The Uncertain Future of Bees with National Bee Expert Dennis vanEngelsdorp

Dennis vanEngelsdorp is the Pennsylvania state apiarist and one of the nation's most prominent advocates and researchers of bees, whose numbers are dwindling worldwide because of the mysterious colony collapse disorder. Last year, he gave a talk at the TED conference explaining the significance of the problem. He is featured in The Last Beekeeper, and here is some of what he had to say in a conversation I had with him recently about some of the big questions around CCD.

CCD, explained

This is what we know. We know that the bees are dying from the equivalent of the flu, and so they're getting bad virus infections. But it's not the same flu--there's different strains and different types of viruses bees can get. CCD bees have a lot more pathogens than healthy bees do. The question is, why are these bees suddenly so susceptible to these different pathogens, and we don't have an answer to that yet.

We have to look at the various factors. It's like heart disease in people--you don't get heart disease from one factor, it's a combination of factors that contribute to heart disease. So that's what we're trying to do now is figure out what factors combined contribute to CCD.

I think it's really important to realize that honeybees, left on their own, aren't going to survive in North America, because they're not native and because of introduced pests; they sort of do require management. But it's not only honeybees, because there's thousands of other native bees, and they're in trouble too.

Bees are social in nature, so they form a behavior called altruistic suicide: somehow they know they're sick, and they're flying away from the hive to die so they don't contaminate the hive. It's an evolved response.

What people can do to help

First, think about becoming a beekeeper. It's the most relaxing, enjoyable thing you can ever imagine. There's nothing more rewarding than opening a colony of 40 to 50,000 individuals working in concert making this liquid gold. It's just, it's a glorious experience. Everyone should own a hive once, you really connect to nature, to bees, you know when things are flowering. It's a fantastic hobby.

Now, that isn't for everybody, so the second thing is to buy local honey. Local honey is the most ethical sweetener in the fact that it takes the least amount of carbon to get to your table. So buying local honey, and replacing sugar with honey, is something people can do.

The third thing is: plant a garden. And make a meadow, not a lawn. I think that's really important. I think it's astonishing how we decided that this green, flat lawn is a beautiful thing, when really it's a sterile desert.

And you should see the little green gems flying around in the flowers I have right now, it's very exciting.

Honeybees and food: the connection

Your apples, your cranberries, your nuts, almonds, macadamia nuts, some of your coffee [are all pollinated by bees]--and then indirectly, a lot of our dairy eats alfalfa and alfalfa seed production is reliant on honeybees. We need these bees if we want to produce that food. If we want to continue to eat apples, we need to have bees.

Honey + veganism = compatible?

I think most beekeepers aren't in this to make money, they do it because once you're stung, it's in your blood and you're always a beekeeper. It's done with a lot of love and a lot of care. And I certainly think that the environmental problems of producing organic sugar, even, are far worse than the environmental consequences of producing local honey.

I think another vegan idea is to look at individuals, but there is a very big body of thought that you don't look at a colony as a group of individuals, but the colony itself as an individual. And bees themselves are part of that larger individual.

And I think there are various ways of doing that--there are hives that might be good for urban beekeepers. I think the whole vegan idea is very noble in the sense that we want to minimize our impact on the earth. I think bees play a very important role in that, and I think that honey is better than some of the other [carbon intensive] vegan options.

A little history

Migratory beekeeping is something the ancient Egyptians first started, transporting bees up and down the Nile. So the idea of nomadic beekeeping is something that's had a very long history, and in America it's been happening since the '40s.

The other thing that's important to note is that this last winter, the guys who [transport] their bees in fact had less mortality than the guys who didn't.

Room for hope

One of the most rewarding parts of this whole thing--and when you work with bees, you love the bees, right. Seeing these dead bees is pretty depressing--but if there's any silver lining, it's the public interest.

But also, some of these corporate sponsors who realize that bees are important to their industry have really stood up. Burt's Bees has done a little bit, but Haagen Dazs stands out for their honeybee awareness campaign savethehoneybee.com, and the National Honey Board and of course beekeeper groups too.

Learn more for yourself from resources like pollinator.org and the Xerces Society.