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Myrmecos1's mixed feelings about honey bees
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 antdude |
Myrmecos1's mixed feelings about honey bees |
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Posts: 17064 05/23/2008 3:38 PM
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Quote of the Week: "No, I'd prefer a cooler WITHOUT an ant-door, thank you..." --unknown. Ant/AntDude @
The Ant Farm (Personal Web Site), Ant's Quality Foraged Links (AQFL), and The Ant Farm and Myrmecology Forum.
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MrILoveTheAnts |
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TAFMF Addict Posts: 3133 05/23/2008 5:18 PM |
I've been very conflicted with the issue myself. The trouble is the way farms are designed and the amount of insecticide used. I would love to see a farm
that devoted every 5 rows of crop to nesting blocks and mixed wildflowers. Would this be sustainable without something taking over though is the question?
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Mrmacophyl |
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Posts: 3394 05/26/2008 5:45 AM
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I am in total agreement with Myrmecos on this one. As on who studies native bees. I can tell you from first hand experience what a devastating impact honey
bees have had on the native populations. Even in areas where there is no agriculture, if the are honey bees the natives are about gone or at the very least
limited in activity periods.
Insectator Insectorum
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MrILoveTheAnts |
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TAFMF Addict Posts: 3133 05/26/2008 11:43 AM |
I can name two plants in my area that are suddenly swarmed by hundreds of different species of native bees the moment they bloom.
The winged sumac http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v735/mrilovetheants/Bees/GreenFlowerTree.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v735/mrilovetheants/Bees/GreenFlower.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v735/mrilovetheants/Bees/GreenFlower4.jpg Bees on the winged sumac. I would say Honey bees made up about 1/4 to 1/3 of the bees and wasps visiting. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v735/mrilovetheants/Bees/GreenFlowerBees3.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v735/mrilovetheants/Bees/GreenFlowerBees2.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v735/mrilovetheants/Bees/GreenFlowerBees.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v735/mrilovetheants/Bees/GreenFlowerWasp7.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v735/mrilovetheants/Bees/GreenFlowerWasp6.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v735/mrilovetheants/Bees/GreenFlowerWasp5.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v735/mrilovetheants/Bees/GreenFlowerWasp4.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v735/mrilovetheants/Bees/GreenFlowerWasp3.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v735/mrilovetheants/Bees/GreenFlowerWasp2.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v735/mrilovetheants/Bees/GreenFlowerWasp.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v735/mrilovetheants/Bees/GreenFlower3.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v735/mrilovetheants/Bees/GreenFlower2.jpg And there were even quite a few others that I missed. Many of the small mason and digger bees seemed to avoid me. A few didn't interest me much or at the time seemed scary to approach. I recall a few much much larger then the honets I'm used to seeing, but were still smaller then the Cicada Killers. And a curious thing I noticed was not all of the trees were swarming with bees, which I can't explain. The other plant was a three year old Clethra alnifolia in a fellow beekeepers garden. I don't have photos for this one but it had even greater diversity then the winged sumac, though a much smaller plant. It is a native plant, by far the BEST smelling I've ever been around. I'd say the native bees were by far the dominant force here. I only saw two honey bees, but perhaps that was the problem. So many native bees, to many, all having to compete for the same nectar of a single plant. I've observed in my own garden that honey bees don't really pollinate anything, it's all native bees doing the work. I want to say Honey Bees only go after flowering trees. I agree they are very likely the main reason for a lot of the invasive plants. I don't argue that at all. I've read a few facts that are vague and contradicting. They say Honey Bees because out forage the native bees and take about half of the nectar that's there. One book I read went as far to put a number on how many Bumbelbee queens die or are not developed because of one honey bee hive. And it was an outragious number too, something in the thousands. But bumblebees have a much longer tung and several of the smaller native bees can actually slip deeper into the flower. And honey bees even over look lots of the plants that are out there. Another fact was that native bees actually stimulate the plant to produce more nectar upon arrival. I have no idea what this refers to or how it works but it sounds like something only a hand full of the natives out there can do and only with certain plants. So, let's say Honey bees were not in my area. Would the native bee population suddenly sky rocket? Have I just named two plants that Honey bees don't like and are probably the only open food sources left to the native bees in the area? |
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MrILoveTheAnts |
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TAFMF Addict Posts: 3133 05/26/2008 8:53 PM |
Did some research on my own at the Xerces Society site. I see the evidence is there for farms and crops, and native bees are the superior pollinator. I
don't feel that honey bees should be blamed for the loss of native bee populations. In my mind, yes they are taking food from the native bees and that will
cause a population drop. But if you increase the amount of nesting space and food plants for the bees (not expand the farm but increase the plant diversity)
then there will be more food to go around.
Why aren't we petitioning the garden industry to make more native plants? We could kill two birds with one stone here and promote host plants to butterflies. |
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djecko |
#5 | |||
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Young Worker Ant Posts: 53 06/02/2008 8:21 PM |
It is all true, but the fact still is that we need someone to pollinate the crops and, with the local pollinator fauna heaving difficulties (as in most heavily
urbanized countries), Apis mellifera does the job.
Also, are there studies that show the negative impact of A mellifera on other pollinators? I think that they really shouldn't be treated as just another alien (tramp?) species, because they do perform an important ecological function. |
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MrILoveTheAnts |
#6 | |||
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TAFMF Addict Posts: 3133 06/02/2008 8:41 PM |
http://www.xerces.org/Pollinator_Insect_Conservation/Farming_for_Bees_2nd_edition.pdf
This is a blue print of how farmers can shift over to native pollinators once and for all. http://www.physorg.com/news76083012.html This is something I found funny. They say native bees make honey bees better pollinators because they attract them to different sexed flowers and say See this flower made more seeds because of that. But they don't touch the issue of how much the native bee contributed. As I see it it's unfair to say one species is the cause of the population drop of the rest. When you have 100% of the bees all striving to pollinate as many plants as possible and produce more seeds, more fruit, and more plants, it's just hard to see how 1% can screw it up for the rest. The argument that honey bees, because of their shorter tung only take half the food from the flower. You could just as easily say that Bumblebees are bad because their longer tung takes ALL the food from the flower, those greedy bastards! Back to what I was saying before though. If we increase the amount of foraging plants out there and habitat for the bees their populations would return regardless of the number of social bees. Honey bees, at least where I'm at, are cavity nester's. There are only so many hollow trees, poorly built houses, and beekeepers around. I fully support everything that is mentioned in Farming for Bees (at least I don't recall anything I disagree with). If farms around here started using more flowering cover crops it would only mean more honey for me. Actually a lot of the things they say make the Bumblebee superior can actually be found in feral (wild) hives of honey bees. Beekeepers who capture wild hives of honey bees have observed them active at 6am instead of 9am, they've been see flying out in the rain, they're great dealing with mites on their own. It's actually neat to see this. Managed hives tend to have their queens replaced and ones that are better honey produces as far as hives go. My question that I posed a few people is "Does honey production have anything to do with pollination?" No one has gotten back to me yet but it sounds like something easily for everyone to assume go hand and hand. If they find feral hives are actually better pollinators then it makes sense for beekeepers to try and breed feral genetics into their hives more, so they're not just stealing the food from other bees. |
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djecko |
#7 | |||
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Young Worker Ant Posts: 53 06/02/2008 9:48 PM |
MrILoveTheAnts wrote: As a rule yes, but it also depends on the type honey.
Fir and spruce honey and the likes of them are examples of honey from wind-pollinated plants.
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