Beekeeping was simpler 30 years ago, when Ron Bogansky first set up hives on the small hobby farm he shares with his wife.
Back then, Bogansky’s autumn ritual included collecting honey, leaving enough for the bees to eat during the winter and wishing them farewell until spring.
But this fall he participated in a ritual of modern beekeeping: treating his hives for varroa mites, the invasive “blood suckers” he credits with ushering in a collapse in population of honeybees in the U.S.
His hives likely would be goners without the careful rounds of treatment. Some collapse anyway, leaving behind a stark scene.
“It’s like someone went in there with a vacuum cleaner and all the bees are gone,” said Bogansky, a longtime member and once president of the Lehigh Valley Beekeepers Association.
U.S. beekeepers lose about 40 percent of their honeybees each year, a figure that used to hover around 10 percent. Pennsylvania beekeepers have reported losses of 20 to 90 percent.
“Bees die, that’s just a way of life,” Bogansky said. “But when you lose 40 and 50 percent, or 60 percent or higher in given years, that’s not acceptable.”
That’s why Pennsylvania and other states have written plans aimed at saving honey bees and other pollinators.
The Pennsylvania Pollinator Protection Plan was released in September. It dives into threats facing the state’s pollinating species and describes methods shown to protect the critters that support both the state’s natural biodiversity and its $260 million fruit and vegetable growing industry.
Experts hope the state’s pollinator protection plan will help circumvent those declines by providing advice on how to support those pollinators — like encouraging municipalities to adopt “native plant” ordinances that allow residents to grow tall, native plants in their yards, not just short-cut grass.
Beekeepers, researchers and conservationists from across Pennsylvania gathered to write the document. Christina Grozinger, director of Penn State’s Center for Pollinator Research, considers it a “one-stop shop” for information on pollinators, their value, the threats they face and advice on how best to protect them.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency called on all states to put together such a document. Grozinger and her team were careful to tailor Pennsylvania’s plan to consider all the pollinators in the state, not just the honeybee. The report is not binding, but someday could be used to craft regulations down the road.
“We wanted to create a plan that was really tied to Pennsylvania’s needs and opportunities and challenges,” Grozinger said. “We made it broader than just managed pollinators to include wild pollinators, and we made it broader than just pesticides and we made it broader than just agriculture systems.”
The less-glamorous pollinators, such as bats and bumblebees, face declines, too — the abundance and spread of some bumblebee species have declined as much as 96 percent, the plan states. Entomologists know less about the status of those other species, but that’s something Grozinger wants to change.
“Flies are very important pollinators but nobody ever cares about them,” she said. “We don’t really have those numbers (about their population).”
Bogansky advocated for a focus on honeybees, the workhorses of Pennsylvania pollination.
Thirty-five percent of Pennsylvania apple growers contract with beekeepers, or rent honeybee hives, when their crops bloom and need to be pollinated. Forty-nine percent at least sometimes rent them. Other species could not pick up the slack if honeybee populations plummet, Bogansky said.
“Our agriculture has evolved with honeybees,” he said. “You can’t rely on bumblebees for the almonds out in California when you have square miles, not just acres, of almonds blooming all at one time. Bees have to be brought in.”
Honeybees also face the threat not affecting other flower-loving bugs — varroa mites, tiny parasites first identified in Asia that were introduced to the U.S. in the 1980s. They attach to and feed on bees, weakening them and sometimes causing entire colonies to die off.
Bogansky and Grozinger agreed that treating honeybee hives for mites is the No. 1 measure beekeepers can take to protect the species. Unhealthy colonies can hurt nearby healthy colonies, since the mites can spread from hive to hive when bees intermingle in the wild.
Bogansky described unhealthy hives as “varroa bombs,” because of their capability of spreading the mites.
They are considered an unpleasant outcome of increased attention paid to honeybee population loss — people with good intentions may think they can support honeybees by keeping hives as a hobby, but if those hives are poorly tended they could turn into varroa bombs.
Bogansky recommended do-gooders plant more native flowering plants and allow their dandelions to grow instead of keeping haphazard hives that could spread the pests.
But other threats face both honeybees and other pollinating insects: Namely, climate change, pesticides and a loss of flowering plants.
Bogansky checks on his hives late into the year, now that the weather tends to stay warm later into autumn. A longer summer means beekeepers might have to treat for varroa mites more often.
Increased development and modern farming methods that more effectively kill weeds mean there is less food available for pollinators.
“In between those corn rows in the old days there were weeds and stuff, and the bees would go and feed on that,” Bogansky said. “Now a cornfield is a desert to a bee.”
Some chemicals are particularly problematic — most notably, a family of pesticides called neonicotinoids, which target bugs that feed on and damage crops. They can be effective pesticides, but also can hurt pollinating insects, especially if not used correctly.
The chemicals are increasingly common. A Penn State study showed neonicotinoid use has skyrocketed since the early 2000s, when seed companies began treating field crop seeds with the chemicals. A study featured in Nature showed that 75 percent of honey samples from around the world contained a measurable amount of the pesticides.
Lobbying for pollinator-safe farming practices is among a host of recommendations that could be included in the fifth chapter of the pollinator plan, which Grozinger said is expected to be released in early 2018.
Researchers are collecting feedback about the recently released chapters and using it to come up with ways Pennsylvanians can support pollinators in the future. They already have some ideas, such as studying how much planting native wildflowers affects pollinator populations.
The state pollinator plan is open for comment through Dec. 15.
THE PLAN
The Pennsylvania Pollinator Protection Plan was released in September after more than a year of work from researchers, beekeepers and conservationists.
The first four chapters include information about pollinating species, their habitat, the impacts of pesticide use and beekeeping practices.
The plan is available online at ento.psu.edu/pollinators.
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