Bee hives at the White House!

According to Bee Culture, a beekeeping magazine, and an article in the KansasCity.com, Michelle Obama has recently announced that not only will there be an organic garden at the White House, there will also be two bee hives! Apparently the bee hives belong to a White House employee who lives nearby and will tend the hives. The crops and will be used by the White House kitchen staff for the family and for official functions, while some will be donated to Miriam's Kitchen, a soup kitchen near the White House. Some of the produce will include lettuces, fennel, rhubarb, cucumbers, sweet and hot peppers, as well as berries and some herbs.

The 1,100 square foot garden will be the first of its kind since Eleanor Roosevelt planted a victory garden during World War II. Mrs. Obama broke ground on the first day of spring with a group of fifth graders from Bancroft Elementary School in Washington. The students will be brought back next month for the planting and will continue to be involved during harvesting as well. Mrs. Obama said that she thinks it will encourage her children to eat their vegetables, especially if they're involved in planting and growing them.

I just think we're so blessed to have a first family taking such bold steps towards a more ecological lifestyle, setting a good example for a key part of our lives that we have to change here in this country. A Brazilian friend of mine commented the other day, "I just don't get it, Americans are the richest people in the world, but their food is so terrible and the people are so fat!" Well, maybe it's time to change that, eh? Hopefully the inspiration that the Obama's have inspired can trickle down into these other, very important parts of our lives.

I heart bumblebees! Part Three: How we can help.

I watched the documentary King Corn last night and LOVED it. It's about two men who decide to farm an acre of land in Iowa and grow corn to understand just how the crop gets into so much of our food (and bodies). It's poignant, interesting and thoughtful, and I couldn't help but think how similar the issues they're looking at are to the ones that have caused bee decline. Basically, we're both exploring the downward spiral of agriculture, and its effects on our environmental and bodily health. The King Corn website also offers some great ways to address our agricultural system on the "take action" tab in their website, which gave me some good ideas for this post.

So let's get on with it, shall we? How can we help out bumblebees (and bees in general)? First of all, it kind of depends on where you are. I'm going to tailor this to folks in the U.S., but I know there are similar resources in the UK as well. I'll start with the easiest, less complicated solutions and go from there.

• Make a bee garden. Fun fact: Bees don't see red, but do see blue, yellow, and ultraviolet. So, most of the flowers bees pollinate are yellow, and some are blue (and some are other colors too!). Check out this cool website for some tips on how to make your garden bee-friendly. Here's a bee plant list for those of you that want to get right on it.
  
• Save some wild space. If you have some land (or even just a back yard), create wild/untamed spaces for bumblebee habitat. They love long grasses, abandoned animal burrows, etc. So if you can leave some wild spaces in your yards, you'll increase wildlife diversity in general, and attract all kinds of pollinators and birds as well.
• Buy local. Support small, local farms through farmer's markets and community supported agriculture (CSAs). Small farmers farm more diverse crops than large scale agriculture and usually are much more bee friendly.
  
• Buy Organic. Because of the expensive labeling process, not all farmers can afford to be organic, but actually are. That's why shopping at the farmer's markets is so helpful because you can actually talk to the farmers and find out about their farming practices. But buying organic at the store is huge too. Why? Because, to be blunt, pesticides kill bees! So, the more we support systems that don't use pesticides, the more bees will flourish.
• Learn about the Farm Bill. Creating innovative new farming methods is one of the most important things we can do, which means we have to get involved in our politics. We have to educate ourselves. In the EU, for example, farmers are incentivized by the government (through subsidies) to leave sections of their land for hedgerows and wildflowers to attract pollinators. Got that? Farmers are PAID to leave portions of their land for bees. More bees and pollinators=higher crop yields. Farmers are also moving away from intensive pesticide use and towards organic agriculture. The challenge we face in the U.S. is that crops like corn--which are part of this huge industrial farming complex that eats up all the land--don't need bees, so there have to be other ways to incentivize farmers to keep some of their land fallow. You can get involved and write to your local senators and congress folk and get encourage them to help shape the bill.
• Join a local preservation group. A popular one in the U.K. is the Bumblebee Conservation Society. Some in the U.S. are:
• The Xerces Society--an international nonprofit that protects invertebrates
• The North American Pollinator Protection Campaign (NAPPC) which specifically works to protect pollinators.
• Support honeybee and bumblebee research. One easy way to donate is through Haagan Dazs but the above preservation groups certainly need help as well.
• Tell your friends!
  

