"It's fantastic that someone is doing this," says Rutgers University entomologist Rachael Winfree. "There are no long-term bee monitoring programs in North America, except for bumblebees. This is not a new idea, it's just no one is doing it."
Part of the reason there hasn't been a long-term, wide-scale bee monitoring program is because there wasn't an efficient way to collect the bees. Using nets takes time, and results vary depending on who swings them. Bowls of soapy water catch bees effectively, but the water evaporates quickly—meaning scientists have to check the traps frequently. "Figuring out how much and when to sample is tricky" with this method, Droege says. A third option uses malaise traps, which are large tent-like nets that funnel insects into jars of alcohol or propylene glycol, but these traps can cost up to $250 apiece.
Droege and his colleagues spent years cooking up a solution. They developed a trap made from painted plastic beer cups, soap and glycol. The paint colors attracts the bees, the soap kills them and the glycol preserves them. (Propylene glycol is "generally recognized as safe" by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.) The foresters at each site set out the traps, collect the captured bees every two weeks and mail them to Droege for identification.
The program is in its third year of data collection, but doesn't yet have a name or funding. And so far they haven't needed it; most of the participating sites report that maintaining the traps requires very little money or effort. Henry McNab, a research forester at the Bent Creek Experimental Forest in North Carolina, estimates that on average the bee collections required 15 minutes per week and about $30 per year.
Some sites have collected more than 1,400 bees in one summer. They've found several rare bees, and discovered species in places that would typically be considered outside of their normal range or habitat—for example, scientists at the Maine site collected a squash bee (Peponapis pruinosa), a species that is most common in the U.S. Southwest and rarely found north of southern New England.
The two-year analysis is also uncovering hints at population trends, although several years' more data are needed to determine whether these hints are significant. "The main goal is to look at change over time," Droege says. "If we can foresee declines, we can intervene before it's too late."
By making the monitoring project simple and inexpensive, Droege has made it easy for the experimental sites to continue participating for a very long time. Michael Ryan, a research ecologist at the Manitou Experimental Forest in Colorado, said in an email that "As long as the Forest Service can afford to keep a site manager at Manitou, we'll continue. And even if the site manager goes away [due to budget cuts],” he added, “I'll work somehow to get it done."
The simplicity of the program could come at a slight cost. For now, foresters participating in the monitoring program set up the traps in an area of their own choosing, typically in an area that is most convenient. But bees respond strongly to local habitat changes, such as weeds flowering in a nearby field or a freshly mowed lawn, Winfree says. She suggested that by standardizing and controlling the environments around the traps it will be easier to detect large-scale changes in bee populations, rather than the effects of local changes.
As the project is still in its infancy, Droege continues to work out the kinks. After he has proved that the experimental design works, he says he'll ask for federal funding in hopes of scaling up the project and increasing data resolution. At the moment Droege alone is tasked with identifying the thousands of bees collected, so he only has time to categorize them down to the genus level. "To some extent, the really interesting and important questions are at the species level," Winfree says. "The problem with having genus-level data is that, say one species is increasing and one went extinct, you wouldn't even detect it," because the total number of bees would stay the same, she says.
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Add CommentIf we collectively allow the bees to become extinct, we are so through. Has anyone entertained the thought that the tragedy of Industrial Agriculture might just have something to do with it? That, ensconced in Industrial Agriculture, is the massive application of pesticides, fungicides, insecticides and some other kind of "cide" that escapes me just now. They don't call 'em "pesticides" and "insecticides" for no reason. The Powers That Be have genetically altered our fruit & vegetable plants and trees to the point where nothing is made by Mother Nature anymore - and did they really expect that not to cause a blowback?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'd venture to say that since their imperative is money, money, money; that they didn't even entertain the thought of how their experimentation would affect anything but their own pockets. The run-off has contaminated the water supplies of rural communities, and the products that are available in any market USA
today contains very little nutrition or variety. It's the epitome of "The Illusion of Choice" in action.
