"HoneyBees" news and stories

It seems that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which is supposed to, you know, protect our environment, is about as effective as a teacher letting kids slack on their homework. Documents have recently leaked -- thanks to a Colorado beekeeper -- that show that the EPA approved of the pesticide clothianidin in 2003, which is knowingly toxic to bees and is already banned in Germany, France, Italy and Slovenia, reports Grist.

Not only do bees ensure the life cycle of plants (so to kill them in order to grow more plants seems painfully counterproductive), they also create honey, which is as diverse in flavor as the fields of flowers around a hive, and in its raw form is even believed to counteract allergies. (Honey from your area contains a small dose of your area's pollen, much like a vaccine.) But frankly, that's all shot to dust if this pesticide stays on the market.

Introduced in spring 2003 by German agrichemical manufacturer Bayer, despite warnings and the need for proper tests on how it would affect bees, clothianidin was used in billions of plants along the corn belt. And in 2009, Bayer made about $262 million in sales, reports Grist.

Not so coincidentally, bees have been dying off steadily ever since, from what researchers call colony-collapse disorder. Like other pesticides, clothianidin is "taken up by a plant's vascular system and expressed through pollen and nectar," Grist cites from the Pesticide Action Network of North America (PANNA), which leaked the EPA documents with the organization Beyond Pesticides.

Supporters says a new Kentucky law requiring mining companies to include native flowering plants in their mountaintop reclamation programs should prop up honeybee populations across the state, helping to preserve Appalachia's distinctive culinary traditions.

"Most of our food depends on honeybee pollination," explains Eastern Kentucky University senior researcher Tammy Horn, who abandoned a career teaching English literature to fight for honeybees. "Currently, we're losing one out of every three colonies. It's a crisis."

Surface mining isn't responsible for the decimation of the honeybee population, Horn clarifies: Disease and the decline of beekeeping are just two among many factors contributing to the problem. "If we quit mining tomorrow, we'd still have a bee crisis," Horn says.

You've already heard about colony collapse disorder: Honeybees pollinate many of our crops; honeybees are in a state of precipitous decline; without honeybees, our food supply will decline, too. It's a frightening scenario, and if you happened to catch the latest news out of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, you were probably left with a sense of despair. "Bees are in more trouble than ever," warned The New York Times yesterday. "A quick federal survey indicates a heavy bee die-off this winter." Yikes.

Today, however, the same paper explained the situation in more depth, and -- as with most topics -- there's a good-news, bad-news angle here. Marcelo Aizen, a researcher at Argentina's National Scientific and Technical Council, and Lawrence Harder, a professor of pollination ecology at the University of Calgary, say that the truth about colony collapse is "not nearly so dire" as we think. For one thing, while certain crop-growing areas do indeed show a sharp decline in honeybees, the global trend indicates the domesticated honeybee is actually on the rise. Furthermore, not all crops are as dependent on pollination as we imagine. "Overall," the researchers write, "About one-third of our worldwide agricultural production depends to some extent on bee pollination, but less than 10 percent of the 100 most productive crop species depend entirely on it. If pollinators were to vanish, it would reduce total food production by only about 6 percent."

Bees fly to the hive on the hotel rooftop. Photo: The Fairmont Washington, D.C.

Some permanent hotel guests in the nation's capital are definitely causing a buzz. The Fairmont Washington, D.C. recently brought 105,000 Italian honeybees to their roof to make the sweetener for the hotel's restaurant, Juniper.

As "chief beekeepers," executive sous chef Ian Bens and executive pastry chef Aron Weber share the responsibilities of maintaining the three colonies -- Casa Bianca, Casa Bella and Casa Blanca.

So why bees? Weber tells Slashfood he got the idea when he visited the Fairmont Royal York in Toronto and saw their rooftop hives flourishing in an urban setting. The D.C. Fairmont already had an interior courtyard garden that produced fresh herbs and edible flowers like lavender, peppermint and rosemary, so the bees seemed like a logical step to further extend the chefs' ideology in keeping products as fresh and local as possible.

Seeing sunflowers makes me smile. They are so bright and cheery. Now, however, I have even more of a reason to smile about sunflowers.

I had heard about the mysterious disappearance of the bees. As mentioned previously on this blog, Haagen-Daaz has done a good job spreading the news. They have a wealth of information on their Help the Honey Bees Site. Not surprisingly, most of their campaign revolves around buying ice cream. I love ice cream and support the cause, but what else could I do?

The Great Sunflower Project gives you a great opportunity to help out in another way. Sunflowers attract bees that subsequently pollinate the plants we eat. If you register by June 15, The Great Sunflower Project will send you sunflower seeds to plant in your garden. They then ask that you monitor the bees that visit your sunflowers. Don't worry, they make it easy by giving you lots of helpful hints on how to effectively monitor your backyard visitors. They will use your information to help get a big picture of the state of bees in urban areas.

Is it really bad to say at this point that bees scare me and I'm not sure I want extra bees in my yard? Probably, but I think saving fruits, vegetables, and one of the loves of my life, honey, wins out over my fear of bees. I also don't need to plant the sunflowers right next to my porch swing.

Check out The District Domestic for more on the plight of the honey bee and what you can do to help.