About 25 years ago in the orchard, I noticed two things. Warm spells in midwinter would bring the bees out, and there was nothing for them. And year by year, there were fewer native plants in bloom around the orchards to serve as a supplemental food source. Weaker bees are more susceptible to disease.
The Washington State University study isn’t saying that we suddenly have to feed bees because nature has failed. Beekeepers have been supplement-feeding bees for a long time — that’s not new. What the study shows is that a better, more complete feed improves colony health, with more bees and brood and significantly lower winter losses. In other words, it’s an improvement to an existing management practice, not the discovery of a new emergency.
European honeybees, an introduced species in North America that can place stresses on local ecosystems, are already managed like livestock, especially in large-scale agriculture. Supplemental feeding isn’t new — this is just a better version of it.
It probably says as much about how we farm as it does about the bees.
The claim is often made that our food supply depends on European honeybees. That’s an overstatement. They’re important for some crops, but far from the whole picture. No crops depend exclusively on European honeybees. Some business models do — especially in large-scale monoculture systems.
Grain crops are wind-pollinated. Many others — tomatoes, melons, squash — are pollinated by native bees, especially bumblebees. Even in crops often associated with European honeybees for maximum yield per acre, pollination is not exclusive. Native pollinators play a critical role there as well, particularly in tree fruits and nuts. Bumblebees alone pollinate more than 25 important crops — cranberries, blueberries, strawberries, plums, zucchini, melons, sweet peppers, tomatoes — along with seed crops like alfalfa, red clover, cotton, and sunflower.
The decline of native pollinators in North America is probably a far greater concern than the condition of European honeybees.
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