It's not nice to try and fool Mother Nature - it's wrong, it's not normal or natural, it's making people sick .... and now, it's probably extinguishing the bee population worldwide. Like Wild Bill Hickok would say, "You called it."
It's a positive to read such a well thought out article in Scientific American.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs an amateur 'bug guy', I've witnesse no decline in native bee populations here in western Canada. Non-native honeybees get 'the press' but their demise is not necessarily a negative for the environment.
Bees are such a large and diverse group of insects that generalizations about their numbers can be somewhat meaningless. Also, 'more' of a species does not necessarily mean 'better'. It can mean that some other variable is out of whack.
I couldn't agree more. Unfortunately, "Industrial Agriculture" (aka, Monsanto) has an answer - buy the bee research...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.naturalnews.com/035688_Monsanto_honey_bees_colony_collapse.html
It's not as simple as just pesticides. Hives have continued to thrive in some heavy use areas, and wild bees are doing well in areas when honey bees are declining. Transporting hives by the hundreds per truck across the continent has increased the spread of bee parasites. Than in some areas pollution may be the culprit. This is a complex problem with no one cause.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe a different approach - say it IS critical and he needs a Billion Dollars just to Startup - now he's speaking Washington Words.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSomeone should help, or we'll all have to learn to eat dirt.
Thanks for such a nuanced treatment of a complex subject. For all the concern about crop pollination, though, it seems as though very few resources have been put into studying the vast number of other insects that also pollinate—in many cases, far more efficiently than bees do. An interesting take on this appeared in the August 2008 issue of Gourmet (full disclosure: I edited the story). http://tinyurl.com/69f5qp
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCultivated hives are naturally feeling the effects of parasites, insecticides and environmental change more then wild hives. Multiple hives are kept in very close proximity to each other and transportation increases the import of disease.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBee keeping was big business where I live on the Big Island of Hawaii. I say was, because all the large be keepers I know have just recently lost their entire business do to three new parasites that mysteriously appeared all at once, just a couple of years ago. Prior to that, Hawaii's bees and in particular the queens were the healthiest and gentlest bees in the world. The pressing question here in the industry is how did this happen practically overnight. Some speculate it was purposely introduced by some big business that has a reason to prevent natural pollination. A similar plight is happening in the coffee industry.
Certain companies are now proposing new rules to force coffee growers to plant only bore beetle resistant plants that were genetically modified and can only be cloned, because of beetles that were introduced just a few years ago too. They even proposed cutting down existing plantations and forcing farmers to implement these new rules. This would effectively lower the price of Hawaiian Coffee to Columbian prices, because the Specialty Coffee Association of America, which sets the price, will not allow GM coffee to be rated or compete in international coffee tasting championships.
I believe the destruction of the bee populations is following the same crooked rules as the coffee industry and will soon be followed with mechanical pollinators and factory produced seed stock that was designed to replace naturally pollinated food seeds which is a big industry here in Hawaii.
There is a testing facility on Molokai that is funded by Monsanto to do exactly that in an environment that can be most easily controlled should these experiments go wild, without threatening the whole country.
I am unaware of any major studies on wild bees here, but certainly it has become necessary.
Ha, ha! The mad scientist sits at home counting dead bees to see how many are alive. And it is so 'normal' nobody sees the insanity of it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut then it all comes down to money, doesn't it. And money can't buy me love. :)
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I asked a honeybee keeper what he feeds his bees over winter and he told me sugar, pure white sugar - the cheapest. I asked him if that was a nutritious replacement for the honey they would normally eat and he didn't reply - the answer is obvious.
And, with the additional loads on the bee's referred to above - and the sinister interventions alluded to, the learned scientists ask why the bees are dying? It's all that 'learnin' I think, gums up the mind.
Unfortunately, based on the current system of regulated greed, we are going to finish plundering the store before we realize we need a value system more profound than money to survive in a global society.
