We love honey bees. They’re fascinating insects that pollinate our crops and gardens, make honey and wax, and provide leisure activities or livelihoods for many of us. Honeybees are not, however, an endangered species - they are farm animals. Recent findings from Cambridge researchers challenge the conventional wisdom surrounding honeybees and their role in environmental conservation. The narrative that we need to “save the honeybees” might be misleading and detracts from more pressing ecological concerns.
All extant species of honeybees are indigenous to Eurasia.
The first honey bees in the Americas arrived in Jamestown, Virginia in March of 1622. The bees were for intended to produce honey and wax for agircultural commerce. They were shipped by the Council of the Virginia Company in London along with seeds, young fruit trees, pidgeons, rabbits, and dogs aboard the 60 ton ship Discovery with instructions that the colonists ensure “the preservation & encrease whereof”. All of the plants or animals on the Discovery were European species that rapidly spread across North America, displacing or competing with native species.
Honeybees are essentially the livestock of the insect world. As Juan P. González-Varo from Cambridge points out, they are “artificially-bred agricultural animals,” managed much like cattle or pigs. Despite public concern, the decline in honeybee populations primarily reflects agricultural challenges, not a direct conservation issue. These bees are continually bred and managed, which differentiates them from truly endangered species.
“For some reason, maybe because they are small, honey bees are not generally viewed as the massively distributed livestock animal that they are. There are millions of honey bee colonies in North America, 2.8 million of which are in the U.S.. Approximating around 30,000 bees per colony (the size of a pollination unit), that’s roughly a billion honey bees in Canada and the U.S. alone, almost triple the number of people.
“High densities of honey bee colonies increase competition between native pollinators for forage, putting even more pressure on the wild species that are already in decline. Honey bees are extreme generalist foragers and monopolize floral resources, thus leading to exploitative competition, that is, where one species uses up a resource, not leaving enough to go around.”
– Alison McAfee, Ph.D ., post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology at North Carolina State University and author of the Science Insider column for the American Bee Journal.
The conservation efforts focused on increasing honeybee populations in urban and protected areas might be counterproductive. Dr. Jonas Geldmann of Cambridge highlights a troubling issue: these well-intentioned initiatives can actually harm biodiversity by enabling honeybees to outcompete and spread diseases to their wild counterparts. These wild pollinators are the real victims of an overlooked biodiversity crisis.
Honeybees, active nearly year-round, pose a significant problem when cultivated crops cease blooming. They migrate to natural habitats, competing with indigenous pollinators for scarce resources. Research from southern Spain reveals that after agricultural blooms like those of orange trees, honeybee populations in nearby woodlands can surge to levels eight times their normal size, drastically out-competing native pollinators.
The current approach to boosting honeybee numbers for crop pollination inadvertently undermines the survival of wild pollinators. Both groups are affected by pesticides and habitat loss, but conservation efforts disproportionately favor managed honeybees over their wild counterparts, whose ecological roles are equally if not more crucial.
The plight of honeybees, while significant, should not obscure the broader ecological crisis facing wild pollinators. Effective conservation strategies must prioritize ecological balance, recognizing the distinct roles of managed and wild pollinators. It’s imperative to realign our efforts to reflect the nuanced realities of pollinator health and biodiversity.