Bee Decline in the Northwest and Its Affect on Agriculture

Agriculture has had a very large and very detrimental effect on bees in the
Northwest. Agriculture uses about half of the earths arable land. This means that about
half the earth is mono-cropped with some plant that is being mass produced. Mono
cropping in agriculture has many benefits because it makes farming simpler, more cost
effective, and more fruitful. Bees play a huge role in agriculture practices as pollinators
and are necessary in the process of growing food and plants. In fact, bees are the most
popular pollinators used in mono-cropping (Monocultures, 2013). Bee keepers main
source of profit is from the selling of bees to companies that need them to pollinate their
huge mono crops. There are many issues that arise from this. Imagine if a human could
only eat one food item for a month. Soon enough they would become sick because they
will be missing nutrients that they would get in a varied diet. The same goes for bees. If
they can only eat one type of pollen for an extended amount of time, it deteriorates hive
health. It decreases their immune systems and makes the hive more vulnerable. Bees
with a varied diet are more capable to have immune systems that can battle against
microbes and pathogens (Monocultures, 2013). Another issue with mono-cropping is
that some crops have a short bloom time or dont produce a pollen or nectar at all,
leading to starving bees. Corn and wheat, two of the most popular crops, do not
produce any food for the bees, making it an uninhabitable place for bees. Corn and
soybeans both have a two week flowering period. This industrial method of farming has
made the area of the world that was once meant to be a home for insects like bees and
turned it into huge fields of monocropped plants. A recent study has shown that bees in
urban areas are healthier than those in agricultural areas because urban areas have

more plant diversity (Monocultures, 2013). This is a sad reality that plays a huge role in
why the world is in the situation it is in now. We are looking at a future with not so many
bees.
Another large contributor to bee populations declining is insecticide use in
agriculture. In 2006, when the bee populations just started their downward nose dive, a
new term came about called colony collapse disorder. This is when the worker bees in a
hive mysteriously disappear without a trace, leaving behind only the queen bee and
some nurse bees (Hooven, 2013). No one knows exactly what causes this disorder, but
there are many possible causes. Neonicotinoids is a pesticide family commonly used in
the 1980s that was developed to replace two highly toxic families called
organophosphates and carbamates (Turner, 2014). Ironically, this pesticide has caused
bee deaths to sky rocket. This is because it has residual toxicity that lasts longer than
eight hours and in some places up to four years. The golden rule when it comes to
pesticides and bees is that if the pesticide has a residual toxicity that lasts longer than
eight hours, keep it far away from the bees (Hooven, 2013). Neonicotinoids do
something worse than just hanging out for a few hours, they actually are taken up by the
plant's vascular system, making the plant, and all parts of it, toxic (Turner, 2014). Also,
big suppliers of fertilizer and house plants like home depot, treat their products with
neonicotinoids. This leads to people buying plants thinking that theyre helping the bees
when in reality theyre planting poisonous plants. The cherry on top of this bee killing
sundae is that if soil is treated with fertilizer containing neonicotinoids it persists in the
soil for three years. This leads to people planting toxic gardens (Turner, 2014). Many
people who have conducted research pertaining to colony collapse disorder have

accredited neonicotinoids to very probably being the main cause. The only place in the
Pacific Northwest that has banned the use of neonicotinoids is Eugene, Oregon.
(Turner, 2014).
Another big contributor to colony collapse disorder is simply the way
these pesticides are sprayed onto crops. It is not done very carefully to say the least.
Because of wind, nearby wildflowers and weeds are also being contaminated with
pesticides. North Western bees are known for collecting pollen from weeds and
wildflowers, so this is a big issue (Turner, 2014). Another issue with the weeds and
wildflowers is that herbicides are killing them off, leaving only mono crops for the bees
to eat which are infected with pesticides. One of the other theories for colony collapse
disorder is that theres a chemical in some pesticides that disorients bees and causes
them to get lost and eventually die. They think this may be a chemical used to kill
termites called imidacloprid. Today, imidacloprid is mostly used on sunflowers (Turner,
2014). As a result of all of these chemicals being used in agriculture, bees immune
systems are plummeting. This allows parasites easier access to hives. This parasite is
called nosema ceranae, and it is thought to be a contributor to colony collapse disorder
(Woody, 2013). It produces effects that are similar to colony collapse disorder, but it
cannot be identified as the main cause of this disorder. It is obvious that there are a ton
of possible causes for this disorder, and the big issue may just be a combination of all of
these.
In the 1990s there were around 5 million bee colonies whereas in the early
2000s there were as little as 2.4 million bee colonies. Something needs to be done
about the current state of bee populations if we want to keep eating the foods we love.

