There are twenty thousand of bee species, and only six or seven produce honey. Many are small, some are harmless, and most are in danger. Those aren't the bees I'm talking about. I'm talking about the honey bee that's domesticated and used to create honey. These bees have been introduced around the world, and displace wild bee populations. "The study found that the honey bees had largely displaced native bees. Kato and Kawakita’s data suggests that some native New Caledonian bees are now endangered." (1)
"Over 20 years of data now indicate that honeybees deliver a range of negative impacts, including direct competition with more effective native pollinators (not just other bees), and indirect effects like pollinating invasive weeds and facilitating their spread."(3)
The only purpose the honey bee has? Agriculture. "And then there's the honeybee: originally imported from Europe, raised and managed by beekeepers in order to make honey or to pollinate crops like almonds. It's an agricultural animal, in the same way that sheep and cattle are." (2) When someone tells me they're farming honey bees, I shake my head and groan. There are plenty of bee farmers already, some of them trying to get their bees to pollenate their crops. However, many farmers in Nebraska (where I live) don't have their own honey bees and are just fine because they have natural pollinators like humming birds and humming bird moths. In fact, most of the bee farmers I hear of live in the large city I live in. Big cities don't hold large amounts of wild flowers like out in the country. When there aren't many flowers, thats when native and non-native compete." But in many landscapes, or when an orchard stops blooming, farmed honeybees can compete with wild bees for food, making it harder for wild species to survive." (2)
Why are plants so sparse? Why can't other bees pollinate elsewhere?
"These native bees have evolved with their partner plants for millennia, making the natives particularly good pollination partners for specific sets of native plants—not only the flowers that decorate our wild lands and forests, but also for native crops like squashes, tomatoes and blueberries."(3)
My conclusion is complicated. Don't seek out and kill the honey bee, but, don't support it either. Support your native bees by setting out more native pollinator friendly plants.
Yeah, honey bees and native bees fill different niches, but food competition isn't the only threat honey bees pose.
(For the record, I absolutely believe honey bees and native bees can and should coexist, this just helped me realize that a very important issue with bees hasn't been brought up yet)
The spread of varroa mites are probably one of the most damaging things apis mellifera has done to native populations, and I'm actually shocked it wasn't mentioned before looking back. I would not be surprised if this is one of the prevailing reasons honey bees are replacing native ones.
So, manged bees do spread parasites to wild ones.
And I wish wish I had a picture of the graph, but at a lecture given to my local beekeeping association, given by the awesome professor I linked to before, the largest reported cause of colony death in captivated hives was varroa mites. Luckily, there are pesticides beekeepers can use to kill ht mites, control the population enough to keep the colony alive. However, native bees don't have that privilege, and when they get varroa, they die. Whereas beekeepers can split their colony, start a new hive and treat this time, the native bees don't stand a chance.
So yeah, just basically adding another issue with honey bees, sadly it's not just out competing with food. Again, I absolutely believe that all bees can and should coexist, just wanted to kinda take this and launch into another informative tangent lol
.......
Anyone more interested in varroa can find a lot of info at the Honey Bee Health Coalition , and if you go through the site you'll see the science supports aggressive treatment, meaning use of chemicals and pesticides.
Any honey that acts like it's holier than thou for never using pesticides is part of the reason the honey bee can be such a dangerous invasive.
Please note that I'm only in high school. I am not a professional scientist. Please do not attack anyone here or I will remove the thread completely. This is an unpopular opinion.
Sources:
Source 1
Source 2
Source 3
"Over 20 years of data now indicate that honeybees deliver a range of negative impacts, including direct competition with more effective native pollinators (not just other bees), and indirect effects like pollinating invasive weeds and facilitating their spread."(3)
The only purpose the honey bee has? Agriculture. "And then there's the honeybee: originally imported from Europe, raised and managed by beekeepers in order to make honey or to pollinate crops like almonds. It's an agricultural animal, in the same way that sheep and cattle are." (2) When someone tells me they're farming honey bees, I shake my head and groan. There are plenty of bee farmers already, some of them trying to get their bees to pollenate their crops. However, many farmers in Nebraska (where I live) don't have their own honey bees and are just fine because they have natural pollinators like humming birds and humming bird moths. In fact, most of the bee farmers I hear of live in the large city I live in. Big cities don't hold large amounts of wild flowers like out in the country. When there aren't many flowers, thats when native and non-native compete." But in many landscapes, or when an orchard stops blooming, farmed honeybees can compete with wild bees for food, making it harder for wild species to survive." (2)
Why are plants so sparse? Why can't other bees pollinate elsewhere?
"These native bees have evolved with their partner plants for millennia, making the natives particularly good pollination partners for specific sets of native plants—not only the flowers that decorate our wild lands and forests, but also for native crops like squashes, tomatoes and blueberries."(3)
My conclusion is complicated. Don't seek out and kill the honey bee, but, don't support it either. Support your native bees by setting out more native pollinator friendly plants.
LizardKing wrote on 2019-04-27 13:14:12:
Yeah, honey bees and native bees fill different niches, but food competition isn't the only threat honey bees pose.
(For the record, I absolutely believe honey bees and native bees can and should coexist, this just helped me realize that a very important issue with bees hasn't been brought up yet)
The spread of varroa mites are probably one of the most damaging things apis mellifera has done to native populations, and I'm actually shocked it wasn't mentioned before looking back. I would not be surprised if this is one of the prevailing reasons honey bees are replacing native ones.
So, manged bees do spread parasites to wild ones.
And I wish wish I had a picture of the graph, but at a lecture given to my local beekeeping association, given by the awesome professor I linked to before, the largest reported cause of colony death in captivated hives was varroa mites. Luckily, there are pesticides beekeepers can use to kill ht mites, control the population enough to keep the colony alive. However, native bees don't have that privilege, and when they get varroa, they die. Whereas beekeepers can split their colony, start a new hive and treat this time, the native bees don't stand a chance.
So yeah, just basically adding another issue with honey bees, sadly it's not just out competing with food. Again, I absolutely believe that all bees can and should coexist, just wanted to kinda take this and launch into another informative tangent lol
.......
Anyone more interested in varroa can find a lot of info at the Honey Bee Health Coalition , and if you go through the site you'll see the science supports aggressive treatment, meaning use of chemicals and pesticides.
Any honey that acts like it's holier than thou for never using pesticides is part of the reason the honey bee can be such a dangerous invasive.
Please note that I'm only in high school. I am not a professional scientist. Please do not attack anyone here or I will remove the thread completely. This is an unpopular opinion.
Sources:
Source 1
Source 2
Source 3
Blue // they/he 
