No bees? Not just strange, but scary
Dave
Lindorff
(is an investigative journalist living
in Maple Glen)
Where
are the bees?
As
an unwilling and disgruntled suburbanite,
I take great pride in my dandelion crop.
Over the decade that I have owned my 2.3-acre
lot in Maple Glen, just north of Philadelphia,
I have watched as the dandelion population
in my lawn has grown year on year.
One
reason I've enjoyed the display is that
I know these bright-yellow-flowered plants,
which bloom early and continue blooming
well into fall, are popular with honeybees.
Given all the problems the bees have been
having with insecticides, destruction
of natural habitat, and the like, I'm
happy to give them some help.
I
remember that when I was a kid growing
up in rural Connecticut, getting stung
by a honeybee was almost a weekly occurrence
that went along with going barefoot in
the lawn. (My parents liked dandelions,
too.)
Today,
though, you could walk all day barefoot
around my yard and never get stung.
There's
not a honeybee to be seen.
I
walked two miles recently around the neighborhood,
past plenty of dandelions, including through
a feral field full of them, and didn't
see a single bee. Not one. This is particularly
strange because in the first warm days
of spring, the hives are usually out in
full force trying to replenish supplies
after a long winter and in anticipation
of a big period of egg-laying and hatching
of larvae.
And
it's not just dandelions.
Behind
my house is a wild cherry tree. A few
days ago, it was in full bloom. Ordinarily,
this would be an occasion for a true bee
fiesta. The tree at this time in prior
years was virtually a cloud of buzzing
insects, all zipping from flower to flower.
This
year, there was not a bee to be seen on
the entire tree.
This
is beyond strange. It's downright scary.
When
you consider that perhaps half the plants
in nature depend upon pollinators like
bees to reproduce, you have to wonder
what a future without bees holds - not
just for the animals that live on those
plants, but for human beings.
And
it's not just honeybees that are missing.
Honeybees, after all, are immigrants from
Europe, and the Americas survived quite
nicely without them before their arrival
with the colonists. But the native bees
- ground bees and bumblebees, for example
- are gone, too. The only bees I've seen
since the spring began are wood bees -
large, clumsy-looking, bumblebee-like
creatures that bore neat circular holes
into the wood of the house and lay their
eggs in solitary nests. Thank heavens
for them, or there wouldn't be a bee on
my property.
But
even several hundred wood bees can hardly
compensate for the total absence of other
pollinators.
What's
happening here?
There
are a lot of possible culprits: climate
change, ubiquitous microwave radiation,
overuse of herbicides and pesticides,
stress, and lowered immunity to fungal,
viral, bacterial and mite infections,
or perhaps a combination of all of the
above.
My
feeling, though, is one of dark foreboding.
When
something as basic as bees vanishes from
the scene as quickly as this, you know
we're in Big Trouble.