According to DeCandia (2013), we could lose foods such as: apples, almonds, carrots,
celery, onions, broccoli and kale along with much more. To give an example, Whole
Foods pulled 237 of the 453 products from the shelf to show what would no longer be
available if we lost our most crucial pollinator. Without bees, we would lose about half of
the food we see every time we walk into the grocery store. How to Identify a Docile Bee
from Its More Aggressive Counterparts (2014) lists facts such as: 60 pounds of honey
produce 1 pound of beeswax, Honey Bees contribute over $14 billion to the value of
crop production and there are estimated to be 2.4 million bee colonies in the U.S. today.
Honeybees pollinate 70 of the around 100 crop species that feed 90% of the world
(Grossman 2013). A lot of people will go hungry and it will be a kind of world hunger that
is drastically different than what were experiencing now.
The loss of bee species will not only affect the human population, but the
herbivores that eat those plants: deer that survive off of fruit, wildflowers, flowering
weeds and vegetables that all need pollination from bees. It will be a lot harder for
herbivore species that eat plants, requiring pollination from bees and other pollinators,
to find their food. This grim forecast gets worse as it makes its way up the food chain.
What will happen when the rabbits, squirrel, deer, hare, and other herbivores start to
disappear due to a lack of food? The carnivores that eat them will also start to
disappear. Wolves, foxes, eagles and other predators will begin dying off because of a
lack of food. When the cows that feed on the alfalfa fields wont be able to get enough
nutrients, they will stop producing milk and dairy products will be rare and much more
expensive. We could also lose a lot of the beef supply when the cows starve and die
and the cost of meat rises dramatically.

In order for farmers to pollinate their crops, commercial beekeepers must bring in
colonies because naturally occurring bee colonies no longer exist there. For much of
the past 10 years, beekeepers, primarily in the United States and Europe, have been
reporting annual hive losses of 30 percent or higher (Grossman, 2013). According to
the Business Insider, if farmers do not provide their crops with enough honeybees for
pollination, the whole harvest could fail. One important crop that could be lost without
bees is the cotton fields. Cotton is used to make jeans, towels, paper products and
other household and clothing items. It could soon become a luxury just to own a pair of
jeans.
Honey producing companies will go out of business without honey to sell, leaving
many people without jobs. They wont be the only ones though, honey is used in the
cosmetic industry as well. Honey is used as a moisturizer in soaps, creams, lipsticks
and other products. These cosmetic producers could go out of business with less honey
to make a successful product. The loss of bees will affect every aspect of life, it will
affect the clothes we wear, where we work and especially what we eat. Something
clearly needs to be done about the current state of bee populations if we want to keep
our current way of life and all its luxuries.
The simple truth is that bees are dying. None of us want to believe this or more
importantly, change our diets to help the bees survive, instead we continue eating our
monocropped food, growing toxic gardens, and simply, doing nothing. There are quite a
few easy solutions to this and a plethora of complicated solutions. Creating varroa mite
gates, banning specific pesticides, planting varied native wildflowers, and keeping
solitary bees are just a few of the more simple solutions to this life-threatening problem.

