Colony Collapse: Do Massive Bee Die-Offs
Mean an End to Our Food System as We Know it?
By Scott Thill, AlterNet Posted on
June 11, 2007, Printed on June 11,
2007 http://www.alternet.org/story/53491/
The joke may have fallen flat, but this time no one could blame Bill
Maher. Sure, it happened on the May
4, 2007 installment of his show Real Time With Bill Maher, but
CNN personality and senior medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta was the one
delivering the punch line, and it seems he was the only one in the room
who believed the issue of Earth's mysteriously vanishing honeybees was a
joke. And while some may argue that he stayed on message, promoting his
May 19 documentary called Danger: Poison Food, he nevertheless
fumbled for answers when Maher asked him about what could be killing a
major component of the nation's food supply.
"Gosh, I don't know," Gupta answered, searching for context. "The --
you know, with regards to bees in particular, I'm not sure what's killing
the bees. I'm not sure what's killing the birds or the bees."
Cue the laugh track.
In Gupta's defense, a few weeks or months ago, the increasing
disappearance of the honeybees, known now by the technical term Colony
Collapse Disorder, had that feel of an urban legend, a phenomenon so
esoteric and strange that it sounded like something out of science
fiction. Except it's not: It's a frightening trend that, according to
those hard at work at solving the problem at universities and
organizations worldwide, could lead to everything from a radically
transformed diet to an overall wipeout of the world's food supply.
"It is real," argued Dewey M. Caron, professor of entomology at the
University of Delaware and one of several authorities investigating the
issue with the Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium's
Colony Collapse Disorder Working Group (MAAREC). "We surveyed a few
states and figured out that half to three-fourths of a million bee
colonies have died. This is no urban legend. It is serious."
What is so serious is not only that the bees themselves are dying off
without a smoking gun present, but that most people have no idea of the
role they play in the food supply at large. Commercial beehives pollinate
over a third of America's crops, and that web of nourishment encompasses
everything from fruits like peaches, apples, cherries, strawberries and
more, to nuts like California almonds, 90 percent of which are helped
along by the honeybees. Without this annual pollination, you could
conceivably kiss those crops goodbye, to say nothing of the honey bees
produce or the flowers they also fertilize.
But as the world has grown, so has its hunger and crowds, which has
paved the way for the death of wild pollinators as well as the importation
of honeybees from different climates in order to have massive crop
pollination.
In the case of California's aforementioned almonds, the largest managed
pollination event in the world, the growing season occurs in February,
well before local hives have suitably increased their populations to
handle the pollination load. As a result, the region is increasingly
dependent on the importation of hives from warmer climates.
The same goes for apple crops in New York, Washington and Michigan, as
well as blueberries in Maine. Almonds alone require more than one-third of
all the managed honeybees in the United States, so it's entirely possible
that the honeybees may have already been stretched to the breaking point,
as far as environmental and chemical stressors are concerned. In fact,
it's safe to say that the nation's honeybees, already a tireless lot, are
totally exhausted from work.
"The honeybee is so important for pollination of hundreds of
agricultural crops, because humans have made it so," Caron explained. "We
destroyed the natural pollinators, plowed up the area they needed to live
and continued to replace their habitats with strip malls and housing
developments. So, farmers have come to rely on honeybees because of
mushrooming human populations and our own destructive habits to the
natural ecology."
And not just here, either: The disappearance is under way across the
world. Regions of Iran are experiencing the same phenomenon, as are
countries like Poland, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland,
Germany and more every day, including Latin American and Asia. The breadth
of the problem suggests that a major environmental balance could be to
blame -- what else is new? -- yet no authority will sign off on the
possibility and the specific causes still remain unknown.
"Other countries are also experiencing serious declines of honeybee
colonies," said Maryann Frazier, senior extension associate at MAAREC and
the department of entomology at Penn State University. "But we are not
certain that the cause behind the losses here in the United States are the
same as those causing [losses] in other parts of the world."
Throw in the fact that this type of thing has been recorded as a
regular occurrence since the 19th century, and you have an apiary mystery
of mammoth proportions.
"Bee colonies die all the time," Caron added. "They die over winter,
lose queens, are destroyed by pests or diseases. But this is different, as
the bees are simply gone and do not develop normally."
"We have had honeybee die-offs in the past which may or may not be
related to the current situation," said Frazer. "However, they seem to be
getting more severe. If the problem of honeybee health isn't addressed
quickly, there could be serious consequences."
