The Peril of Perishing Pollinators

In the 2008 movie The Happening, Mark Wahlberg plays a science teacher. In one classroom scene - as if director M. Night Shyamalan were toying with the audience - a tantalizing glimpse of a blackboard in the background may be seen at times. Scrawled upon that slate surface is an enigmatic and prophetic warning from Albert Einstein. It warns us of calamitous consequences in the future, if anything dire ever threatens the common bee. "If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live."

Einstein said that? Holy Crap, Batman! Since the news has been covering this story for some time, detailing just such an occurrence, it is a sobering sentiment to consider. And, wait a minute. Four years? This movie came out in 2008? Uhhh, wouldn't that make it 2012? How many coprolytes have to hit the fan blades before we wake up? Some really bad stuff is looking like it might coincide that year which, incidentally, is the Year of the Dragon on the Chinese calendar. Pigs, rats, oxen, tigers, rabbits, snakes, horses, sheep, monkeys, roosters, and dogs. Those I can deal with. Dragons? How much more evocative can we get? My imagination goes into hyperdrive.

In my mind I envision the form of an obsidian cumulus thunderhead, suggestive of the livid face of some wrathful Supernal Being, who bellows sardonically in stentorian fashion, "Hey, Earthlings, how would you like a nice little Dragon's Breath solar flare to go with your polar shift? Oh, and don't forget. The Mayans ordered 'Take Out' for you. It just hasn't been delivered yet. They got you the family special, which includes tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and even a carton of planetary smackdown by a brown dwarf sumo named Nibiru. Want some seasoning? We'll throw in climate change, flooding, and famine, no extra charge. Plenty of fortune cookies too. They all say the same thing, though. 'Eat fast.' "

Well, it turns out that Einstein never made this quote. At least not according to David Mikkelson, who runs the urban myth-debunking Web site Snopes.com. He conducted an investigation, and was satisfied enough by the results to declare it a false attribution. My take on his conclusion? Although the "quote" might have some validity, it was likely associated with Einstein in the hopes that some of his gravitas would rub off, endowing those cautionary words with his imprimatur. For the purposes of this piece, though, it doesn't matter if PeeWee Herman said it. It's enough that it was merely brought to our attention.

There are some genuinely far-reaching repercussions that could result if the annihilation of the bee population continues. About one third of the close to 240,000 flowering plants in North America depend upon the honeybee for pollination. That number increases to 75% when you include birds, bats, or other insects necessary to ensure their propagation. According to Wikipedia, pollination by insects is called entomophily. Entomophily is a form of pollination whereby pollen is distributed - from the stamen of a plant to its stigma, or to that of another - by insects, particularly bees, butterflies, moths, flies, and beetles.

The FDA estimates that nearly $15 billion of US crops - primarily nearly all berries and nuts, most fruit, and also many vegetables - are dependent upon pollination by the honeybee. Over ninety diverse crops worldwide - one out of every three bites of the food we consume - rely on Apis mellifera for pollination. Name a few? How about "apples, nuts, avocados, soybeans, asparagus, broccoli, celery, squash and cucumbers. And lots of the really sweet and tart stuff, too, including citrus fruits, peaches, kiwi, cherries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, cantaloupe and other melons." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18442426/

What first appears as a problem of limited scope, grows in magnitude the more you consider it. It's not just that Granola would be more expensive. We could grudgingly accept more limited availability of the affected products. But with higher prices, consuming a well-rounded diet would become harder. Nutritional deficiencies would manifest among individuals who couldn't afford vitamin supplements. And what if the ramifications of the bees disappearance were much worse than that? In some ecosystems, the honeybee is considered a keystone species, meaning the loss of the bee could prove to be not only debilitating, but induce the disintegration of those structures.

If the bees were to vanish, it could lead to the destruction of entire ecosystems. Plants that were dependent upon the bee for pollination would decline, eventually to disappear. Their loss would eliminate a food source for species that fed upon them, threatening their existence as well. Predators would be affected by the loss of prey. The loss of crops, such as alfalfa, would rob cattle of forage. The Domino Effect could occur and, one after another, species begin to topple. A snowball rolling downhill gathers momentum as it accelerates. Predicting its direction, the size of its eventual effect, or the force of its impact are impossible.

There are other insects which share the workload. But in many cases they do not pollinate as efficiently, nor on as widespread a basis, as the honeybee. This would impose a limitation on the size of commercial operations. Worldwide, 3/4 of the crops we depend on for food require pollination, and the threat of diminishing numbers of insect pollinators is not limited to the honeybees alone. Other species, endangered by loss of habitat, insecticides, pesticides, and specific threats peculiar to theirselves, are rapidly diminishing in number as well. Are we soon to be left to rely on wind pollination? Our food supplies would be severely limited, should that ensue. Anyone want another bowl of gruel?

So, what happened? When did it start? Reports of vanishing bees and die-offs have happened before. There were reports of disappearances that date back to 1869, with recurrences in 1923, 1965, and during the Seventies. When the Varroa destructor mite first made an appearance in the States in 1986, it wrought carnage, lethally devastating bees. Some areas experienced hive mortality of nearly fifty percent. Again, in 2004, stories began to surface in some eastern states of bees dying under mysterious circumstances. But it wasn't until November of 2006, when a Pennsylvania beekeeper began inspecting the hives in his wintering quarters in Tampa Bay, Florida, that vanishing bees gained notoriety, and they became Big News.

David Hackenberg, an apiarist from West Milton, Pennsylvania, was astonished to discover that most of his bees had gone missing. His hive counts were down 90%. Queens might be present, along with capped brood, but there was a complete absence of workers, with no bodies of dead bees near the colony. Appalled, unable to make sense of this decimation, he reported his loss to someone he hoped could help. He contacted the US Department of Agriculture. And then he spoke with Diana Cox-Foster, Phd, at Penn State University. Cox-Foster is one of the foremost experts on bee diseases in the country, having spent years exhaustively investigating the maladies that can afflict them.

Dr. Cox-Foster consulted with other researchers, those who were like-minded, as well as other experts in human diseases. She convinced them to help. A cadre of scientific peers was quickly assembled to form a working group, assisting in the investigation of what was soon to be labeled Colony Collapse Disorder. That group broadened to include additional representatives from the Department of Agriculture, delegates from state beekeeping organizations, and researchers from five states. A task force now operates under the acronym MAAREC, the Mid-Atlantic Apiary Research and Extension Consortium.

The search for answers continues under MAAREC's aegis, augmented by research from disparate global sites. It's critical to the agriculture industry to find answers because, to date, estimates of total bee losses are approaching 45%. That's about 1.1 million hives. Colony Collapse Disorder - the criteria for which call for that 50% or more of beekeeper's dead colonies are found without bees and/or with very few dead bees in the hive or apiary - has been discovered to have affected at least twenty-four states and parts of Canada. And the problem of the bees disappearance is not limited to the United States.It is overseas as well. The bee population in Europe has suffered devastating losses.

Wikepedia states: "Since the beginning of the 1990s, France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Greece, Slovenia and the Netherlands have been affected by honey bee disappearances, though it is far from certain that all or any of these reported non-U.S. cases are indeed CCD." Nevertheless, whatever label is assigned to categorize the vanishing of our bees, the result is the same. They are dying. We need to determine the cause, and develop a cure, if that is possible. Otherwise, the loss of these pollinators could result in an irreversible decline in our food sources. And if that happens, their fate could become ours.


Part One of Three