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Page added on August 17, 2013
A world without bees; beekeepers say it could happen
As the worldwide bee population continues to decline from something called Colony Collapse Disorder, Ozarks beekeepers say it could have a serious impact on food prices.
A third of US honeybee colonies died or vanished during this past winter but you may be asking yourself, why should I care? Some passionate Ozarkers say there are plenty of reasons and one has a direct tie to our food supply.
Jeff Maddox says the relationship with his bees is built on trust. That’s why he doesn’t wear the protective garb.
“I tell people all the time dogs can bite you, people can stab you, bees can sting you, it all depends on how you treat them.”
He trusts if he treats them with kindness they won’t hurt him and more importantly, they’ll stay. Many others don’t.
“In the case of what’s being called Colony Collapse Disorder you open up the hive and there’s no bees, there’s still honey but no brood, no queen, it’s just empty. It’s as if they moved in the middle of the night and left everything,” Jeff explains.
It’s impacting hives all over the world but not here.. at least not yet. We don’t know why it’s happening or where it will strike next but we know who it affects.
According to the USDA at least one third of the foods we eat depend, in part, on bee pollination, but some more than others. For example, apples, aspharagus, avocado and broccoli are all 90% dependent on bee pollination but almonds wouldn’t even exist without bees.
“Without those all of the apple orchards and cherry orchards in Washington, Oregon and California start producing a lot less food which means that the price goes up,” explains Jeff.
“I don’t think it really hit home til just the last few years how important they are since we lost a lot of our bees,” says Val Nichols, part of the Beekeepers Association of the Ozarks. Now she is trying to make the rest of us aware.
Thursday night a new organization called Springfield Food CORE is showing the documentary “Vanishing of the Bees” as part of a four month Springfield Food Day Celebration. All the snacks are local and courtesy of the film stars.
Of course they don’t know how much we need them. So Jeff just works to earn their trust and keep them.
“If you care for them they thrive, if you use them they decline,” he concludes.
Jeff and other small scale beekeepers say one of the reasons why commercial keepers are more susceptible to CCD is because they move their bees often. That stresses the insects and stress makes them less healthy. Scientists are also looking at pesticide and chemical exposure.
7 Comments on "A world without bees; beekeepers say it could happen"
dave thompson on Sat, 17th Aug 2013 1:48 pm
“Scientists are also looking at pesticide and chemical exposure.” This makes me feel SO relieved that the ever so slight chance, we as the human race, spreading engineered chemicals into the environment are concerned enough to look at the possibility.
mike on Sat, 17th Aug 2013 3:50 pm
Bullish for cotton buds.
bobinget on Sat, 17th Aug 2013 6:26 pm
My wife and I have been running a blueberry farm in S.Oregon for thirty one years. Getting too old to keep bees any longer, I depend on outside bee-keepers.
This year my regular bee guy was delayed on the Oregon coast by unseasonably cooler weather. The point is we had no DOMESTIC BEE pollination. I feared the worst until I took the time to watch the berry blossoms for a half hour. We were getting plenty of attention from wild ‘bumble bees’, wasps, flies dressed to look like fruit wasps and some insects not identified.
Bottom line, our crop was slightly below normal yield, which was OK as our U-Pick business has been way down, as gasoline prices go higher.
Our bee guy is making out by selling so called ‘nukes’
or starter hives all over the US. He parks hives here because we never spray insecticides. We are organic in that respect, our wild insect population is
doing almost the same job as domestic honey bees.
Here’s the rub… Conventional AG can’t get by w/o pesticides. When planting a mono crop farmers have the advantage of scale. A small farm such as ours, eleven acres, doesn’t even come close. WE can afford to avoid pesticides. On a thousand acre mono culture, where are all wild bees to come from?
Bottom line, we are trapped in a cycle of over population for the amount of land available.
I hold out some hope for genetic engineering, but that too could prove to be only a stop gap.
(what foes of GMO won’t tell you, conventional farmers would be air spraying deadly chemical insecticides, weed killers. Were it not for GMO, the total amounts of
2-4-D type (Agent Orange) would have had to be increased every harvest as moisture robbing weeds developed resistance).
actioncjackson on Sat, 17th Aug 2013 8:30 pm
Yes, it’s no secret how absolutely blundering American farming practices have been the past 100 years. Two words, Dust Bowl.
GregT on Sat, 17th Aug 2013 8:54 pm
We used to have wild honeybees in our yard all spring and summer long, they were everywhere. This year, I have seen less than 20 bees, and all of them in the spring. I haven’t seen one single honeybee in over 2 months.
One more reason to get out of large population centres, while the going is still good. Learn how to grow your own food now, your lives may very well depend upon it.
DMyers on Sun, 18th Aug 2013 12:06 am
Oddly missing is the obligatory quotation from Einstein, who said that if bees were removed from the face of the Earth, man would have four years left to live.
“Are you sure, Doctor Einstein, only four? Any way we could stretch it to five?”
“Vee don’t negotiate vith Nature.”
“Vee don’t?
“Four years is all vee get.”
“And then?….”
“Vee die.”
Like it not, I think that’s what the guy said. Was he predicting an eventuality, or toying with the ridiculous? Is it about the smallness or man, or the bigness of bees?
If they go, vee die. That’s the scientific formula. They’re going.
BillT on Sun, 18th Aug 2013 3:29 am
Does suicide by Ag chemicals or lead bullets change anything? One is slow but sure. The other is fast and relatively painless. Either way, you are dead. We have chosen the slow painful method, but we have chosen death anyway.