Meanwhile, MAAREC and others have ruled out a few possibilities, at
least in the sense that they are not currently studying them. Radiation
from cell phone towers -- "Get serious!" laughed Caron -- and genetically
modified organism (GMO) crops such as Bt corn are no longer in the chase
for public enemy No. 1, although some farmers would like them studied
further. John McDonald, a biologist, beekeeper and farmer in rural
Pennsylvania wrote an extensive
piece for the San Francisco Chronicle questioning the role Bt
corn, which is used extensively in commercial beekeeping, plays in the
suppression of the honeybee's immune system. He echoed the concern to a
recent roundtable on the issue for Salon.com., but so far, the scientific
and industry consensus, for what it's worth, seems to be mostly united on
disavowal of the GMO threat.
But why? After all, the rapid increase of GMO crops plays as much a
role in the destabilization of natural environments as warming
temperatures, which opens the doors to all manner of pathogens and
parasites, such as the Varroa (or vampire) mite infestation that allegedly
leveled the same fate on crops in the winter of 2004-2005. And though that
particular theory carries a good amount of weight in the scientific
community, it has yet to be ultimately confirmed. Same goes for the fungus
Nosema ceranae, which was reported in the Los Angeles Times as
being one of the many recently discovered pathogens that could be
devastating honeybees in Europe, Asia and America.
"By itself, it is probably not the culprit," Diana Cox-Foster, Caron
and Frazer's colleague at MAAREC, as well as a professor of entomology at
Penn State University, told the Times, "but it may be one of the
key players."
And so on. Science's search for the smoking gun may not be able to see
the honey for the bees, pardon the paraphrase, because they are searching
for so specific a threat in the face of an acknowledged overall
environmental instability. Scientists may be hard at work looking for a
pathogen, parasite, pesticide, pollutant or disease, and may not be
interested in arguing that the culprit could be all of them, given what
the IPCC and others are calling our precarious environmental situation. So
the question has to be asked: Is this yet another byproduct of climate
crisis, our increasing global temperature? As usual, the answers aren't
too satisfying.
"There is no way to demonstrate global warming effects with a simple
experiment," Caron explained, "but last year was very poor nutrition-wise.
We do not have the smoking gun. Our experiments are along three credible
lines. Stressors inside or outside, including beekeeper manipulations, may
stress bees leading to their being susceptible to pathogens. The pathogens
themselves -- maybe a virus has mutated and is now in epidemic form -- but
we cannot say the pathogens are the cause or effect. Or chemical
stressors, such a pesticides that bees are increasingly exposed to,
causing them to have weakened immune systems that then permit pathogens to
enter more easily and kill the bees. Chemicals could be acting
synergistically."
But what could be more synergistic than our environment, a dense
webwork of annually occurring natural actors and events that give us our
food, air and water on a basis so regular that we barely take the time to
notice how all of it works? Or what we will do when it stops working?
And that is where the future of this debate lies, regardless of what is
causing the honeybees to disappear. What this phenomenon has made
glaringly obvious is our vulnerability to any environmental disruption
going forward. Which is a scary proposition, plugged in as we are to
addictive simulations like American Idol and YouTube while our
real-time environments bite the dust. What do we do when the honeybees
stop working for our collective benefit?
"We can find alternatives and grow other crops," Caron said, "but not
immediately. It will take time for farmers to adjust. In the meantime, our
food production goes offshore, and we become a food-dependent country like
England, a decision their leaders elected to pursue when they stopped
supporting agriculture. But most people think food comes from the
supermarket, and they have no perception of what things cost anyway."
Since perception is reality, as the aphorism goes, that attitude might
change in a hurry once the strawberries and almonds stop coming. The way
forward, therefore, is the same as it ever was: Education and funding.
We're not going to make it to the next century without both.
"Twelve cats died from tainted foodstuffs," Caron fumed, "and six vets
at Cornell University alone were studying the losses. Meanwhile, we have a
few dedicated pathologists and bee experts on this issue. What is wrong
with this picture? Twelve cats or the loss of one-fourth of America's bee
colonies? Not to say the cat deaths didn't need to be investigated, but
the resources we are prepared to pour into that issue versus the
disappearance of our honeybees is what is out of whack."
Now that's a joke, Dr. Gupta. A terrifying one.
Scott Thill runs the online mag Morphizm.com. His writing has appeared
on Salon, XLR8R, All Music Guide, Wired and others.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All
rights reserved. View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/53491/ |