At the grocery store, blueberries come in a box. But months before that, they started out on a bush, a bush that needed soil, water, fertilizer and finally, the help of a tiny insect -- that industrious pollinator, the honey bee.
In 2017, nearly 2.7 million honey bee colonies pollinated more than twenty kinds of crops across the 50 states. If that wasn’t enough, in 2016 honey bees produced 162 million pounds of honey, a staggering amount when considering a single female worker bee makes less than a teaspoon in her lifespan.
Unfortunately, the length of that life span may be growing shorter. Between March 2016 and April 2017, the average U.S. beekeeper lost 33 percent of their honey bee colonies, according to the Bee Informed Partnership, a non-profit run by beekeepers, scientists and epidemiologists. At peak population, as many as 80,000 bees make up a colony.
David Tarpy, a North Carolina State University entomology professor who specializes in honey bee biology, said the high mortality rate of the country’s honey bees can be attributed to the confounding effects of pesticides, poor nutrition, loss of genetic diversity and in particular, the parasitic varroa mite. The tiny mites, less than 1.5mm long, suck blood, shorten the lifespans and cause mutations in their hosts.
“Varroa mites are kind of public enemy number one,” Tarpy said.
The mites can do even more damage when colonies are weakened by pesticides. In 2006, scientists began researching how neonicotinoids, a class of insecticides used around the world, may negatively impact bees' ability to forage for food. Bees are more susceptible to pesticides if they are poorly fed -- bees not only need a sufficient supply of nectar, which is put at risk by habitat change, but a diverse diet, which can be difficult as more farms turn towards monoculture.
The final issue, of genetic difficulties, occurs when beekeepers grow new hives from old ones. To combat bee losses, beekeepers will split a healthy colony into multiple hives, during this process, genetic traits that promote healthy and productive bees can become rarer.
Losing bees has always been a part of the beekeepers’ world, especially when wintertime hits hungry colonies. But for the last 10 years, winter colony losses have been higher than beekeepers deem acceptable, the BIP survey reported.
“It’s harder to keep bees now than it used to be,” said Randall Austin, a 13-year beekeeper and member of the Orange County Beekeepers Association.
Bee reports that document the reduction from 6 million colonies in the 1950s, when every family farm had a hive, to the 2.7 million colonies modern large-scale agribusinesses move around on flat-bed trucks may seem to show an out-of control decline in honey bees. But because beekeepers can manage their populations, the keepers.
“Losing your hives is like losing a part of your family,” said Leigh-Kathryn Bonner, the owner of Bee Downtown.
Bonner’s “bees-ness,” as the company calls it, is one of the many organizations in the Triangle working to promote honey bee health. Bee Downtown maintains hives for businesses and corporations in urban areas like downtown Durham, keeping bee populations thriving in urban areas.
The OCBA also promotes bee health by running a 10-week bee school to teach good colony management practices, which keep disease and parasites like the varroa mite from spreading.
“I want my neighbors to know what they’re doing,” said Austin, who works with the school. “If they don’t, their problems can spread to my bees.”
Tarpy hopes that research on genetic diversity will also help to make bee colonies better able to survive the parasite and pesticide threats. Tarpy is involved in NC State’s Queen and Disease Clinic, which tests reproductive quality and health of beekeepers’ queens.
Genets will be a component of reducing varroa mite stress, but not a cure-all, Tarpy said.
“Dealing somehow with varroa is really critical,” he said. “Increased habitat is another way, to make sure bees are not nutritionally stressed.”
