Paul Hetzler
The Advocate
In addition to being a reliable source of honey, not to mention personal satisfaction, backyard beekeeping can be a rich learning experience for the whole family. And yet, at the same time, honeybees are causing grave and, in some cases, irreversible harm to the environment.
It’s imperative that beekeepers learn about the threats to native pollinators posed by honeybees, and actively work to mitigate the damage as much as possible.
Just to be clear, honeybees are a non-native species whose population is burgeoning. They certainly don’t need our help to survive. Statistics Canada reports there were 783,575 honeybee colonies in Canada in 2021, up sharply from 561,297 in 2011 – a 40-per-cent jump in 10 years.
It’s true honeybees are vital to industrial-scale agriculture, like on California’s almond farms, which are the largest in the world, and in Florida’s citrus groves. Although they are relatively poor pollinators, they’re the only ones that can be transported in great numbers.
Outside of vast tree-crop plantations that are inhospitable to native bees, honeybees don’t measurably boost pollination rates, according to a multi-year study by Cornell University. Led by Dr. Scott McArt, a bee specialist at Cornell’s Dyce Laboratory for Bee Research, the team concluded honeybees had an insignificant effect on pollination in all but the largest apple orchards in the study. The 110 species of wild bees the researchers cataloged on apple blossoms did the real work.
Honeybees displace other bees
The problem with honeybees is that they displace, and sometimes extirpate, native bees.
A long-running study by Concordia University noted that honeybee hives on the island of Montreal skyrocketed from less than 250 in 2013 to nearly 3,000 by 2020. During that time, the overall number of wild native bees across 15 sites dropped by an average of 1,200 per sample. Far more concerning was the loss of diversity. In 2013, 163 species of wild bees were documented. In 2020, that number was 120. Forty-three species of native bees disappeared from the record in seven years due to honeybees. That’s huge.
For years, professional beekeepers in the U.K. have been asking the public to moderate the recent “outbreak” of hives, which is putting native bees at risk. The London Beekeepers’ Association is concerned that “the prevailing ‘save the bees’ narrative is often based on poor, misleading or absent information about bees and their needs. It can imply that keeping honeybees will help bees.”
Push to limit honeybee populations
In fact, there is now a global push, led by current and former beekeepers, to limit honeybee populations in order to save wild bees, which do practically all the pollinating in the world.
One could dismiss such pleas from professional beekeepers as self-serving, but Andrew Whitehouse of the insect-conservation group Buglife agrees that the public’s unfettered embrace of honeybees is having dire consequences.
“We know the main reason native pollinators are in decline is a lack of wildflowers in our countryside and urban areas,” Whitehouse said. “To increase competition for limited resources puts a huge pressure on the wild pollinators.”
Too many honeybees also bring diseases to native pollinators.
As Dr. Jane Memmott of Bristol University in England has stated, honeybee hives are sometimes “little ecosystems of plagues and contagion.”
Invasion of the bees
Even the loudest critics of backyard beekeeping don’t want to see it banned. But anyone who likes the thought of a hive on their rooftop or back lot needs to remember the wildflowers in any locale are already spoken for by native pollinators. A meadow in bloom is not virgin territory that honeybees are free to exploit without impact. When a non-native species arrives in large numbers, there will always be repercussions.
It is a moral imperative that beekeepers – big and small – compensate for the nectar and pollen their honeybees consume in a season. Wild bees were there first, and relied on the existing forage to survive. If you keep bees, provide about one acre of flowering plants per hive. This is essential to keep native pollinators healthy.
Flowers that bloom at different times, grow to various heights, and have a multitude of floral structures and colours will serve the greatest diversity of native pollinators. Very often, this can be achieved by simply letting things go wild. Maybe cut back (so to speak) on mowing. Choose some areas to mow once a year in late fall, and others to cut every second or third year.
Bumblebees, which are four times more effective at pollinating than honeybees, often nest in rock piles and old foundations, things that tend to get “tidied up” as rural areas get more populated. Mason bees make use of all types of unkemptness for their nests. Since both kinds of bees are super-pollinators, a small decrease in their population is worrisome. A change in mindset regarding aesthetics will go a long way toward saving bees of all stripes.
And finally, if you don’t have land on which to grow wildflowers, please curb your enthusiasm. Seriously. Divesting is best, but cutting back is good, too. Perhaps one hive can suit your needs, rather than two or three.