Two Riverside Elementary School third-graders are taking action after they learned the honeybee population worldwide has been declining in recent years.
Analiese Garding and Oliver Kelm both recently read "The Mystery of Disappearing Honeybees," by Bo Grayson, in Kacee Barrett's third-grade literacy class. They were shocked to learn about colony collapse disorder and were wondering why more people weren't talking about the issue.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, colony collapse disorder threatens pollination and honey production, as well as the production of crops dependent on bees for pollination. In California, the almond crop alone requires 1.3 million colonies of bees, or approximately half of all honeybees in the U.S. "The Mystery of Disappearing Honeybees" lists apples, cherries, pears, strawberries, garlic and broccoli as crops threatened by colony collapse disorder.
"If the honeybees disappeared, then our children or our children's kids wouldn't know what strawberries, apples, cherries, pears, garlic or broccoli or anything like that is," Garding said.
Garding would especially miss strawberries and apples, while Kelm would be stung if pears, broccoli and cherries disappeared.
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According to the USDA, in late 2006, beekeepers became alarmed by the sudden death of honeybee colonies across the U.S. Investigations revealed outbreaks of unexplained colony collapse disorder may have been occurring for three or more years. In 2004, the USDA Agricultural Research Service responded to a site in Minnesota after claims of bee loss.
In general, bee pollination is responsible for a third of the food on grocery store shelves, said Don Jackson, president of the North Central Beekeepers Association. This includes most fruits and a large number of vegetables, he said, as well as alfalfa, which is used to feed cattle. Pollination accounts for $15 billion in added crop value, according to the USDA.
Insect pollination is especially important for apples, cherries, broccoli, kale and the seeds to grow onions, Jackson said.
According to the USDA, pollination involves moving pollen from one flower to another. In a way, it happens by accident, as bees are trying to collect pollen to bring back to their hives. Pollen they drop along the way from flower to flower helps flowers make seeds.
Sadly, there's no way to synthetically pollinate crops, Jackson said. There's no way hand pollination can replicate the job done by a few dense colonies of bees in an orchard, he said.
Garding was kind of scared of bees before she read the book, she said, because she can't tell the difference betweens bees that sting and bees that don't. But her grandmother's flowers attract a lot of honeybees in the summers, she said, and they like to pet those bees.
"If you see a bee, you just want to stand still," Garding said. "Just leave it alone and it won't do anything to you."
According to the USDA, colony collapse disorder could be caused by a single factor, or multiple factors working together. Some of these factors include bacteria, fungi, viruses, invasive mites, pesticide poisoning and stress caused by poor nutrition or migration.
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People have been debating the causes of colony collapse disorder for a while, Jackson said. One factor is how the agricultural pesticides or fungicides farmers use interact, sometimes lethally, with the miticides beekeepers use to prevent the spread of mites in their hives. These interactions haven't been closely studied, he said, but some researchers are hard at work on it.
Garding and Kelm both wonder why more people aren't talking about colony collapse disorder.
"I don't think a lot of people knew because we were the first ones at this school to read this book," Garding said. "My mom and dad thought that it would be kind of strange that honeybees are disappearing."
It's not just honeybees that have fallen on hard times. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Tuesday officially declared the rusty patched bumble bee endangered. The Minnesota and Wisconsin native was once common across the Midwest but has declined rapidly in recent years. In the last two decades the bee has disappeared from nearly 90 percent of its historic range.
Bumble bees are important pollinators for berries, vegetables, clover and native flowering plants. The value of wild bee pollination is estimated at $3 billion annually across the U.S., according to officials.
Garding and Kelm decided to take action after reading "The Mystery of Disappearing Honeybees." They made a poster alerting others to the problem and hung it across the hallway from Barrett's room. They also sent a handwritten letter to the Brainerd Dispatch asking the newspaper to alert its readers to the issue.
"We want to save honeybees and save the food," Kelm said. "In the future, people might not know what strawberries or apples are."
Consumers unfortunately can't do much to prevent the spread of colony collapse disorder, Jackson said, so it's up to the beekeepers and farmers to work together. Beekeepers can use organic miticides that don't interact with pesticides or fungicides, he said, and farmers can avoid spraying pesticides while bees are pollinating crops.
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"It takes awhile to educate people on the usage of things," Jackson said.
Jackson cautioned people who live in urban areas to watch what sprays they use in their gardens. Their garden could be a popular spot for a local beekeeper's bees or other wildlife, he said.
"There are wild insects that do a lot of pollinating too, particularly bumble bees," Jackson said. "People need to be very careful about their agricultural chemicals."
Kelm was so inspired by the book he asked his mother if he could keep honeybees at home. Unfortunately, she told him no.
