dots for me?


You haven't seen crop losses because beekeepers, and agriculture in general, 
are compensating.

1.  The South has always supplied the North with bees to compensate for 
losses. The system has simply geared up to replace larger numbers than they 
did in the past. Losses reported by the press aren't permanent losses - 
unless the beekeeper is bankrupted by them.

2.  Migratory beekeeping has become the norm. Take the bees where they are 
needed. This means that fewer bees can pollinate larger amounts.

3.  The situations where crops are lost due to pollinator loss are where 
people are caught off guard, or the cause is unrecognized. If you are part 
of a system that uses commercial pollination, then you are alert. If your 
beekeeper quits, or can't supply you; you look elsewhere. So far, beekeepers 
have been able to compensate.

I believe that the attrition of small farmers in the South is linked, in 
part, to the loss of wild and feral pollinators. They don't recognize the 
cause of their loss of productivity, and they just quit farming, or quit 
growing crops that need pollination.

Likewise, I saw whole fields of watermelon and squash that were 
unharvestable in 1990 and 1991, following the massive aerial spraying for 
mosquitoes in the fall of '89 following Hurricane Hugo. Insecticide 
applications came on goldenrod in full bloom, and it knocked out domestic 
honeybees, bumblebees and other wild species. Farmers who had relied on wild 
bees did not realize what had happened, and they lost their crops. Even 
those who recognized the cause, and tried to replace their pollinators with 
domestic honeybees, weren't always able to get them, because beekeepers like 
myself were also clobbered and could not replace bees fast enough to meet 
the demand.

Dave Green
Retired beekeeper 

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