I heart bumblebees! Part Two: Why the bumblebee is in decline.

So, why have the bumblebees been in decline? Many of the articles I found concerned the U.K., which doesn't mean that the decline isn't happening in the U.S., it's just that the U.K. has been a hotbed of recent bee research. An article titled "Decline of Bumblebees (Bombus) in the North American Midwest" states: "The nature and extent of bumble bee decline in North America is poorly understood due mainly to a lack of baseline and long term data." Clearly, there are reports of bee decline in the U.S. as well, and I think that the two phenomenons are closely related.

So let's return to David Goulson's analysis. In the last blog, I wrote about bumblebee's unique characteristics, but let's point out some of the main ones that are contributing to their decline.

1. Bumblebees tend to specialize more than honeybees, and some only feed off of one plant species, like legumes (Fabaceae) for example.
   
2. Bumblebees make their homes in abandoned animal burrows (rodents, typically) and in grassy tussocks, which are usually only available in unmanaged grass and pasture lands.

Let's just think for a moment about the track our agriculture has been on. Farm lands that were once interspersed with wild flowers and grazing meadows for horses are now mono-cropped and farmed for every inch of possible land. In Iowa, for example, my boyfriend has told me how farmers will cut down sections of riparian corridor (the plants that you find along the sides of river beds) to farm corn there. ACK! That's the trouble with subsidized farm products. When the government pays more for a certain crop (think: ethanol), you get all the farmers replacing their more diverse food crops for cash crops that will yield the greatest amount of, well, cash.

But I digress. Sort of. Previously, bumblebees and honeybees would feed off of some food crops (like raspberries, strawberries, apples, and legumes) and especially off of the wild flowers that grew in the adjacent meadows and fallow pastures. Bumblebees in particular would also make their homes in the unplowed sections of farms in those abandoned rodent burrows and in hedgerows, the sections between cultivated farm lands where bushes and wild plants grow.

One of the interesting things the article about bumblebees in the Midwest pointed out was that bumblebee diversity took a sharp decline in Illinois during 1940 and 1960, which "coincided with large-scale agricultural intensification in Illinois" during that time period.

This same process has been occurring in the U.K. as well. Goulson writes that the U.K. has lost 98% of its unimproved grassland since World War II. He then goes on to say that "increased use of herbicides and improved seed cleaning mean that arable crops are now virtual monocultures, whereas once they were rich in flowering seeds."

Basically, as a result of this agricultural intensification, there has been a significant loss in wildflower diversity. When bumblebees need certain habitats and those habitats get plowed over, and when bees depend on certain flowers and those flowers aren't cultivated any more...well, you do the math. The bees go extinct.


References

Goulson, D. (2006, December). Demise of the bumblebee in Britain. Biologist. Volume 53, Number 6, 294-299. Retrieved March 04, 2009.

Grixti, J., Wong, L., Cameron, S., & Favret, C. (2009, January). Decline of bumble bees (Bombus) in the North American Midwest. Biological Conservation, 142(1), 75-84. Retrieved March 14, 2009, doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2008.09.02

I heart bumblebees! Part One: Cool facts about Bumblebees.

So, I was speaking with a colleague the other day who just happens to have a family history in beekeeping. Her father (if I'm correct) is a third generation beekeeper and also an etymologist. Anyway, we were talking about her family's bee business when she mentioned that over 5 species of bumblebees had disappeared in the U.K. recently. 5 species? That surprised me, so of course--since I teach research writing and I'm into bees--I had to go and research the fact.

