BEE SHORTAGE=FOOD CRISIS

By Sean Henahan, Access Excellence

NEW YORK (August 14, '96) The recent sharp decline in honey bee populations means more than a lack of honey on the store shelves, it could lead to serious consequences for many food crops along with higher prices at the checkout counter, say scientists.

"A pollination crisis is flaring," say Stephen Buchman and Gary Nabhan. "It threatens rare, endangered plants as well as the common ones that keep people clothed and fed. At risk is every plant crop that depends on pollination for reproduction: one in three mouthfuls of the food people eat," they report in The Sciences.

The decline of a single species, even one as important as the honey bee, would not usually have such far- reaching effects, but with the crisis in biodiversity, the loss of even one keystone species can bring down several others. In the past many different animals pollinated plants, including mosquitos, butterflies, flying foxes, bats, and more than 40,000 native species of bees. As more and more development projects disrupted native habitats, specialized pollinators were driven to extinction. The honey bee filled in for a time, pollinating a wide range of plant species, but now even the honey bee is at risk. The combination of killer bees and tracheal mites is ravaging feral honey bee populations, destroying up to 85 percent of hives in some parts of the country.

The costs to beekeepers are trivial compared to the price that consumers may pay for the overall losses to agriculture. "In one region of the U.S. the pollinators are known for only one of every fifteen endangered plants," Buchman and Nabhan warn. "Without such knowledge, of course, a plant's primary means of propagation could disappear before anyone could lift a finger to preserve it."

While it remains difficult to measure how much lost pollinators cost an economy, one Canadian study put the price at $1.25 billion annually, estimating that seven of the sixty agricultural crops critical to the North American economy would be lost if the wild insects that pollinate them became extinct.

"Pollinators are the unseen engines driving an ecosystem," say Buchman and Nabhan. "They couple plant to plant and plant to animal, spinning the verdant world through endless cycles and feedback loops, providing fuel and fuses and safety valves. Unless we provide a seat belt for the pollinators, we may drive ourselves into a cul-de- sac."

For more information on this research see the July/August issue of The Sciences.

Related information on the Internet

Beekeeping