What's happening to the worldwide commercial bees?

Beekeepers load up tractor trailers with bees to pollinate crops on a farm. (Image Credit: Wikimedia/Pollinator, CC-BY-2.5)

Beyond the bee shipping to smaller bee keepers, there is a whole industry of commercial bee pollination of crops! Their condition and activity are startlingly worrisome.

Both wild and domestic honeybees are responsible for most of the worldwide plant pollination, including fruits, nuts, and vegetables. One colony typically pollinates around 300 million flowers per day. Bees pollinate 70 of the top 100 human food crops, making up 90% of the world's nutrition.

Bees around the world are struggling. For instance, Slovenia bees have been dying off in winter, accounting for the highest rates in Europe. Also, bees that help produce food by pollinating flowers on a global industrial scale have experienced travel stress and pesticide exposure, leading to devastating effects. As a result, they may impact pollinator species. Overall, migratory beekeeping helps to ensure craps, such as apple orchards, can produce food. During the U.S. winters, bees have declined by 30 to 50%. Beekeeper David Hackenberg reported that 90% of bees died in his hives. According to the U.S. National Agricultural Statistics, honey bees declined from 6 million hives in 1947 to 2.4 million in 2008.

Cibele Cardoso de Castro, a plant biologist in Brazil, investigated beekeepers in Ceara. She says honeybees have the potential to reproduce native plants with generalist pollination systems. However, these could end up displacing wild pollinators that certain plant species require. Beekeepers in China are also involved in migratory pollination, where various plants ranging from sunflowers to strawberries are pollinated. Meanwhile, middle-aged citizens in Turkey practice beekeeping and travel for this purpose. Canada, Egypt, Russia, and India also practice migratory beekeeping. The United States remains the epicenter.

Generally speaking, bees are transported from state to state in the U.S. via a tractor-trailer with many boxes stacked atop each other, wrapped in a net. These bee farms typically consist of over 400 honeybee hives, with a queen and 15,000 to 30,000 worker bees inside each colony. During the spring, these hives could travel anywhere, including California's Central Valley, home to almond orchards, where they join 1.5 million hives and 1.600 beekeepers. This place serves as the Earth's largest pollination event, where approximately 50% of U.S. honeybees reside. Beekeepers receive payments from farmers for each hive. After working for five or six weeks, the remaining honeybees head over to another flowering plant species.

This is a more established system in the states due to an alarming decline in wild pollinators and a monoculture agriculture increase, even with huge corn and soy tracts. Negatively impacted soil and less diverse food sources lead to weaker pollinators. Even worse, diseased bees pollinate crops, leading to rapid crop death. Also, bees dealing with insecticides, Varroa mites, and poor nutrition struggle to respond to varying threats.

Sadly, intense travel doesn't seem to help either. Honeybees undergoing long travels experience stress with an improper diet. As a result, bees are fed sucrose syrup before leaving the hive. Bees are unloaded from the tractors via a large tanker filled with syrup and a hose, feeding each hive with supplemental nectar before sending them off to the almonds on the California farm. These don't have the same amino acids, nutrients, and vitamins found in flower nectar. In addition, the bees are exposed to pesticides, contributing to the bees' inability to be more disease-resistant.

(Image Credit: Damien TUPINIER/Unsplash)

Earlier this year, five million bees transported by Delta Air Lines to Anchorage, Alaska, and rerouted to Atlanta, Georgia, died due to heat exposure on a tarmac for several hours. Alaskan beekeeper Sarah McElrea placed an order for two shipments of honeybees from a California-based supplier, costing $48,000, to help pollinate apple orchards and nurseries. 

Delta Air Lines contacted McElrea to inform her that the first shipment required rerouting because it didn't fit the plane. However, some bees flew out of the crates, so Delta took them out of the protective cooler and set them atop the hot tarmac. Panicked, McElrea then contacted Atlanta beekeeper Edward Morgan, who arrived at the scene and informed her that many bees had died. He then called up some beekeepers to try to save any surviving bees.

Help out these bees in our "Save the Bees Design Challenge." I am hoping to inspire the you with all these bee posts. :) 

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