Varroa mites transmit many pathogens that have wiped out entire colonies of
Western honey bees. Being that these varroa mites are such a serious problem, the
Bee Institute and Bayer created a product called a varroa gate, which is a plastic strip at
the entrance of the colony with bee sized holes. Every time the bee has to go through a
hole in the entrance it is covered in an anti-mite chemical that eliminates the mite. The
anti-mite chemical is perfectly safe for the bees but deadly for the mite. The plastic strip
is covered with a mite poison called acaricide and when a bee passes through the holes
in the strip, it kills any of the mites the bee could be carrying. The Bayer scientists also
found a way to automatically replenish the chemical on the outside of the hole so every
bee will be coated in the chemical when entering the hive. This product is modelled after
flea and tick collars for dogs and cats. We have learned over the past few decades that
no single weapon is effective in controlling mites. We need an integrated approach to
mite control, comments Gudrun Koeniger (as cited in Bayer, 2013).

2
Figure 1. Demonstration of the varroa gate in action, it is just big enough that the bee touches the
inside of the hole.
Figure 2. This figure illustrates the effective use of the varroa mite in real life.

In many ways we as Americans consider ourselves to be liberal or more

intelligent that the rest of the world, however in the way of bees, we are severely
lacking. In Europe they banned the use of three specific pesticides in order to aid colony
health. These pesticides scramble the bees homing and navigating processes, making
the bees get lost when foraging and returning home, as well as, suppressing the bees
immune system and making them more likely to be affected by small illnesses. As
Henry et al. (2012) says, nonlethal exposure of honey bees to thiamethoxam
(neonicotinoid systemic pesticide) causes high mortality due to homing failure at levels
that could put a colony at risk of collapse. Europe banned the use of these pesticides
for a three year span to see if colony health and bee survival increases. Presumably,
they will continue to ban these pesticides if the decline in bee colony health slows.
Monocropping leads to malnourished bees which in the end leads to dead bees.
There are a few solutions to monocropping, one is ending monocropping but in modern
society that is not possible without a paradigm shift. The most plausible solution for
monocropping is either adding native wildflowers throughout the monocrop or adding
them around the monocrop. This will not only support bee colony health but also, make
the companies need less bees and therefore make more money. There are many
wildflowers local to the particular northwest region. Catmint is nutritious for honeybees,
bumblebees, carder bees, and mason bees. Other flowering plants such as lavenders,
rhododendrons, ocean spray, currants, salal, etc, are native and incredibly nutritious for
bees and give them a varied diet, (Chiho 2011). Introducing more of these into their
habitats with aid colony health and survival.

The most thrilling and effective answer is solitary bees. Mason bees are a
specific type of solitary bee and are non-aggressive, more effective at pollinating, and
live in a home the size of a number two pencil, able to move and hold in your hand.
When honey bees pollinate they collect pollen in the sticky areas of their legs and small
amounts fall off their legs and occasionally land on flowers. This is incredibly different
than how mason bees pollinate. When mason bees pollinate they belly flop on a flower,
eat some nectar and then travel on to the next flower, distributing a bit of pollen to each
flower they belly flop on. The way mason bees pollinate is 30 to 60 times more effective
than that of honey bees. In an orchard you may need 20,000 to 30,000 honey bees to
pollinate an acre when you would only need 400-500 female mason bees. The mason
bee is incredibly easy for the home gardener because they are not aggressive, you
need no other equipment and they are incredibly easy to maintain. To put it succinctly,
there are no downsides to mason bees. Out of 4,000 species of bees in the U.S. over
half of them are solitary. (Hunter, 2014) If you could get stung by a mason bee, the
venom would be less than a mosquito bite (Hunter, 2014). Mason bees are incredibly
easy to keep for the average gardener because they need three things, one being a
variety of plants, a second being an object quite similar to a common drinking straw, and
a third being a loamy, sandy soil for the bees to pack mud between their eggs. In figure
3 you can see a pea-sized amount of pollen from about 30 trips by the mason bee, then
an egg and finally a mud pack separating that egg from the the next egg. Figure 4 is
showing an active bee area full of mason bee cocoons and eggs.

Mason bees are a growing population with little to do downsides. If home

gardeners continue to use these bees and the bee population continues to grow. These
bees will help to solve our bee crisis in the long run.

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