A world without bees would… sting, to say the least.
It would be a place where up to a third of our crops could be affected.
A world without the sweetness of honey, or its medicinal properties that can heal wounds
and could guard against everything from allergies to cancer.
A world where our entire economy, health, and even your second cup of coffee are all
in jeopardy.
But with beekeepers losing up to half their colonies each year, scientists, farmers, engineers
and, of course, beekeepers are foraging for answers and creative solutions.
So, how close are we to saving the bees?
The last time you heard about bees in the news, it might have been connected with a
mysterious phenomenon called “colony collapse disorder.”
CCD was a series of strange, sudden disappearances of entire colonies, where workers left
behind a queen, some young, and plenty of food, but not so much as a note.
- Which makes it really hard to know what happened, as if you're trying to do kind of
an autopsy without a body.
We still haven’t pinned down the exact cause of CCD.
But researchers agree that a mix of the perilous four Ps was likely to blame: parasites, pathogens,
pesticides, and poor nutrition.
And though reports of CCD itself have waned, those four factors combined are still a major
threat to bee health.
- The Department of Agriculture makes surveys every year to see how many colonies survive
the winter months.
The rate of losses for the beekeepers are approximately 40-45%.
Evan Henry’s research team believes that the first step in saving the bees is to know,
in real time, what the status of a colony is.
That’s why they developed Nectar, an in-hive sensor and data management platform for beekeepers.
- So here's this beacon, our sensor device that we installed a couple of weeks ago.
It collects temperature, humidity, sound, position data and sends it to the gateway
here, which is solar powered.
And it sends everything over 3G or 4G to the cloud.
The ability to remotely monitor and manage their hives in real time is immensely valuable
to commercial beekeepers, who might have as many as 1000 hives spread across large areas.
- We can help tell if the hive is queenless, if the queen's laying eggs are not, if the
hive got knocked over by a bear or a predator... we're developing sensors that have longer
batteries that are more affordable and more durable to survive the inside of the beehive
for a year on end, without recharging.
We analyze that data using various machine learning and AI algorithms where beekeepers
can see the status of all the hives that are connected as well as perform different management
operations online or on their phone.
This allows the beekeepers to be alerted immediately to any changes in their hives, giving them
more time to visit a colony, see what could be affecting it, and save the bees in danger.
Or, it can show them that everything’s okay.
- So you can see here this is a brood pattern of a healthy queen who lays eggs in every cell.
When the queen is failing or less healthy, she misses cells and has more of a shotgun
pattern of the brood.
But here we see the queen's very healthy, productive.
This hive is clearly healthy.
With information like this, beekeepers can better monitor which of the four Ps are affecting
their colonies.
But we also want to prevent these problems from happening in the first place.
Pests, like the wax moth and hive beetle, feast on everything the bees make... including
their young. And they leave behind a rotten-orange-smelling yeast that smothers the hive.
But even more destructive is a tiny mite, aptly named "Varroa destructor."
When the Asian mite encountered European bees, it became an insidious pest, slowly wearing
down their immune systems over time.
- And with that compromise of the immune system, those diseases have increased several fold.
Some strains of those viruses became more abundant and more lethal.
Pathogens, like these viruses, are a nasty threat of their own.
In particular, a disease called Deformed Wing Virus causes a baby bee’s wings develop
too curly and shriveled to function.
And even if bees don’t show signs of the disease, they can still carry and spread it.
This leads to trouble foraging and shorter lifespans, which can be disastrous for a colony
trying to make it through a long winter.
- A lot of colonies come out with very, very low numbers of workers that are not enough
to get our colony going.
So what do we do?
- Let's pump them up.
Let's feed the bee something that even if he gets attacked by a mite, it can have the
superhero strength to fight the diseases.
Some think that “something” is a super vitamin of sorts
derived from polypore mushroom extract.
When administered to hives in a sugar water solution, it resulted in a 79-fold reduction
in instances of Deformed Wing.
Others are using formic acid and menthol to fend off the mites.
Another solution?
Neurotic queens.
- People are looking into selecting queens that their colonies are very clean, very,
almost neurotic.
They check on every cell and if they don't like the scent, if they think something's wrong
with that pupa, they'll sacrifice that baby bee,
they will interrupt that varroa mite breeding cycle.
But there are more Ps to contend with.
Pesticides may damage male drone bees’ sperm, affecting their ability to reproduce.
But the ultimate key to saving the bees could be improving their poor nutrition.
To build up the fat they need to make immune proteins, bees require certain amino acids
in their diet.
- Bees that are fed on a variety of flowers do better than those that are fed on one
or two crops.
And as we simplify the environment, as we create great landscapes for agriculture, we
reduce the biodiversity of the forage.
That’s why farmers are reserving parts of their land for plants besides their primary
crop.
We haven’t even mentioned wild bees, but there are ways to help them as well, like
leaving part of your lawn overgrown.
These little yellow critters provide an estimated $15 billion service to U.S. agriculture alone
and are an important piece of Earth’s ecosystem, so we definitely want to keep them around.
Between planting wildflowers, installing high-tech sensor systems, and boosting their immunity,
we have plenty of tools to preserve our furry little friends.
But will we do it in time?
How close are we to saving the bees?
- We're closer to saving the bees than we were ten years ago.
We have sophisticated tools but we also create a lot of disruption in the environment.
Diet means a lot for bees.
And so our success depends on how good we make on the promise of keeping diversity and
forage for bees.
I'm actually encouraged by the concern overall for pollinators and I think we are going to
have to change the way we do some things to keep them around.
- In terms of securing our food supply, I think we're close.
Next five to ten years, Nectar system and other data collection techniques will be able
to uncover and pinpoint sources of why honeybees are dying.
Using data, I think we'll be able to improve the efficiency and efficacy of the industry
which will result in lower hive mortality, higher productivity and better pollination
services for the agricultural system.
Fly on over to more episodes of How Close Are We? on this playlist.
Don't forget to subscribe, and come back to Seeker for your daily dose of science.
Thanks for watching!