World's Food Supply Needs Bees & Bees Need Help

One study found 40% of bee and butterfly pollinators are in decline around the world. As if bees didn't have enough problems with the neonicotinoid type of insecticide that has been causing their colonies to collapse since 2006, now they have to deal with the effects of climate change. When spring-like warming occurs too early, flowers can bloom before bees are ready to make their rounds. Crops of at least 140 nuts, fruits, and vegetables can suffer from a lack of pollination.

     In the US, clocks are about to be moved an hour ahead this weekend to signal the beginning of daylight saving time and the time to get seeds for planting flowers and food crops on commercial farms and in backyards, rain gardens at the curb, and community plots. The Sierra Club has been sending members packets of what the organization calls a "Bee Feed Flower Mix." These packets contain seeds for bee-tasty nectar and pollen from forget-me-nots, poppies, asters, blue flax, white sweet alyssum, lavender, fleabane daisies, and purple coneflowers. What is important is the seeds in these packets are Untreated.

     Untreated seeds are important because treated seeds, such as corn and soybean seeds, are coated with neonicotinoid insecticide to kill pests as soon as the seeds sprout. Frequent exposure to neuro-toxic pesticides that spread through a plant's leaves, pollen, and even nectar damage a bee's nervous and immune systems. While insects destroy plants, so too are strawberries, avocados, peaches, almonds, and other crops lost due to a lack of pollination by bees.

     Presented with a decade of evidence about simultaneous bee colony collapse and neonicotinoid use, the European Union suspended the use of neonicotinoid in 2013. In the US, the Department of Agriculture continues to study the problem, and the Saving America's Pollinators Act of 2015 failed to get out of a House of Representatives subcommittee.

     US consumers and farmers began to take matters into their own hands. There have been consumer campaigns against stores that sell neonicotinoid-treated plants. Gardeners started to grow bee-friendly flowers and to leave woody debris, leaf litter, and bare soil where bees can breed. You can find more on this subject in the earlier post, "Be Kind to Bees."

     Some farms also began to meet the bee health challenge. Besides planting vegetables, an organic farm couple in Minnesota planted flowering dogwood and elderberry hedgerows to attract bees, butterflies, and other insects that pollinate their crops. General Mills, a company that uses honey, fruit, and vegetable ingredients requiring pollination, is working with the Xerces Society and the Department of Agriculture to preserve pollinator habitat on 100,000 acres of US farmland. A plan to grow flowers and shrubs in narrow strips around crop fields is designed to restore seven million acres of land for pollinators in the next five years. But for farmers who usually grow single crops, a shift to diversify with flowers that attract pollinators is not easy. It requires analysis of farm land, how wet and dry it is, for example, and which plants will not attract the insects that could destroy their farm's crops.

     The battle to save bees, and the world's food supply, continues.