My passion for beekeeping began decades ago and the more I learn, the more I am in awe of these wonderful creatures. Late March, we are getting another four hives and four queens. You see one of her queen in this photo (identified with a white dot) in all her magnificence attended by her worker bees, Beekeeping is a life-long journey that is both inspiring and deeply connecting to nature around us and the need to preserve it.
“If the bee disappeared off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live.”
You’ve probably seen this quote, usually attributed to Albert Einstein, in connection with colony collapse disorder (CCD), a mysterious disease that is sweeping through US and European honeybee hives. Honeybees do play an important role in mass flowering crops, those, such as blueberries that blossom at exactly the same time each year. If you grow such plants as a monoculture, there won’t be enough food to support wild pollinators year round. The only option then is to truck in honeybee hives, moving them northward with the season.
Pesticides, notably DDT, have been found to directly cause ecological damage in the past. But not all problems have a single cause. It is possible that neonicotinoids are one factor among many that are implicated in CCD. Although hard figures on populations are hard to come by, there is evidence that the diversity of pollinators has been declining. Beekeeping becomes more important than ever to preserve the diversity of our pollinating sources.