April 11, 2017

“You would never think that something so small could affect the human population the same way that a nuclear bomb would and that’s really scary.”

Ever since 2009, Suzanne Hendricks, owner of Boggy Meadows Farm and Pollinator Habitat has had many plants around her area not bloom or create crops because of the declining bee population in her area. She knew that her area needed more bees, but the process to locate an apiary that would sell the right strain of worker bees with a queen for the area she resides in proved to be a lengthy process. After 3 years of searching, she finally found an apiary and bought 2 queen bees and 10,000 worker bees in the spring of 2017. 

However, the issue of honeybees dying is not only happening in a small rural town in middle Georgia. Bees are dying at alarming rates all over the world due to heavy use of pesticides and parasites that have developed a resistance to commonly used miticides. So why should you care?

Honeybees are responsible for pollinating $15 billion worth of crops in the United States alone, but beekeepers across the nation are losing 44% of their bee colonies each year. Studies show that 87% of crops require pollination from bees.  Without bees, many crops such as almonds, coffee beans, and apples would not yield anything because they would go unpollinated. While there are staple foods such as wheat and rice that self-pollinate, if there were no bees then our diets would be less diverse and prices on avocados, onions, berries, and many other foods would skyrocket and become scarce.

One of the causes of this problem is that many chemicals in pesticides such as roundup are disabling and killing bees. When you add in a parasite called the Varroa destructor, bees don’t hardly stand a chance. These mites attach to the bee and suck its blood, like a tick. These two factors have contributed to the 44% loss of bees in colonies every year.

But farmers are finding ways to get their crops pollinated without bees. Ashley Hendricks, owner/manager of Hendricks Blueberry Farms LLC. told me that, “farmers, especially citrus and berry farmers use bees to pollinate our crops. There are other ways to artificially pollinate; we use progibb to make sure we get a good pollinated stand of berries. I'm sure there are other pollinators out there but we try to get the most cost efficient each year.” Hendricks Blueberry Farms also rents 20 to 24 hives each year to pollinate their blueberries. When it comes to blueberry farms, to yield a profitable crop, there must be 1 to 4 hives per acre. 

According to an agriculture census conducted by the USDA, there are 915 million acres of farmland being used in the United States. There are around 90 million domesticated hives in the United States, so if the average acre needs one hive, then 825 million acres of farmland would go unpollinated by bees. This shows the gap in the need for bees and how many bees there actually are to go around and pollinate.

But fear not, there are ways that you can help save the bee population. On the homefront you can plant colorful flowers, set out sugar water, plant things all year round, and raise awareness in your community. Suzanne told me that for the everyday person, the best things you can do to help the bees is, “plant bee friendly plants such as flowers and shrubs, don’t use pesticides on plants that bees would pollinate, and most importantly don’t fear the bees and just let them do their job”.