According to the recently released annual survey by the Apiary Inspectors of America (AIA) and the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), more than a third of U.S. managed honeybee colonies—those set up for intensified pollination of commercial crops—failed to survive this past winter. Since 2006, the decline of the U.S.’s estimated 2.4 million beehives—commonly referred to as colony collapse disorder (CCD)—has led to the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of colonies: Hives are found empty with honey, larvae, and the queen intact, but with no bees and no trail left behind. The cause remains unknown, but appears to be a combination of factors impacting bee health and increasing their susceptibility to disease. Heavy losses associated with CCD have been found mainly with larger migratory commercial beekeepers, some of whom have lost 50-90 percent of their colonies.

A “keystone” species—one that has a disproportionate effect on the environment relative to its biomass—bees are our key to global food security and a critical part of the food chain. Flowering plants that produce our food depend on insects for pollination. There are other pollinators—butterflies, moths, beetles, flies, and birds—but the honeybee is the most effective, pollinating over 100 commercial crops nationwide, including most fruit, vegetables, and nuts, as well as alfalfa for cattle feed and cotton, with a value estimated between $15-$20 billion annually. As much as one of every three bites of food we eat comes from food pollinated by insects. Without honeybees, our diet would be mostly meatless, consisting of rice and cereals, and we would have no cotton for textiles. The entire ecosystem and the global food economy potentially rests on their wings.

Experts now believe bees are heading for extinction and are racing to pinpoint the culprit, increasingly blaming pesticide usage. U.S. researchers have reported finding 121 different pesticides in samples of bees, wax, and pollen. New parasites, pathogens, fungi, and poor nutrition stemming from intensive farming methods are also part of the equation. Three years ago, U.S. scientists unraveled the genetic code of the honeybee and uncovered the DNA of a virus transmitted by the Varroa mite—Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV)—found in almost all of the hives impacted by CCD. Researchers have also found the fungus Nosema ceranae and other pathogens such as chalkbrood in some affected hives throughout the country.   Other reported theories include the effects of shifting spring blooms and earlier nectar flow associated with broader global climate and temperature changes, the effects of feed supplements from genetically modified crops, such as high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), and the effects of cell phone transmissions and radiation from power lines that may be interfering with a bee’s navigational capabilities. (Last year, a study revealed that a contaminant from heat-exposed HFCS might be killing off the bees.) However, according to a recent congressional report on CCD, contributions of these possible factors have not been substantiated.

The industrial bee business and the demands of intensified food production could also be playing a role in the bees’ demise. Widespread migratory stress brought about by increased needs for pollination could be weakening the bees’ immune systems. Most pollination services are provided by commercial migratory beekeepers who travel from state to state and provide pollination services to crop producers. These operations are able to supply a large number of bee colonies during the critical phase of a crop’s bloom cycle, when bees pollinate as they collect nectar. A hive might make five cross-country truck trips each year, chasing crops, and some beekeepers can lose up to 10 percent of their queens during one cross country trip. Bees are overworked and stressed out.

California’s almond crop is a prime example of our reliance on bees’ industriousness for our agriculture success. The state grows 80 percent of the world’s almonds, making it our largest agricultural export and bringing in a whopping $1.9 billion last year. The crop—with nearly 740,000 acres of almond trees planted—uses 1.3 million colonies of bees, approximately one half of all bees in the U.S., and is projected to grow to 1.5 million colonies. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is now predicting that Central Valley almond growers will produce about 1.53 billion pounds of almonds this year, up 8.5 percent last year. To meet the demand, bee colonies are trucked farther and more often than ever before and demand for bees has dramatically outstripped supply. Bee colonies, which a decade ago rented for $60, cost as much as $170 this February in California.