I found two articles that talked about this phenomenon. One was titled "To Be or Not to Bee..." by Marianna H. Horn and Peter G. Kevan and another (not so subtly named) was called "The Demise of the Bumblebee in Britain," by David Goulson. Both articles had some enlightening things to say about bumblebees--not just why they are disappearing (which may give some clues as to why honeybees are disappearing as well), but also just some wonderful info about the lovely bumblebee in general. So, let's start there.

Some neat facts about the bumblebee from their articles:

• Bumblebees belong to the genus Bombus that includes many rare species with highly diverse ecologies. Honeybees belong to the genus Apis.
  
• Bumblebees are the larger, hairier variety of bee, often colorful as well. Honeybees, by contrast, are described by Goulson as "smaller, slender, drab, and relatively hairless." (Guess who is a little biased towards the bumblebee? I'd say Goulson, but he's starting to win me over too.)
• Bumblebees, like honeybees, feed solely on flower nectar and pollen for their energy and protein.
  
• There are only 240 species of bumblebees worldwide (contrasted with thousands of bee species in general), and they are found mostly in the Northern Hemisphere from the Arctic to the tropics.
  
• Bumblebees are endotherms, which means that they can warm themselves by contracting and releasing their flight muscles, also known as "shivering," which allows them to endure cooler temperatures than most bees.
• Bumblebees are social creatures--like honeybees. But instead of living in a hive, they live in abandoned animal burrows, or (and I LOVE this phrase) in grassy tussocks. (Basically a section of grass that grows a bit higher and more thickly than the rest.)
• The colonies that the bumblebees live in consist of about 400 worker bees (all female) with one queen. To contrast, a typical cultivated hive of honeybees has about 60,000 bees.
  
• Bumblebees can be much more specialized than their honeybee cousins in terms of what they pollinate. One species of bumblebee, for example, only pollinates plants in the pea family. This is what makes them more susceptible to extinction though because if that species dies off or isn't planted, then the bee is likely to die with it.
• Bumblebees aren't very aerodynamic, so flying demands a lot of energy. Goulson gives this great analogy. Apparently, it's been calculated that a running man consumes a Mars bar worth of energy in about 30 minutes. By contrast, a honeybee would use that same amount of energy (in bee portions) in about 30 seconds of flight. Thus, he concludes, a nest of about 400 bees would need a lot of food.
• Bumblebees do have stingers, but they're not barbed like a honeybee's. They can sting multiple times if necessary.
  

Finally--and this is from my personal experience, you can pet bumblebees! I don't recommend, it, but I remember spending time with my good friend Leaf in college, and he saw a bumblebee and leaned over and pet her as she sat on a flower. It was the sweetest thing. He said that she didn't have a stinger, which was wrong, they do, but they don't tend to sting unless their nest is threatened.

Anyway, I have a huge crush on bumblebees now. Next up--why they're dying and what we can do to save them!

(And then I swear we're going back to top bar hives! I just got so enamored all of a sudden and couldn't resist!)

Lastly--isn't this photo of a bumblebee the cutest friggin' photo you've ever seen? She's waving at us. I almost cried.

References:

Goulson, D. (2006, December). Demise of the bumblebee in Britain. Biologist. Volume 53, Number 6, 294-299. Retrieved March 04, 2009.

Horn, M., Kevan, P. (Date unknown.) To Bee or Not to Bee. Journal Unknown. Retrieved March 04, 2009.

Top Bar Hives in Kenya

So, when I took beekeeping classes last year, I studied what's known as the top bar hive, not the traditional Langstroth hive (see the colorful bee boxes in the post below). Top bar hives are much easier to build than the Langstroth hive, which makes it perfect for using in developing countries. Some would even argue that it's more ecological for the bees since they build their own comb entirely, without the wax mold that comes with the Langstroth.

