Merrie-Ellen Wilcox - Whats the Buzz?: Keeping Bees in Flight

The brown spot on this honey bee is a varroa mite. Mites can cause a whole colony to die in just a few months. SCIENCEPHOTO.COM

Wherever they are, honey bees can be exposed to a variety of poisons as they move from plant to plant. For example, they can come into contact with insecticides, which are used to kill insect pests, and herbicides, which are used to kill weeds. These chemicals can either kill bees right away or build up gradually in the honey and wax in a hive, making the bees sick and weak. One class of insecticides, called neonicotinoids (neo-ni-co-teen-oyds), is thought to be especially harmful to honey bees. They are similar to the nicotine in cigarettes; are used to kill insects that suck and chew plants, insects in soil, and fleas on animals; and are sprayed on soil and on the seeds and plants of many crops. Some neonics have been banned in Europe, but not in North America.

As if that werent enough, honey bees around the world are dealing with a variety of parasites and diseases. One of the most common is the varroa mite, whose formal name is Varroa destructor. Its a small crablike insect that you can actually see on the bees if you look closely. The varroa mite itself only weakens the bees, but it also carries several diseases that can kill them, such as deformed wing virus.

People all over the world, like these protesters in Tampa, Florida, are doing what they can to stop the use of harmful pesticides. KRIZ PARTRIDGE/BEE AGAINST MONSANTO

In cities, as well as in places where there is logging or industrial agriculture, wild bees have few places to nest and little food to eat. GQP/ISTOCK.COM

Its not just honey bees that are in trouble. Many wild bees are threatened too. Not surprisingly, some of the same kinds of things that harm honey bees also harm wild beesespecially pesticides. But there is another problem for wild bees that isnt a problem for honey bees, and that is the loss of habitat, places where bees can nest and find the foods they need.

Since most honey bees live in hives, and the hives are usually in places where there is lots of pollen and nectar available for them to eat, they dont need to worry too much about finding places to live and enough food for themselves and their offspring. Not true for wild bees.

In urban and suburban areas, where much of the ground is covered in pavement, concrete, lawns or buildings, bees that live in or on the ground have nowhere to make their nests and none of the native plants they need for pollen and nectar. Large-scale industrial farming also destroys bee habitat, as does logging in forests.

BEE FACT: Even in areas that are not affected by urbanization, industrial agriculture or logging, plants from other places, called invasive species, can crowd out the native plants that bees need for food and nesting.

Helping the helpers