Few organic beekeepers have reported bee losses, suggesting that natural and organic bee keeping methods may be the solution. In addition, organic farmers who maintain wildlife habitat around their farms are helping to encourage bees to pollinate their crops.  “The main difference between our farm and our conventional neighbors is the amount of wildlife and insect habitat that we have around the edge of our farm,” said Greg Massa, who manages Massa Organics, a fourth generation 90-acre certified organic rice farm near Chico. Massa started growing organic almonds six years ago, and works with a small, organic beekeeper in Oregon who brings in 30 hives to his farm. Massa’s farm has a large wildlife corridor which has been revegetated with native plants and covered in mustard, wild radish, and vetch, a favorite of bees and also a good nitrogen source for his rice crop.

Time might be running out for the bees, but there are simple actions we can take to make a difference. First, support organic farmers who don’t use pesticides and whose growing methods work in harmony with the natural life of bees. In particular, buy organic almonds. Don’t use pesticides in your home garden, especially at mid-day when bees most likely forage for nectar. You can also plant good nectar sources such as red clover, foxglove, bee balm, and other native plants to encourage bees to pollinate your garden. Provide clean water; even a simple bowl of water is beneficial.  Buy local honey; it keeps small, diversified beekeepers in business, and beekeepers keep honeybees thriving. In addition, you can start keeping bees yourself. Backyard and urban beekeeping can actively help bring back our bees. Finally, you can work to preserve more open cropland and rangeland. Let’s use our political voices to support smart land use, the impact of which will not only result in cleaner water, soil, and air, but also just might help save the humble honeybee.

Photo: Hardy Wilson/The Chronicle, 2009

Originally posted on the Inside Scoop.

New York City urban beekeepers (and lovers of honey, fruit and flowers): tomorrow is the big day to let your legislators know that you want beekeeping to be a legal activity by giving an oral testimony at the public hearing on the issue between 10am-12pm, 125 Worth Street, Room 330.

Beekeeping is currently illegal under the health code of NYC, which prohibits the possession, keeping, harboring and selling of “wild animals” and “venomous insects.” However, beekeepers are becoming commonplace in cities across the United States. These cities have realized that bees are essential to a thriving natural environment, including as a support to urban vegetable gardens.

Just Food, an organization that seeks to expand access to healthy food to all New Yorkers, has spearheaded the campaign to get this antiquated law changed. Nadia Johnson from Just Food sent over some of of the organization’s testimony. Hopefully it will inspire you to come along and speak your mind on this important subject:

Just Food supports the Department of Health’s proposed amendment to Article 161 of the NYC Health Code regarding honey-beekeeping in New York City. Lifting the ban on honey-beekeeping is essential to a green, healthy, sustainable city.

As a local organization that works to increase access to fresh, healthy food in New York City and to support the local farms and urban gardens that grow it, honeybees and beekeepers are vital to our mission.

City planners and elected officials increasingly acknowledge urban farming as key to addressing greening, climate change and other environmental sustainability issues, and honeybees are key to building a strong local food system. As pollinators they contribute to productive harvests in New York City’s community gardens, botanical gardens, public parks, greenroofs and backyards.

With the crisis of Colony Collapse Disorder, it’s never been so important for all communities—urban and rural—to promote beekeeping. Beekeeping is legal in cities throughout the country—including Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Minneapolis, Portland, San Francisco and Seattle. Even government sites such as Chicago’s City Hall and the White House’s South Lawn has honeybee hives.

Beekeepers in New York City—past, present and future—play a vital role in ensuring our city is greener, healthier, and sweeter. The proposed amendment to Article 161 would bring New York City up to speed with cities around the country

Check out Just Food’s video, “Hidden Hives Tour”:

Hidden Hives Tour from Just Food on Vimeo.

Photo: Vancouverconvention

Over the past few years, I’ve noticed that it’s gotten more and more difficult for me to get a steady supply of California oranges for juice at my cafe. I keep getting offered oranges from Florida, from Texas, and from Mexico. I have nothing inherently against any of those locations, and wish them well with their citrus crop, but I’d prefer to buy what’s in my home state.