But, but, where's the data? :)
I have a vegetable garden in Michigan's upper peninsula. There are no apis mellifera here. My garden is pollinated by bumble bees, minor bees, and at least one other pollinator. I have never had trouble with having my crops pollinated.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI and my wife have been Bee Keepers for nearly a decade. We always have been interested in Beekeeping and when we heard of the great amount of bees virtually vanishing either by desease or pesticides or whatever we thought that NOW is a great time to get hands on info. The cost is minimal ( unless your the type who wants all the pricy gizmoes) less than a hundred dpllars for about 15,000 or 3 lbs of bees. The fact is we have learned alot about these little pollinators and though we've lost a colony or two in the past 10 years we've learned that "good pest management" is crucial. It is an investment of your money but it's extremely important that they are an investment to ALL OUR FUTURES. Our APIARY (bee hives) have been doing great and the type we care for are BUCKFAST and ITALIAN Honeybees and with proper care they will grow in numbers and provide a generous amount of honey. Bees also are benificial in helping cure certain cancers so these small but powerful creatures provide more than just pollination tho thats what we hear more of. Invest and care for one of the only insects that god put on earth that allows humans to help and manage them. BeeMan of MO.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thismight help to leave a wild flower or two (weeds) out there for them instead of cutting down every last one of them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf only we could train these guys: http://hubski.com/pub?id=5516 to target Monsanto executives.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere have been studies that pin the use of pesticides specific to GMO technology with the decline of the Bee population. While I think Monsanto is as bad as an organization gets (think Dr. Evil... but worse) there are other factors such as climate change that are to blame.
Fact remains, without bee's we are all f_c_ed.
I'm no scientist, but i´ve got a sudden idea:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen the beekeepers extract the honey, they replace it whit
"mane made sugar" right ?
What if the problem came from that ?
What if the bees "need to keep" there own honey in order to survive (like in agriculture where you leave a field alone to re-invigorate)/ OR, the man made contains something that the bees get sick off ???
Just and idea ;D
There are an estimated 1600 species of bees native to California. With the general decline of honeybees in Berkeley, where I live, native bees have taken over as pollinators for many of my flowers and fruit trees. More than a decade ago Berkeley banned the spraying of pesticides (other than B.T.) and the honeybees are making a comeback. I have a hive of long duration in a chimney that vents the burned gas from my furnace and hot water heater. I think the bees like the extra warmth. They have swarmed twice in the last ten years and this year are buzzing around my chimney, looking for the food they need. My garden supplies lots of that and they seem to be contented in their location. California has the most diverse food production of any State in the Union, and native bees are more and more the pollinators that are effective. I have asked the organic food producers about their pollinators, and they say native bees for the most part, but those farthest from spray drift have seen an increase in honey bee populations.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with the theory that "Bleached white sugar may not bee the best for the bee's" but as a bee keeper we try to aide the bee's with what the regulators advise. Most if not every " Bee Keeper" does not remove "ALL" of the honey ,most of the honey is left for the colony to feed off of thru the cold or winter time. The sugar water is set in the hives to feed them when necter is not available and is primarily used for the building of the Comb so either the Queen lays her eggs in the comb or the workers fill the comb with pollen or necter and thru thier natural drying system the necter is transformed into honey. Nature has it's way of keeping them in check through other insects that can harm or destroy a hive or even over-population which makes the hive seek a less populated area called upscounding. Then comes MAN and thier extensive way of making sure thier crops are not eating by other insects, unfortunately Bees are effected and usually the bees bring back to the hives the same deadly chemicals that kill every other "Pest" in the fields. The area we live in the farmers around us have visited us to assure us the chemicals they are using are not harmful to the pollinators and the farmers are excited that we have an APIARY with nearly 200,000 Bee's close to where they are farming , the farmers even left several plots of land for us to plant a pollination food plot for our Bee's and are antisipating our Bee's will pollinate thier crops when they begin to mature. A win- win for both the farmers and the Bee's. They agree that " Our Future Flies On The Wings of Pollinators", Bee Man of Mo.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you for the amazing photos of these rare bees. I have a vitex tree in my yard that has dozens of bees of all types each day. Maybe I can identify some of them now.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this