Bees and colony collapse

Albert Einstein is reputed to have said that if honey bees became extinct, within four years humans would follow. Doubt exists as to whether Einstein did actually make this claim but what would a world without bees be like?

Let’s back track a little. Our common honey bee is not a native. It is more accurately called the European honey bee (Apis mellifera) brought to Australia in about 1822.

Australia has about 1500 species of native bee. Many are solitary with only a few ‘social’ species living in nests and storing a little honey.

However native bees are not as prolific as the imported European bee. After their initial introduction it took only a few decades for European bees to become established in the wild right across the country. They are now our familiar honey bees.

Before the arrival of the European honey bee, pollination in the Australian bush was performed by a whole range of indigenous insects, birds (honey-eaters) and small marsupials. The European bee gave pollination a new impetus. Even the evolutionary direction of some native flowering plants has been altered by the energetic and aggressive behaviour of the European bee.

Since white settlement our gardens, orchards and food crops have benefited from ‘free pollination’ by wild European honey bees.

Traditionally bee-keeping has been for honey production but in recent times some bee keepers now focus on pollination services for orchards and market gardens to earn a living with honey as a secondary product.

Few people realise the importance of pollination for our food supply. Some two thirds of the items on supermarket shelves rely to some extent on pollination by honey bees. In economic terms honey production is worth some $300 million to Australia but pollination services could well be worth some $2 billion.

You can see from these figures how significant it would be if bees were to disappear from Australian gardens and orchards. The threat is real. Wild honey bee populations across America and Europe have almost disappeared.

Four or five years ago Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD for short) hit the headlines. The label derives from the mysterious disappearance of honey bees from their hives across several states in the USA and in Europe. The bees were apparently healthy, with plenty of stored honey tucked away in their hives. Bee keepers were puzzled. There have been times in the past where various diseases have had a serious impact on bee populations but the so called CCD was unprecedented.

After some investigation, consensus is emerging among bee scientists that a number of factors contribute to CCD. Causes identified include the effect of the bee parasite varroa which has spread around the world since the 1950s, and now exists in all countries except Australia.

Apart from being a bee blood-sucking pest, varroa is suspected of enhancing invasion by viruses causing certain death of a hive if chemical treatment is not employed. Such treatment though not lethal for the bees must surely weaken them.

Changing agricultural practices with extensive monoculture farming reducing the range of bee foraging plants leading to nutritional stress combined with increasing use of modern pesticides must also share some of the blame. Of particular concern is a range of modern insecticides known as neonicotinoids (neonics for short) which target the bees’ nervous system, disorienting them but not killing them outright.

A neonic known as imidacloprid (marketed under the brand names ‘Confidor’ or ‘Gaucho’) has been implicated in the decline of honey bees in Europe to the extent that France has now banned its use as a seed dressing for sunflowers following discovery of harmful traces of the insecticide in both the nectar and pollen from these plants. Neonics affect normal healthy functioning of the hive thus weakening it and laying it open to other viral and bacterial diseases.

So far, here in Australia we don’t have the combination of factors that seem to be afflicting honey bees in the more intensively farmed and populated parts of the world. The varroa mite is generally agreed to be the key underlying threat to a continued healthy honey bee population and we must redouble our efforts to keep this pernicious pest out! Extreme vigilance is necessary!

The clock is ticking and researchers like Dr Denis Anderson (CSIRO Canberra) are working with limited funds to attempt to snip the genetic thread linking the varroa mite to the European honey bee. If the varroa mite becomes established in Australia wild bees in our gardens will disappear, chemical-free honey will become a thing of the past and effective pollination of some commercial crops will be impossible.

Much more money is needed for border surveillance of our ports and shores and for research. Our precious honey bee is the victim of increasing pressures brought about by our modern way of life and we are failing to recognise its importance. If we lose this amazing insect we will only have ourselves to blame.

Jim Sansom is a retired teacher who lives in Newham in central Victoria where he tends a large vegetable garden, paints and is currently experimenting with home biochar production. Jim has run a small bee-keeping operation, Blackhill Apiaries, for 35 years with his honey a popular item at the monthly Lancefield Farmers Market. Author and bee hive photographs courtesy of Kim Selby Photography.