A Stroll Through the Garden: Are our bees endangered?
In 2014, I was initially asked the question in the headline above.
So, I went to the home of a friend and a reader of our column. He took me to his established orchard. While there, he commented that he had seen some unusual things in his orchard this year.
My friend told me that he had noticed the pollinating method was different. I looked around and commented, “I don’t see a hive.” If you want to have an orchard, you should try to keep a hive. Among the five orchardists I call friends, only one keeps bees. The balance relies on the native bees to pollinate their trees.
All these orchardists do have a crop of some sort.
“Do you think our bees are endangered?” was his question.
In response, I said, “I’m not sure. I’ll do some research and talk to some of my friends.”
On Oct. 2, 2024, I attended a Master Gardener series on beneficial insects. During the five hours of lectures, I gathered information. Denise Ellsworth of the Entomology Department of OSU spoke on Native Bees.
I can apply this new information to the question. To come up with an answer, we are going to several sources.
For the answer, we start with the Western Honeybee or Apis mellifera, our local honeybee, and the African Honeybee or Apis mellifera scutella.
Western honeybees came to the New World in the early 1600s. These are our traditional worker bees, doing most of the work on our continent. Six subspecies, all European in base, interbreed with the Western Honeybee. The term Western Honeybee refers to all the western subspecies of Apis mellifera.
So far, experts have recognized twelve subspecies of Apis mellifera in Africa. One of the subspecies is Apis mellifera scutellate, the East African lowland honeybee. This East African lowland honeybee is found in Africa’s southern and eastern regions and is the ancestor of these African bees.
African Honeybee colonies have a higher rate of colony growth, reproduction, Varroa mite resistance, and swarming. For these reasons, as well as Western Honeybees’ failure to adapt to tropical regions, Brazilian scientists imported African Honeybees to Brazil in 1956 to improve production.
These African Honeybees are limited to warmer climates and cannot adapt to our more northern climates.
A few queens escaped and mated with local European drones in Brazil, producing a hybrid called the Africanized Honeybee. These Africanized Honeybees are far more aggressive in defending their territory than the Western Honeybee.
Our Western Honeybee will usually only defend the entrance to their hives, whereas the Africanized bees will defend their territory up to 40 feet within the area of their hives.
After the escape, Brazil’s hybridized African Honeybee population gradually expanded into northern parts of America, arriving in the southern United States in the 1990s.
However, no one can find a pure African Honeybee in the population, and it is virtually impossible to distinguish the Western Honeybee from the Africanized Honeybee without genetic testing or rigorous morphometric analysis.
One of my friends told me she had already started feeding her sugar water, preparing her hive for the winter. The problem she sees is that the drought we have gone through has reduced both pollen production and nectar in the flowers.
Her bees had to travel further to get their nectar and pollen, and their foraging patterns had to change. Our Western Honeybees are truly diversified as they pursue their nectar and pollen. Not all of our native bees have that option.
While attending the Master Gardener lecture at Ohio State University / Extension in Wooster, I received some handouts that may help us care for beneficial insects.
One of the handouts was a guide on how to grow plants to help support native Bumble Bees. Honeybees will appreciate the use of this planting design.
When redesigning your backyard, include water features of some sort.
Here is a list of native plants that OSU would encourage us to use: Butterfly Milkweed, Caspian Blue; Blue Wild Indigo, Magnus Purple Coneflower, Tall Blazing Star, Raspberry Wine; Scarlet Beebalm, Clustered Mountain mint, Fireworks; Rough Goldenrod, Prairie Dropseed, and Bluebird; Smooth Blue Aster. All of these plants need to be planted in full sun.
In all the interviews I did last week and all the articles I have read, I have concluded that the drought and heat we experienced this summer are the real problems in our low bee population.
The aggressiveness of the Africanized Honeybees has not been a problem in Ohio because their genes have not adapted to our northern climate. With all the things our native Western Honeybees have faced, maybe it has been more of the environment and typical weather patterns we have experienced that have been the more severe problem.
I hope you have a great stroll through your fall garden and enjoy the leaves.
If you encounter a challenge, let me know. I can help at ericlarson546@yahoo.com. I shall put a link to the blog I write on my website, www.ohiohealthyfoodcooperative.org. Thank you for participating in our column.
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