Nature's Balance - It seems that for many the focus of beekeeping is restricted to their bees, their main objective being to maintain strong healthy colonies, and to have a good crop of honey. There is nothing wrong in that in it's self but that focus more often than not extends only as far as their own colonies and ends at the apiary gate. Little consideration is given to the fact that those bees are only one of many pollinator species that exist in the natural environment and the population numbers and species variety are not random but specific to the surrounding habitat, the biological (plants, shrubs, trees, animal life, all the living organisms) and non-biologic elements (geology, land form, hydrology, weather and climate) that make that habitat. All those elements work constantly together in balance, natures balance which is sensitive to change and easier to upset than you might imagine.
Native honeybees are a part of the biological element of all except the most extreme habitats in the UK. Their numbers would normally be regulated by the ecosystems they exist in, by the natural limiting factors that control the population dynamics in any given discreet area. At least that is how things are intended to work throughout our planetary biosphere, however as with most other problems with the planets health, the impact of human activity has turned what should be a healthy self-sustaining population of native honeybees into colonies of mongrel bees entirely dependent on human intervention. I refer of course to Varroa, introduced by commercial imports the tiny mites to which our native honeybees have no defense have rendered our them unable to survive on their own. It leaves us in no doubt about the vulnerability of our native honeybees, and of our habitats and ecosystems that make up our natural environment (the one that is less 40% of it's native species in the last 50 years, and counting!), and the cost of what is basically human ignorance and greed. Our wild honeybee colonies, that have existed on these islands for 9000 years or more, have been decimated by those mites to the point that our honeybee populations are now existing almost entirely reliant on beekeepers who are on top of Varroa Control and subjecting them to all kinds of unnatural treatments, chemicals, and are frequently replaced by imports as they die off. This is not a sustainable situation and it's no surprise that wild or feral populations have little or no chance of survival, the balance of nature where honeybees are concerned at least, has been well and truly tipped over.
Spill Over - Everything we do do in beekeeping has an effect and a consequence for nature. A prime example is the Varroa mite, it didn't come on it's own, it brought and quickly spread Deformed Wing Virus (DWV), a nasty disease that causes deformity, shortens bees lives, and disrupts their senses and ability to perform their normal functions including mating and their ability to orientate themselves back to their nests. That is bad enough but disease 'spill over' from honeybees has resulted in DWV now being found in Bumblebee populations. When colonies of strong and vigorous honeybees arrive or are kept en masse in a locality, they have an immediate effect on the local habitat, out-competing the locals, disrupting the population dynamics of the local ecosystems while passing on any disease to those susceptible to them. The results aren't immediately obvious but slowly and surely the web of life, the biodiversity, that existed in that habitat will start to disintegrate.
I've used Varroa here as an example simply because it is now widely known even to non-beekeepers, and you might argue that it would have arrived here on it's own eventually and still caused the problems it brings, but that is not true. Species population dynamics are controlled by natures limiting factors including, physical barriers, geology and landscape, climate, weather, distance, species genetics and traits, predators, disease, habitat, and many more subtle things that we would never normally think of. It would have required all of those limiting factors to change across the entire distance from Varroas origins to our shores in order to get here on it's own and in that unlikely instance the native UK honeybee would no longer be the species we know to be indigenous to our islands, it would be the species that is the Varroas natural host.
Beyond existing beekeepers that have yet to acknowledge or perhaps even recognise the effects on nature, new beekeepers are taking up the craft more than ever, encouraged by media and marketing, citing their number one reason for doing so as 'helping the environment.' Little do they know what's really involved, and the situation previously described won't be covered in any beginners syllabus, although it's more likely they will learn through online videos and the would be 'experts' who offer to teach them to be beekeepers and set them up with colonies for a cut of the profit. This just adds to, and compounds things, even further. Without a deeper understanding of honeybees and their place in nature, they will definitely not be 'helping the environment'.
There are problems, our beekeeping is not environmentally aware enough and needs to move forward to ensure native honeybee sustainability without adversely affecting nature. Where do we start!
Iain D
