Consider the little honeybee, Apis mellifera, collecting nectar and pollen to sustain the hive.  In the process, it pollinates one third of the world's food supply.  Cross-pollination is responsible for the diversity in food, flowers, and landscapes we enjoy today.  Sixteen states have chosen the honeybee as their state insect, showing the respect and importance this little busy-bee is accorded.

Honeybees are extremely susceptible to outside influences like pollution and pesticides.  They are also very efficient pollinators.  Industries revolve around them.  Beekeepers harvest excess honey, honeycomb, and pollen from their hives.  To boost the fruit set of their crops, farmers rent hives from beekeepers.  The hives are set up in fields or orchards.  The bees work the crops, collecting nectar and pollen to feed their young, called "brood," all the while cross-pollinating the crops.  Without pollen fertilization, many plants cannot produce fruits, vegetables, or seeds.

There are many symptoms of under-pollinated vegetables and fruit.  You might have seen some in your own garden.  Undeveloped blossoms or immature, moldy fruits that drop off are signs of pollination failure.  Fruit that is poorly pollinated shows up as deformed or undersized.  Even the sweetening of the fruit depends on enough pollination.  One visit by a bee to a peach blossom, which is easily pollinated, might do the job.  Other vegetables and fruit, like cucumbers, green beans, and melons can require 15 to 20 bee visits.

Honeybees are in trouble in the U.S.  In recent years, imported predators like the small hive beetle (Aethina tumida), varrroa mite (Varroa destructor), and tracheal mite (Acarapis woodi) have been decimating the hives.  Lately, whole populations of hives are just disappearing.  It's a phenomenom known as Colony Collapse Disorder.  it is a mystery as to what is happening to them.

Do we have substitutes for the lowered honeybee pollination population?  A whole assortment of bees, wasps, flies, bats, and hummingbirds help to pollinate our crops.  They, too are losing the life battle.

Our native bumblebees, Bombus, are usually quite gentle creatures, earning an earlier name of "humblebee."  Although they are efficient pollinators, busily working the summer and fall flowers, the brood is not ready for late winter or early spring flights.  Only the queen bumblebee survives the winter.  She rebuilds her population every year.  The first bumblebee you see collecting nectar in the spring is a queen.  She is the sole provider for the first brood.

Other problems?  Some hybrid landscape plants are sterile and do not produce pollen.  Even the simple act of mowing roadsides and cleaning out fencerows has diminished the pollinator population.  So, too, has the "perfect" lawn.  Wildflowers and weeds are important nectar and pollen pieces in the pollinator life cycle puzzle.  Black-eyed Susans, prairie coneflowers, and blue floss flower are pretty enough for the garden; and nectar rich and wild enough for pollinators.

To help stabilize the population, you should not use pesticides when bees are foraging.  They are most active in midday.  Some fungicide preparations for fruit trees call for spraying when flowers are open.  If an insecticide is in the combination, it spells death to pollinators.  Learn to not only read and follow label directions carefully, but to think of just what you are doing to the environment.

Are systemic insecticides toxic to bees?  Systemics are taken up by the roots of plants, into the whole plant.  Any insect that chews on the plant is killed.  It seems there are no definitive studies on whether the nectar or pollen is poisoned.  To be safe, only use systemics on non-flowering plants.

For more information on honeybees and their problems, click this link to the Department of entomology, University of North Carolina.

---Posted by Anne K Moore, July 29, 2007---