Missing Bees? More Reasons Why and How to Help

This spring and summer have been remarkable for several reasons – the Texas heat has been unrelenting, our drought has become significantly worse, and we have been missing bees. We are used to hearing their buzzing, especially in the front on our native plants, but this year we have seen only a handful.

I was thus excited to learn that a team of researchers led by Dr. May Berenbaum at the University of Illinois have untangled more of the mystery around colony collapse disorder. (I’m not an entomologist but knew of Dr. Berenbaum from her creation of the Insect Fear Film Festival and the character named after her on the X-Files.)

Beginning in 2006, colony collapse disorder and the resulting missing bees have been a concern to people all over the world. Bee keepers in North America and Europe lost 30-90 percent of their bee colonies and many of the bees were simply never found. Many workers were flying out of their hives and never returning, very un-beelike behavior. Many more were found dead within their hives, passing away seemingly overnight. The most chilling part was no one knew why.

As reported in Time, scientists now have some answers. According to Time:

A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) shows that the causes of CCD may be more varied than scientists expect. The bees may be dying not from a single toxin or disease but rather from an assault directed by a collection of pathogens. A research team led by entomologist May Berenbaum at the University of Illinois compared the whole genome of honeybees that came from hives that had suffered from CCD with hives that were healthy. The sick bees exhibited genetic damage that could account for the die-off, and that damage indicated that they might be afflicted with multiple viruses simultaneously. This could weaken them enough to trigger CCD. “It’s like a perfect storm,” says Berenbaum.

The PNAS team’s work was possible only because the honeybee’s genome is one of the few animal genomes that scientists have decoded in full. The researchers looked at the genes that were switched on in the guts of sick and healthy bees — the gut being both the place pesticides are detoxified and the main region for immune defense. The technique they used is what’s known as a whole-genome microarray, and it’s ideal for this kind of sweeping analysis. “It’s a really powerful tool that lets us look at all 10,000 honeybee genes at the same time,” says Berenbaum. “The causative agents [for CCD] might just leap out.”

In the guts of CCD-afflicted bees, the microarray analysis showed unusual fragments of ribosomal RNA. Ribosomes are essentially the protein factories inside cells — they’re vital to the health of the cell itself and the larger organism. Berenbaum believes that the presence of those genetic fragments inside the CCD-afflicted bees indicates that they may be under attack by a number of insect viruses — including deformed wing virus and Israeli acute paralysis virus — that damage the ribosomes. “It was the one factor that remained consistently associated with the CCD bees we tested, no matter where they came from or how severe the disorder was,” says Berenbaum. “It doesn’t have to be a specific virus, just an overload.” Once the bees’ systems get burdened this way, they are less capable of fighting off any other threat, from pesticides to other environmental causes.

If you are a go-to-the source person, the study’s abstract is available here.

If you want to help the honeybees, here are some ways to do so:

(1) Stop using pesticides. Pesticides can’t discriminate between insects – they kill all of them. Save yourself some money, save your family and neighbors from exposure to toxic chemicals, and give the bees a fighting chance by ceasing to use pesticides.

(2) Plant pollinator plants. The Pollinator Partnership has created a helpful tool to find pollinator plants for your area. Check out their Ecoregional Planting Guides to find plants for your zip code. Our previous articles on creating a certified wildlife habitat and the fabulous book Bringing Nature Home have more ideas and resources for making your yard eco-friendly.

(3) Ask your friends and neighbors to join you. Today’s Seattle Times included a great story about Sarah Bergmann, a Seattle resident who, with help from neighbors, converted a parking strip in her neighborhood into a pollinator zone.

Once a desert of grass with a few maples, the 108-foot-long, 12-foot-wide strip today blooms with plants selected to attract pollinators. It’s buzzing with life that has spilled over to plantings all around the neighborhood. An orange trumpet vine festooning a fence out back is mobbed with bees too busy to bother anyone, some stacked two to a flower.

She hopes to eventually extend the pathway to a mile, in all. “It’s so basic,” Bergmann said. “I consider it local ecosystem support.”

And I bet, in this time of declining property values, that this planting has made the neighborhood much more attractive to potential buyers.

(4) Join ongoing research efforts. Scientific research is beginning to utilize the power of the people. If you live in Illinois, check out the Bee Spotter, a group of citizen-scientists who collect information on bees in their area. The Bee Spotters monitor local bee populations via photograph to preserve the bees. They hope to expand to other states in the near future. If you live outside of Illinois, you can still start right away through the Xerces Society’s Bumblebee Project. This research project is also using citizen sightings to track three species of bumble bees that used to be common. The bees tracked by the project are the rusty patched bumble bee (Bombus affinis), the western bumble bee (Bombus occidentalis), and the yellowbanded bumble bee (Bombus terricola). Identification guides are available on their website. This would be really fun to do as a family!

While the fragility of the web of life is becoming more clear, studies like this one are helping us see what we can do to help other species survive and thrive. To learn more about the impact that missing bees could have on humans, check out the video below.

Are you missing bees in your area? Have you changed the way you garden or plant recently? Or do you have other ideas for helping bees? Please share your thoughts in the comments!