Re-visiting Our Impact on Native Pollinators
Humans often get lost in the world of honey bees—since they have a commercial market value as generalist pollinators—and leave out the importance of other native pollinators. Honey bees are strong generalist pollinators, meaning they are capable of pollinating a wide range of species, whereas native bees are often specialist pollinators capable of pollinating a small number of species. In August of last year, Buddha Bee Apiary posted a blog that explored our responsibility as beekeepers to advocate for wild pollinators, with a focus on wild bee species. One of the best ways to support local pollinators is by ensuring they have the correct environment—namely a high level of flora biodiversity.
(We know, easier said than done…)
It is no secret that Buddha Bee Apiary focuses most of its educational outreach and brings one species of pollinator to peoples’ properties: The Honey Bee. This blog revisits the important relationship between beekeeping and native pollinators, this time exploring the ways Buddha Bee Apiary is consciously considering native pollinators in our practices.
Native Pollinator Advocacy at Buddha Bee Apiary
First and foremost, we do not associate with any “save the bees” marketing materials. This campaign was initially started when Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) was a huge problem for beekeepers around the world. CCD is a phenomenon where most worker bees in a colony disappear and leave behind a queen, plenty of food, and a few nurse bees to care for the remaining brood and the queen. This was incredibly concerning and nobody could figure out why it was happening! In the last decade tons of money has been pumped into honey bee research, and our understanding of CCD and honey bees has been bolstered. Losing honey bees to CCD is no longer a major risk (it can still occur, of course!), and therefore this advertisement that we need to “save the bees” does not reflect the latest honey bee knowledge we have. Just because CCD is not currently a major threat to honey bees doesn’t mean there aren’t other new threats that have taken over the spotlight.
When this campaign was making waves in the United States in the mid 2000’s, we felt that it was being used to gain followers as consumers and not followers as honey bee allies. This campaign also forgot a very important part of pollination: honey bees are not the only pollinators! We want to touch our community as honey bee allies while considering the vital importance of native pollinators.
Colony Collapse Disorder was caused by the compounding of many different factors, all likely with human origins. Image courtesy of Ohio State, Population Ecology.
There are multiple ways Buddha Bee Apiary has established or altered its practices to be mindful of native pollinators.
We keep a really small apiary! We have one “out yard” where we house between 20-40 hives. The out yard is located at Interfaith Food Shuttle Farm, so we are providing the farm with strong pollination efforts while also ensuring adequate access to food for the surplus number of hives in one location. Without going into great detail, Food Shuttle Farm provides locally grown, chemical-free produce for those in need. We are thankful for this partnership and the opportunity for our honey bees to pollinate produce grown using clean, organic practices.
The Buddha Bee Apiary outyard, located at Interfaith Food Shuttle Farm.
As a small, local apiary our focus is not on crop pollination (crop pollination at Food Shuttle Farm is an added bonus!), honey production, or wax harvesting. We do not transport our hives from state to state to participate in seasonal agriculture pollination events. We do not endlessly grow our apiary to increase our profits from honey and wax production. Our goals are supporting the local pollinating capabilities of honey bees, sharing the joy and intrigue of honey bees with our community, and harvesting only the excess honey.
Our Host-A-Hive program places hives in people’s backyards, on company properties, and at schools. Through this program, we only ever place one to three hives at a single location. Honey bees travel up to three miles away from their hive to pollinate, so from a host’s property there is plenty of flora that needs pollinating. By limiting the number of hives at one location, we are striving to leave plenty of the pollinating for native species.
When building hives with different box sizes, it is important to give the bees designated spaces for “living quarters” and for honey production. The living quarters are where the queen lays her eggs and the worker bees bring in some nectar and pollen, specifically to feed the developing larvae. At Buddha Bee Apiary, we used to give two deep boxes for the bees living quarters but have switched to using one deep box and one medium box. This forces the population of each hive to remain lower, which prevents our honey bees from overtaking the pollination efforts in their neighborhood.
This is an example of our stereotypical living quarters arrangement. Once the honey flow starts, we add a queen excluder (to prevent the queen from laying in the honey boxes) on top of the medium box and 1+ additional medium boxes strictly for honey production.
Besides following good beekeeping practices, the forefront of our mission at Buddha Bee apiary is to be an advocacy resource for our hosts, the local community, and anybody who stumbles upon us. We always, always support our hosts coming out with us during our inspections and focus on providing a fun, interactive learning environment. In the past, we have put on speaking events highlighting solitary pollinators with a key focus on identification and how to support them. We also source locally raised seeds from Garrett Seed to encourage hosts to plant these and other native species on their properties. Honey bees and native pollinators both provide an unmatched value and beauty to our environment, supporting one does not mean you have to demonize the other. Let’s keep asking questions on how we can support both!
For more information on increasing the flora biodiversity in your North Carolinian backyard or garden check out our blog What Flowers do Honeybees Like?. If you want an endless list of native species to plant in your backyard, the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation is a great resource.
We recognize that rearing bees impacts native pollinators, even despite our conscious practices. Every time humans get involved with the environment, it is likely that we don’t do it as well as the natural world did it first. All we can aim for is achieving some sort of balance between our respectful impact and the existence of untouched nature.