Elaine Meinel Supkis
The tiny parasite, Varroa Destructor has been running out of control and is now killing off nearly all wild bee colonies worldwide. Human interference with bee evolution has created a terrible problem that can only be cured now by breeding a different sort of bee.
Bees - which have been loved by Britons ranging from William Shakespeare to Jill Archer - are the quintessence of Britishness. Yet it transpires we are importing them regularly. What is happening? The answer, say beekeepers, is a simple one: a malaise has been spreading through the nation's apiary industry with alarming implications. Thanks to foreign diseases and the spread of drug resistance among infectious agents, the buzzing bee, as sure a signal of summer's onset as traffic jams on the M5, is now at risk of being stifled.'The situation is very serious and very worrying,' said Dr Ivor Davis, of the British Beekeeping Association. 'We are suffering serious declines in our bee population and that has damaging consequences. People are doing anything to try to put things right and restore populations, and that includes importing bees from Europe and Australia but it is not clear this will help us in the long term.'
Britain's apiary crisis can be traced back to the Nineties when hives were first struck by varroa destructor - a parasitic mite that feeds off the bodily fluids of bees. Populations plummeted, particularly among the nation's wild swarms which have virtually been eradicated. Only colonies tended by people survive in this country today. New feral colonies are sometimes established but without a keeper to help will only survive for a short time before succumbing to disease.
'The honey bees that buzz around your garden and which help to pollinate your plants now all come from colonies that are cared for by humans,' said Davis. 'Effectively, we have no wild bees left in Britain at all now, only ones that are tended for and protected by keepers.' That is bad enough. However, new strains of varroa, resistant to the chemicals that had been used to treat the condition, have started to infect hives in the past year. Their appearance has triggered renewed alarm, with beekeepers reporting major dips in honey production.
I have apiaries here on my mountain. For many years, I have raised hosted bee colonies. The domestic European bee is a friendly insect on so many levels despite having stingers. They lead fascinating lives. Just this week, a neighbor's dump truck carrying topsoil up the mountain broke down near the bee's hive. They were rather upset about this strange beast being so near so the guard bees made their loudest buzzing sounds around the truck. Bees can be very quiet or extremely noisy. Normally, when they want to scare off strangers, they make super-loud bzzzzt sounds close to the face. In this case, close to the hood and headlights of the truck.
My husband and I stood near the truck for a while, not moving. They buzzzzt us up and down, not one stung us and after ten minutes, seeing all was safe, they flew back to the entrance to the hive and continued their alert hovering. My present hive is only one instead of the usual four or so thanks to the awful Varroa mite infestation problems. I had a really nice hive of Varroa resistant bees last year but a powerful storm came and the 80 mph winds blowing from the south shot into their hive and killed the queen.
Now, the hive is sheltered from any strong winds and a new colony which was wild, occupies the hive and so far, they have lasted a year without incident.
Varroa destructor was until recently thought to be a closely related mite species called Varroa jacobsoni[1] [2] [3]. Both species parasitize the Asian honey bee, Apis cerana. The mite species originally described as V. jacobsoni by Oudemans in 1904 is part of the same species complex, but not the same species that made the jump to Apis mellifera. That jump probably first took place in the Philippines in the early 1960’s. Only after Apis mellifera were imported to the Philippines, it came into close contact with Apis cerana. Varroa as a parasite of Apis cerana, also became a parasite of Apis mellifera. Up until 2000, scientists did not positively identify Varroa destructor as a separate species. In 2005, we know that the only varroa mites that can reproduce in colonies of Apis mellifera (Western honeybee) are the Korea and Japan/Thailand genotypes of Varroa destructor.
This mite probably co-existed for thousands of years in relative isolation due to the vast deserts and the high Tibetan plateau to the west and the Siberian tundra to the north. But since WWII, the mass movement of bees has picked up tremendously mostly thanks to aeroplanes which can swiftly move them from place to place economically. Many diseases and infestations have been rapidly moving around the earth since modern transportation has picked up armies of hitchikers. There used to be forests of graceful elm trees across America when I was a small child and virtually every single one of them was annihilated by a European fungus, for example.
The swift movement of alien diseases and parasites can hit native populations hard. The domestic/wild bee population is being literally annihilated by the Varroa mites, for example. This is unnatural. Normally, anything that kills off all its hosts ends up not existing so there usually comes a balance within nature that is what makes our ecosystem run rather than fall apart. One of the fancies of humans that is most destructive is the idea we can circumvent evolution by using various poisons and strategems. These systems run against the iron laws of evolution and since few of these methods eliminate the problem, evolution causes any parasite or disease to rapidly mutate as the few survivors madly multiply. These mutations always makes things get worse and worse. Most of our agricultural triumphs in the last 100 years are all, virtually every one, a temporary patch that has now created a host of monsters we find harder and harder to control.
Of course, preserving populations by allowing natural barriers would go a long way to saving most species. In America, for example, bee hives are carted all over the place. Most orchards, unlike in pre-20th Century transportation methods, used to keep hives. To keep the bees happy, clover was grown around the apple or pear trees, for example, so the bees could make honey all summer long. Now, thanks to the industrialization of all farming, orchards have no full time bees but instead, rent them. This means infected hives often travel more than 3,000 miles round trip a year, stopping at various orchards as the trees bloom, then going south for the winter.
Winter kills off many parasites and molds but when bees from warm climates come north each year, they bring infections with them. So the bees in the north not only have to endure cold winters, they now get no abayance in exposure to disease! Most human interference with nature can turn deadly for the animals and plants we manipulate. Our needs are often at odds with sheer survival which is why we have to carefully tend those living things we tame. And up until recently, we collectively, did an amazingly good job at this.
But that was due to localism. Namely, a problem in Korea didn't affect a farm in Oklahoma. Today, there is no quiet corner on this earth.
Bees co-evolved with butterflies and flowers. These two insects have great color sense and they took the meagre, pale, tiny, nectarless proto-flowers and through their harvesting choices, caused a giant evolutionary explosion in color, style, smell and type of flower. The joy we get from these lovely expression of vegetable sex are due entirely to the aesthetic choices of two insect families. Back when dinosaurs ruled the earth, the butterfly and the bee were hard at work, altering the countryside.
Butterflies are suffering too, like the bees. All of nature is being harried and harrassed by human attempts at monoculture farming using poisons. I am fortunate that, unlike the poor bees trying to pollinate professional orchards that use pesticides, there are nearly no farms left here so much of the harvesting by my bees is organic nectar and it tastes wonderful.
A South Korean bee farmer has covered his body with nearly 200,000 bees in protest over a territorial dispute between Japan and South Korea.
Ahn Sang-gyu, known for his bee performances, had tears running down his face as he was stung 200 times.He was protesting against Japan's claim to a number of rocky islets located in waters between Japan and South Korea.
Called Dokdo in Korean and Takeshima in Japanese, the area has caused a long-running rift between the nations.
"The honeybee dares to abandon its life when enemies are attempting to attack, to protect its own home. From now on, I hope these bees will contribute to protect our Dokdo", Ahn Sang-Gyu said.
I suppose I could use my own bees to make a political statement. On the other hand, I don't want to have them sting me 200 times, either. I could ask the swarm to go on the attack. Stopping bees is difficult! The mind reels thinking about the possibilities.
All I know is, it will be a very bad thing, if we lose our bees! But the only cure for this scourge is to help evolution run her course. All other methods are doomed to failure. And of course, stopping the carting of bee hives all over the place as if anyone is going to do THAT! Foolish humans.
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Two other importations that have affected NA, White Pine rust, and Chestnut Blight, and they came in before Aeroplanes.
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