Dwindling Bee colonies can be better understood by History

The future of bees may depend on understanding their past. Bees are in trouble. Honeybee colonies in the United States have suffered devastating losses in recent years. But colony collapse disorder, as it’s called, affects only the species kept in beehives, the European honeybee, Apis mellifera. There are almost 20,000 species of wild bees, and they aren’t faring well, either.

Nearly a third of bumblebee species in the United States are declining. In the Netherlands, more than half of the country’s 357 species of wild bees are endangered. Many species of plants, including crops, depend on wild bees to spread their pollen. When they lose their pollinators, they may suffer, too.

“It’s essential to know what is causing those declines,” said Jeroen Scheper, a graduate student at Alterra, a research institution at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

But it is not enough to consider the many challenges, from pesticides to parasites that wild bees face right now. “We need to go back in time,” said Mr. Scheper.

As it turned out, the fate of the bees often was tied to that of the plants they depended on. The growing intensity of farming in the Netherlands since the 1950s hit many wild plant species hard. “There were a lot more flowers in the landscape before,” said Mr. Scheper.

Dutch farmers cleared more land, used more toxic herbicides, and blanketed their farms with fertilizers.

Some wild plants were able to survive these challenges, but others became scarce. Mr. Scheper and his colleagues found that the bees that preferred declining plants also declined.

This link held true even for bees that collect pollen from dozens of plant species. The results suggest that without the preferred kind of pollen, the bee larvae suffered.

Mr. Scheper and his colleagues also found that big bees were at greater risk than small ones. He suspects that is because big bees need to eat more. If the plants they depend on get harder to find, they are more likely to suffer than smaller bees.

Bio
Latest Posts

Nancy Young

When I was younger I used to spend almost all of my free time playing computer games. My mom and dad would go mental over this. “You’re never going to do anything with your life if you are going to play games all day” they used to say. What was even more unusual was the fact that I played more games than most of the guys in my friend group. Looking back, I have to admit that I probably played a bit too much, but I also learned a lot of great things. When I turned 20 I decided that it was high-time to make some money of my own, but the only jobs I could get were that of waitress or cashier. How exciting. After several excruciating months of serving tables I had a great idea: since I love gaming so much, why don’t I write about it? That’s when I started doing small writing projects on Elance. Eventually, I got an offer for a part-time job. During that time I learned all about content marketing strategies and how search engines work. I started writing about various topics such as technology, health and lifestyle and discovered that I was actually good at it. On November 24, 2014, I became part of the ArgyllFreePress team.