It’s Not Just a Bug’s Life

text and photos : Norma A. Hubbard  (October 2013)

I enjoy gardening. It relaxes me to dig in the dirt and to watch my plants grow. I also love to eat apples. I eat them all the time, so it is hard for me to imagine a world without flowers or apples. However, if the decline of bees continues, this could happen – and our apples would not be the only fruit we’d lose. It is estimated that 80% of the food in our grocery stores is linked to bees.

In the last few years there has been much talk about the decline of bees. We need bees to pollinate our flowers, especially the blossoms on our fruit trees; this is not a task we can accomplish on our own. It takes 1.5 hives to pollinate an acre of apple trees. A hive, or a colony of honey bees, contains about 50,000-60,000 bees by mid-summer. Honey bees (genus Apis) do a lot of work for us. They make thousands of forages to collect nectar, averaging about 50-100 flowers per trip, which is about 5,000 flowers in a day.

Among the bees in our area, there are honey bees and its larger cousin, the bumble bee. Honey bees store more nec- tar than bumble bees because they need the food storage to survive the winter in the hive. Honey bee hives have only one queen that can live 2-3 years. Unfertilized female bees (workers) forage for nectar and male bees (drones) remain in the hives. The drones are kicked out of the hives in the fall and will die because they cannot feed. Workers will over-winter in the hive and will live into the next season. Bumble bees (genus Bombus) live in much smaller colonies compared to honey bees – 150-200 bees – and with the exception of fertilized queen bees, all die by the end of summer. The queen will hibernate in the winter, usually in the ground or under leaves. In the spring the very large, slow-moving bumble bees on our tulips are the queens preparing to start new colonies. The bumble bees we see at this time of year are smaller drone bees that do not even have a stinger! Most bumble bees are very gentle and seldom sting, but can sting several times if provoked. Honey bees are quicker to defend their food and hives by stinging, but each bee can only sting once then it will die.

There are about 25,000 species of bee in the world and 25% are considered endangered. Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), which basically means the death of a hive, is being seen more and more. Beekeepers and scientists do not have a definitive reason for CCD, but according to IBRA (International Bee Research Association), “the Varroa mite and viruses it carries, bad weather, the use of chemical pesticides are just a few of the reasons” why a colony might collapse.

And while people may continue to debate why CCD occurs, or whether or not it was Einstein who said, “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left”, there is no debate that we need our bees. We need to think twice about the pesticides we use. And the next time you swat at a pesky bee thinking, ‘it’s just a bug’s life’, remember it is all our lives riding on these tiny bugs.

References: International Bee Research Association; York County Beekeeper Association; Hinterland, Who’s Who