Joel Nelson, from the trade association California Citrus Mutual, says that I am not imagining this shift. The story is this: back in the winter of 1998 there was a big freeze over Christmas that destroyed 85% of the California citrus crop that year. To fill the empty space on the shelves, stores and wholesalers started to import fruit from Europe, mainly Spain. These Spanish fruits were mostly seedless mandarins, and in no time this Spanish fruit became a favorite with consumers. The next year when the California crop was back in action, they were given less shelf-space and the imported fruit was here to stay.

In response, many California growers started to plant varieties of seedless mandarins– also known as tangerines or clementines. The trees take about five years to mature, and the first crop hit the market around 2005.

This is where things started to get ugly. In an unfortunate twist of fate, a serious of biological and economic factors have joined forces to pit the new seedless mandarin industry against beekeepers.

What, you say? Citrus growers against beekeepers? Aren’t bees necessary to pollinate the plants to grow the fruit? In this case, the answer is no. In fact, when the bees do pollinate the fruit they cause seeds to form inside the otherwise seedless oranges, and seeds reduce their value.

There are about 350,000 beehives kept permanently in California. Another 650,000 are trucked in from other states for pollinating services that are essential for the almond and stone fruit crops. Almonds are blooming in February, and then the bees are moved over to stone fruit orchards for the month of March. Starting in April or so, the bees need a new place to go before clover and summer crops come into flower in late spring.

Traditionally, they were moved adjacent to citrus orchards. Everyone loves the sweet taste of Citrus Honey, and while they aren’t necessary for orange production they were causing no harm.

But that’s for normal citrus – with new varieties of mandarins that have been planted the bees have gone from being a welcome guest to an unwelcome intruder, according to Nelsen. Up to 30-35% of the mandarin crop, Nelsen says, is destroyed by the bees. The crop then gets used for juice at a small fraction of the price it would get going directly to market.

After the 2005 season things got testy between these two groups. By 2007 the California state legislature mandated the California Department of Food and Agriculture to form a working group to mediate the dispute. Both sides claim that they are the victim here. The bee industry is just doing what it has always done. The citrus industry is trying to adapt to new market conditions, and they claim they never wanted the bees in their fields in the first place.

The CDFA just released “draft regulations” (Initial Statement, Notice of Proposed Rulemaking [PDFs]) to try to resolve the conflict, the result of several years of work. They are asking for 45 days of input from all interested parties, after which time the rules will become permanent.  The draft regulations state:

These regulations are intended to address the obligation of the Department of Food and Agriculture to address coexistence issues related to production of seedless mandarin varieties in close proximity to the apiaries of beekeepers. Seedless mandarin growers mitigate that some apiaries increase the risk of crop cross-pollination resulting in the presence of seeds in their fruit. The regulations adopted herein shall be limited to Fresno, Kern, Madera, and Tulare counties and may include the establishment of fees, not to exceed the cost of the program, to be paid by seedless mandarin growers.

The draft regulations will require beekeepers to register their locations with country commissioners, and limit hives within two miles of mandarin groves.

We shall see this April how these regulations play out with both interested parties. Steve Lyle, Director of Public Affairs at the California Department of Food and Agriculture believes that these new rules should solve the problem, and said there was no pending lawsuits that he knew of that would affect this process.

Photo: alasam

I’ve always admired honeybees for their elegant cooperation, and of course because they make more honey than they need out of sheer industriousness, which I love to eat.  So I was excited when I heard that I could learn to keep bees myself, in the city. (after the jump: how to build a hive)

For the past few weeks, I’ve been attending the basic course for beekeepers given by the New York City Beekeeper’s Association.  The focus of the course, which will be given again in March (but is currently taking names for the waiting-list only), was on the order of the hive, hive maintenance, the diseases that can affect a hive and how to treat them without chemicals, how to build your own hive, managing swarms, and when and how to collect honey.  But there was one catch: this is an illegal activity in New York City.

