“What’s in the Air” is a column by Dominique Browning, Moms Clean Air Force Co-Founder and Director, in which she explores life today through the lens of air quality and public health.
As in so many moments in life, Winnie the Pooh comes to mind on World Bee Day, May 20. The first association most of us have with bees is probably honey. No, I take that back. It is more likely a bee sting. The outrage! The pain!
But then comes the honey—or, as Winnie would have it, the “hunny” that pooh bears, heffalumps, woozles, and people find so delicious.
Everything is honeyEverywhere I seeEverything is honeyAnd that’s quite alright with meI am a bear of little brainI can’t explainWhy everything will be changing toThe favorite snack of Winnie the PoohCan you?Everything is honeyI can’t get enough
That honey comes only from honeybees, Apis mellifera. U.S. honeybees are actually European imports, or by now, multigenerational immigrants to these shores. We brought them here 400 years ago for their honey-making prowess, for their waxy combs used to make candles. They have long had essential side gigs pollinating many of our crops.
And they have Queens! Those queens don’t boss the hive around, really, and they only mate over the course of a day or two and then store sperm to lay eggs for the rest of their lives. Efficient, but perhaps not so fun. All those worker bees take care of the queen, even predigesting her food. And if you really want to flip out, check out this YouTube video about Queen Balling, something that happens when bees decide to kill their queen because she isn’t laying enough eggs, or she is an imposter. You definitely do not want to be an Old Queen Bee.
The health of honeybee populations has been jeopardized from time to time. People, and indeed government agencies, have come to the rescue. Honeybees tend to poll well: people show concern for them. EPA has an entire section on their website devoted to Colony Collapse Disorder, caused by several factors, including pesticides, stress from being trucked from farm to farm to be put to work pollinating, parasitic mites, inadequate forage, and poor nutrition. Given how we have come to depend on honeybees, there’s good reason to worry.
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But then there’s the Wild Bunch—I have a bee in my bonnet about our native bees. We should be paying much more attention to them. They are astonishing in variety and color: Diggers. Carpenters. Masons. Sweats. Bumbles. Cuckoos. Metallics. Our native bees—roughly 4,000 species—produce not one drop of honey. (To my sons and grandson: approximately 500 species of native bees in Wisconsin!) They don’t live in hives over dripping golden combs. They don’t have hive minds, they don’t live in colonies. They are the introverts of the bee world. And they are single moms! Many of them live solitary lives, underground no less. No queens.
They might not have obvious charisma. But native bees are thrilling in their own right. They’re more docile than honeybees and don’t seem to mind being watched. There’s a special joy to seeing a bumblebee grow pantaloons of nectar as it flies from blossom to blossom, or to watch a sweat bee drink, yes, human sweat. My garden is filled with dozens of different kinds of bees, some as tiny as the crescent of a fingernail, some as large as a knuckle on my hand. Each summer, I look forward to a chorus of buzzing and humming and thrumming.
Native bees co-evolved with native plants, so they are efficient pollinators. There is research showing that our native bees are far better at pollinating some crops than the honeybees we truck around—and of course, all kinds of insects are pollinators too. Native bees pollinate plants that honeybees don’t and can’t: they “shake” or vibrate pollen free from tomatoes, eggplants, peppers.
Native bee populations have also been threatened: by pesticides, by loss of habitat—ironically, almond farms, into which honeybees are trucked to pollinate, are incredibly destructive to native bee habitat. North American bumblebees are in trouble, with some species federally endangered. Lawns play a role—turn those acres of manicured grass into meadows for the birds and the bees to frolic—just mow paths. Grasslands generally are disappearing. Our native bees have to compete with those honeybees, often for scarce resources—an unintended consequence of bringing in the honeybees.
Native bees don’t have a Winnie the Pooh making a case for the honeybees (and their hunny). “Some people care too much. I think it’s called love,” as Winnie says. So on World Bee Day, let’s honor our native bees and vow to help them out over the next year. Plant flowers, lots of different kinds of flowers, native flowers. Let logs rot on the ground. Let leaves pile up in the corners.
Be Floriferous! Celebrate Diversity! Save the native bees! We won’t get honey in return, but what we will get is even more delicious: one great blooming, buzzing wonder.
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