Over the next few months we will hear news of this
winter's honey bee losses in North America. The news won't be good.
Although official loss tallies have yet to be released,
persistently cold weather across the northern part of the continent has made
the 2013-2014 winter an unusually difficult one. Beekeepers relying on standard
fall harvesting and feeding regimes are almost certainly discovering, as spring
arrives, that their preparations were inadequate for at least some colonies.
Honey bees survive winter in a remarkable fashion. Rather
than slowing into diapause the typical insect way, letting the body's natural
anti-freeze proteins do the work, honey bees instead maintain the center of the
nest at room temperature. They create heat by metabolizing honey, and the honey
furnace is powerful indeed. Hive temperature doesn't waver even at - 40º
outside. Honey is fuel, and in cold winters bees need more fuel than in warm
winters. They are like us.
I mention the weather as a preemptive debunking of
agenda-laden claims to come.
Recent bee declines, and especially the mysterious Colony
Collapse Disorder, are often co-opted into the advocacy efforts of groups
against cell phones, pesticides, and any number of other issues. While these
organizations are well-intentioned, their efforts have tended to overstep the
scientific research on Colony Collapse. The best studies point somewhere
between inconclusive and a complex blend of various factors. If this season's
losses are high, we will likely be hearing more of the loosely-tethered
campaigning. Be appropriately skeptical that anything other than weather (and,
if you like, climate change) is behind the latest bee-pocalypse.
Colony Collapse, whatever the cause, is marked by a lack
of adult bees in the hive in early spring. It's as though the worker force flew
off and never returned, leaving behind a queen, some young bees, and otherwise
healthy-looking brood.
Regular winter loss, on the other hand, ends with adult
bees inside the hive, tragically face-down in the cells as they ate through the
final honey stores:
These bee deaths are sad, but they are not a symptom of
some global conspiracy. They are simply what happens when lazy beekeeping meets
a harsh winter.