We'll save that discussion for another post. For now, check out this fantastic video to learn more about the top bar hive!



Next on I Heart Bees--we'll look at Top Bar Hives in more depth, for those interested in this alternative method of beekeeping. I'll talk about why they're considered more ecological and include a video about how to build a hive. See you soon!

Top Ten Bee Facts Video

Well, the video won't let me embed it into my blog, but I will include the link here on the top ten facts about bees.

Here's the list (but still check out the video!)

1. Bees visit over 2 million flowers to make 1/2 kilo of honey (1.10 lbs).
2. For one jar of honey, bees will fly over 90,000 kilometers--55,923 miles.
3. A honey bee flies over 8km per hour (4.97).
4. The average worker bee will only make 1/2 a teaspoon of honey in her entire lifetime.
5. It would only take two tablespoons of honey to fuel a bee's flight around the world. (I hear this statistic a lot, but the fact is, a bee's wings wouldn't likely last long enough to fly around the world...but hey, it puts things in perspective.)
6. One honey bee will visit between 50 and 100 flowers on one collection trip.
7. Bees have been producing honey from flowering plants for between 10 and 20 million years.
8. Honeybees did not exist in North America. The Native Americans called the honeybee the "white man's fly." They were brought to North America by the colonists.
9. There are over 60,000 bees in the average bee colony.
10. A honeybee has four wings, while a fly has two.

There ya have it--with metric conversions even! But check out that link!

CCD or not CCD? That is the question.

So...got some news. Not sure what to think about it. Basically it states that scientists have not been able to come up with any hard facts about why so many friggin' bees are dying, all the same way.

Apparently, according to an article in the BBC news, "many experts now believe that the term [CCD] is misleading and there is no single, new ailment killing the bees." So--that means, according to the article--that CCD may not actually exist.

Here's a little chunk out of the article:

Conducting experiments at an isolated almond orchard in the Central Valley area of California, Frank Eischen, of the US Department of Agriculture, said it was "probably true" that there was no new single disease. "We've seen these kinds of symptoms before, during the seventies, during the nineties, and now," he added.

"It's probably not a unique event in beekeeping to have large numbers of colonies die."

Basically, the growing idea is that CCD is really a conglomeration of several different causes, like varroa mites, a lack of nutrition because of the urbanization of their pastures, and...and this is the biggie...pesticides. (Please go to the last blog and help protest unmitigated use of IMD!)

Another big concern was the intensity of the agricultural system, which has beekeepers carting bees all over the state feeding them on a few single crops year round, instead of the natural diversity of pollen and nectar that they'd find flying to diverse pastures.

Unfortunately for the bee loving community, there was also this kicker: "Some critics of the bee industry have called the whole concept of CCD a hoax, a public relations stunt designed to attract public sympathy."

Wow--a public relations stunt? There are literally unprecedented levels of bees dying around the world--the number of bumble bees in the UK has halved in the last 60 years alone--and it's a hoax designed to manipulate people? I don't agree with this sentiment.

I mean, check out those bee boxes above. Are bees supposed to live in condos? I don't think so. I'm inclined to think that there's something serious going on here that we need to continue to examine, and that this issue has brought some much needed attention to what's looking to be a broken piece of an already very broken agricultural system.

Help Protect Honey Bees from a Toxic Pesticide

Hey all!

Sorry I've been a little lax in blogging. I've been teaching more than full-time, and working to finish my novel. Anyway, here's a great opportunity to help save the bees. One of the more nefarious pesticides for honey bees is one called imidacloprid (IMD), a toxin created by Bayer Corp. What IMD reportedly does is make the bees drunk, essentially, and inhibit their navigational systems so they can't find their way home.

This letter encourages the EPA to reexamine the research on IMD, and make sure to ban its use when it has proven harmful to honey bees. Please click here and send a letter to the Office of Pesticides Programs at the EPA and spread the word!

Thanks! Here's the link.