Chicago has beehives on the roof of City Hall, and in other cities like San Francisco and Atlanta, beekeeping within city limits is permitted.  But here in New York, the health code disallows the keeping of “venomous insects.”

Luckily we have the food advocates at Just Food taking the lead with their petition to legalize beekeeping in New York, who have also found an ally in Councilman David Yasskey, who put forward a bill that would override the health code and make beekeeping legal.  He spoke to the New York City Beekeeper’s Association on Sunday about his proposal, in which he describes beekeeping as an economic and environmental enterprise. He spoke about honey-gathering as a small business, an alternative for those struggling in this economy.  “With bees come flowers,” he added, going on to say that beekeeping is a part of building a greener city.  As a second-tier approach to the problem, Just Food has worked to encourage a re-evaluation of the health code, which will be taking place this summer.  Unfortunately, this is not in time for beekeepers to feel at ease in mounting their new hives this April.

Many beekeepers have been keeping bees covertly in the city for years, including many of the members of the association.  The threat they face is a fine of up to $2000, though this is rarely enforced.  Enforcement follows a complaint by the neighbors, who might assume that bees are like wasps, and sting without reason.  But Italian honey bees of the variety used by beekeepers in the city, Apis mellifera ligustica, have been selectively bred for gentleness, disease resistance and industriousness.

While I have yet to find a place to keep bees myself, preferably cooperatively (like in a community garden), I do plan to take part in as many “hivings” (introducing bees to their new home), inspections, and honey collections as I can this year.  Hopefully, my helpfulness will render jarred, sweet rewards.

Check back here for updates on the legal status of beekeeping in New York City, and for more posts about visiting city hives.

Building a Langstroth Hive

The class watched on Sunday at the Tompkin’s Square Park Greenmarket as our instructors, the family beekeepers Andrew and his father Norm, showed us the art of building a Langstroth hive.  The Langstroth is the most commonly used hive-type, and that is because it has mastered the concept of “bee space,” allowing just enough area between frames for bees to pass so that they won’t build a bridge of comb, which makes it more difficult to inspect the hive.  The wood being used is locally grown and milled in Maine.  It is cut into individual pieces, which you then hammer, glue, paint and stack, and voila! You have a home for your new “pets.”  Here is the photographic explanation on building the “deep,” or the main partition where the bees will produce the honey for their food and where they will raise their larvae:

Inside the deep will be placed the frames:

Then you do the process over again for another deep, so the bees have room to grow into the hive and will be less likely to swarm, and a “shallow,” a smaller box where you might have honey to eat by August.

This week, food has made big news, beginning with yesterday’s op-ed by Nicolas Kristof in the New York Times arguing that “the most powerful signal Mr. Obama could send would be to name a reformer to a renamed position,” which he suggested should be the Secretary of Food.

Wednesday, in case you missed it, was the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, commemorated and re-affirmed by Frances Moore Lappe at The Huffington Post, where she takes on that rugged individualist spirit in the U.S. that exists at all costs.

While last week the news came that Subway food chains came to an agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers for higher wages for tomatoes picked in the fields, President Bush was busy making it more difficult for farmworkers to enter the country with new regulations.

As of this writing, over 30,000 Americans have already signed the fooddemocracynow.org petition, endorsed by Michael Pollan, Wendall Barry, Marion Nestle, Bill McKibben, Alice Waters, Wes Jackson, Eric Schlosser (and mentioned in Kristof’s op-ed) that supports sustainably-minded picks for heading the USDA.  Now that’s grassroots organizing that the President-elect can appreciate.

Another petition being floated around by the organization Just Food is one trying to legalize beekeeping in New York City.  Keeping bees in the city helps to fight colony collapse disorder, and works in concert with urban gardening efforts to help produce flourish.  And of course, keeping bees means more local honey! I know some city-dwellers fear being stung, but I hope to take an urban beekeeping course in February.

Photo: Tacuina sanitatis (14th century)