It seems that with every passing day, the media discusses a new theory for why the bees are dying. We hear about most of them on Saturday mornings from our regular customers. The most popular ideas include cell phone towers, bacteria levels, an Israeli virus, pesticides or bio-engineered crops. Do we think that any of these are the reason for the recent decline? The answer is NO… and YES.

Out of balance

In our opinion, it is not any one of these reasons, but all of them in combination and more. Honeybees across the country are stressed, out of balance and in poor health on the whole.  In addition to less than favorable weather conditions, standard beekeeping and agricultural practices contribute greatly to the problem. Many beekeepers haul hives back and forth across the country to pollinate crops, causing stress. When honeybees are placed in a temporary location to pollinate crops, they are generally located within a vast monoculture (e.g. pumpkin farm or orange groves). This results in a very imbalanced, one dimensional diet. Crops that bees are attempting to pollinate are often heavily coated in the chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides used in common agricultural practices. If the chemical load does not create stress inside the hive, the dying soil from chemically-dependent agriculture does not impart nutrition into the nectar and pollen that the bee collects for food. With an unbalanced bee colony, the hive is vulnerable to increased mite and virus infestation. In response, the typical beekeeper routinely uses chemical treatments to cure disease and prevent future episodes.    

Maximize profits

In addition to treating for disease, most beekeepers also use chemicals to harvest honey. The size of large apiaries and honey operations mean there is not enough time or manpower to do the work by hand. Finally, in order to maximize profits, many beekeepers remove as much honey as possible. This leaves the hive with a deficit of food stores that must be made up during Fall and Spring with a white sugar and water syrup, times that the bees are needing quality nutrition to survive the cold.

Altering our practices

Not all beekeepers drive their hives around the country, but most use all the other practices mentioned above as their standard.  We are staking our business on the notion that we can address a large part of the bee health problem through altering our beekeeping practices. Some of the factors of this crisis are beyond our control, such as climate changes and increased use of bio-engineered crops which the bees cannot or will not use as a food source. In our opinion, it doesn’t take a special Congressional committee to figure what’s going wrong with the bees. Our concern though, is that these committees will focus on only one of the theories being offered in the media. Such a “magic bullet” approach to the problem is common, but dangerous. Should it be decided that CCD is a virus, we will soon have one more chemical to add to the standard beekeeping manual of prevention and treatment. And the dangerous cycle will continue. At Mockingbird Meadows, we believe that our practice of sustainable beekeeping will promote the long-term health of our hives.