When we think of livestock, we might think of cattle and sheep. But what about honey bees? In Virginia, both honey bees and native bee species face some common, and some distinct, challenges. WMRA’s Ayse Pirge reports.
There are around 4,000 native bee species in the U.S., in addition to honeybee populations that people manage as livestock. Native bees are at risk globally, partially due to the threat from pesticides. But despite some public perceptions, honeybee populations have actually hit record numbers. However, beekeepers are still facing population losses, as well as the ongoing threat of disease.
JERROLD PIKE: I believe everybody’s got their own set of difficulties with honeybees. We all fight the fact of the varroa mites in honeybees.
Jerrold Pike is the owner and operator of Pikes Apiary in Winchester. He says mites have been around for years, and are widespread across the whole industry.
PIKE: They die from the viruses that the mites actually carry. And those viruses are transmitted to the bees, which weakens their immune system. And ultimately leading to the bees’ deaths.
… If a bee flies out to go to get pollen from a plant, and there’s another bee that has a mite on it on that plant, you can get a mite on your bees from that.
He says it’s similar to having three dogs in a yard playing,
PIKE: They have fleas on them. They transmit… by contact, by being around each other, and being in the same area.
The goal for beekeepers is to keep the mite levels low enough for the bees to tolerate them. Pike says he tries to do all organic treatments, such as organic acids that won’t harm the bees. He also cites lack of nutrition as another issue that they’re running into.
PIKE: … If they have little to no forage area for the amount of bees that we need, then they don’t get the beneficial nutrients that they need … And we’re building subdivisions where there used to be a field of wildflowers. Now there’s a subdivision with 30 houses in.
Barry Gibson, who owns HannahBees Apiary in Harrisonburg, also points to mites as an issue. He’s also concerned about the use of pesticides by farmers.
BARRY GIBSON: But I’ve talked to a few of them around here, and pretty much they understand and let us know if they’re gonna use anything. So I haven’t had any pesticide drops or harm.
But concern about the mites is ubiquitous among beekeepers. T’ai Roulston is the curator of the State Arboretum of Virginia, and research associate professor in the Environmental Sciences Department at the University of Virginia. He says varroa mites are a unique problem for honeybees.
T’AI ROULSTON: But there are other diseases that they can share with other species. And where looked at, it appears that the diseases are usually going from honeybees to the other species.
Because honeybees aren’t native to America, efforts to keep them healthy can mean fewer resources for native bees. Many of them, including bumblebees, are in steep decline across the country. And Roulston says native species face threats similar to those confronted by cultivated honeybees: pesticides, diseases, and land management changes.
His current research focuses on propagating several mason bee species. Mason bees, which are native to North America, get their name from their use of clay to cover their nests. During my visit to Blandy Experimental Farm in Boyce, Virginia, not far from Winchester, Roulston showed me blocks of wood which he referred to as “bee hotels.”
ROULSTON: So, those hotels get… several species of mason bees, including both non-native ones that are increasing and very common, and native ones which are declining… But we get several species in the bee hotels.
Roulston says these bees are active in the spring.
ROULSTON: I will move some of them into the screenhouse, where I have lots of flowers for them. And then, let them reproduce in the screenhouse, and the next year, I can put them out somewhere else. So, it’s the same species, but the screenhouse is a way for me to make more of them.
Even though it might have led to fewer resources for native bee populations, Roulston believes initiatives to save honeybees still brought people’s attention to problems that pollinators face.
ROULSTON: So it raised a lot of awareness on the importance of pollinators. And it made a lot of awareness of threats of pesticide to pollinators. Because honeybees and native bees share the same threats from pesticides. And it also had the benefit of a lot new plantings of flowers and supports of native wildflower meadows.
Roulston said that honeybees are used commonly in large scale agriculture, especially in apple orchards, where people often bring them in for apple pollination. But there are native pollinators in the landscape as well, such as squash bees. He said t’s an example in which native species are doing most of the pollination of a crop.
ROULSTON: And nobody is managing for that crop pollinator. It just exists in the landscape.
He said that squash bees are the main pollinators of squash in Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland. And, he said, sometimes people will put honeybees into squash or pumpkin fields, but that honeybees don’t like the flowers.
ROULSTON: Whereas squash bees are specialists of them, and they will always go to the squash, because that’s the only thing they will collect pollen from.
All of which is a reminder that, in the bee world, as elsewhere, it takes a village. In this case, a village of pollinator species that deserve our care. And while these critters are doing their jobs, it’s important for us to take care of the landscape in return.
