Honeybees vs. Native Bees

Honeybee

In one of the world's hot spots of bee biodiversity, scientists are finding that one species overwhelms total numbers of all others.

European honeybees have now hybridized with honeybees from southern Africa, both brought to the U.S. to pollinate agricultural crops. The resulting hybrid honeybees are more adaptable, able to tolerate and thrive in a much wider range of environmental conditions and outcompete North America's many species of native bees. In a study conducted in southern California, honeybees comprised up to 90% of insect visitors to blooming plants in the area. The study's lead author, Travis Hung, concluded that, "It's almost insignificant the number of native pollinators we have now."

Consequences of this include plummeting native biodiversity with honeybees now constituting 98% of total bee biomass in that California study area. And a similar pattern is emerging elsewhere. Another study indicated that this phenomenon may also cause a decline in some native flora that honeybees don't pollinate. Hung added, "We need to start looking at honeybees not as wildlife in the U.S. but as a managed species like chickens and cattle." He quoted a popular maxim in pollinator ecology: "Keeping honeybees to 'save the bees' is like keeping chickens to save the birds."

This is one more example of humans' naively harmful efforts to satisfy our singular desires.

To investigate the country-wide effect of this phenomenon, as well as other stressors on the well-being of native pollinator species , in 2018 the Xerces Society initiated the national bumblebee survey that's conducted annually by hundreds of volunteers. If you missed my earlier post on this effort, take a peek now.