NRDC Helps the Disappearing Honeybee

The Natural Resources Defense Council has been at the forefront of the battle to save the country's honeybees for several years. I spoke with Melissa Waage, campaign manager for NRDC, about some of their efforts to raise public awareness about colony collapse disorder and generate the research necessary to advance our understanding of the issues facing bees today.

What have been the main points of focus for NRDC when it comes to honeybees?

We've been doing a lot of work to ensure that the federal government is putting adequate funds towards research of the problem. One of the core problems with CCD is that we don't know exactly what causes it and there are a lot of research gaps out there and so we work with scientists, institutions and government to figure out what those research gaps are. We have advocated to Congress and to the Executive branch to maintain and increase the research dollars available to look into the problem.

To be more specific, that means, for example, does the Department of Agriculture have the ability to take samples from beehives that have been affected by CCD, and have those been tested to see what's going on with them? It's that run-of-the-mill science that has to happen, so we're trying to make sure there's enough money to make that happen.

We also are trying to work with scientists to see what the research gaps are, and have been trying to work with the EPA to better regulate pesticides that may be playing a role in bee disappearances.

Does NRDC work to involve the public in this issue?

We see that as a big priority. We've done a big media awareness building campaign--looking for examples of how pollinators are important in our lives. For example, honeybees are absolutely vital for growing pumpkins, there was actually a pumpkin shortfall in Indiana last Halloween because of the bee problem. So Josh [Mogerman, from NRDC] went out there to let people know, bees are vital to your jackolanterns, and they're in trouble.

So we've done a lot of media outreach, looking for really good examples--like almonds, 80 percent of the world's almond crop is grown in California, and they're really reliant on healthy bee populations. They drive trucks full of bees to pollinate that crop, and when there's a shortfall it's more expensive to pollinate or they can't get as many bees as they'd like, and our almond crop is at risk.

The list of bee-dependent crops is incredibly long: cherries, blueberries, pretty much every fruit and vegetable that's on our shelves is reliant on honeybees, or perhaps some other kind of bee. A cucumber farmer testified in Congress about the bees a couple years ago--cucumbers actually are reliant on honeybees for pollination. So that's one you might not immediately think of.

We've also engaged the public politically, and are putting pressure on the federal government to do the right thing, for example putting pressure on the EPA to rethink registration of a pesticide that is harmful to bees. We got a lot of folks to comment, saying please consider toxicity of bees when you reconsider this [pesticide]. We got a lot of folks to write into the Department of Agriculture and urge them to be more effective at how they were spending research dollars on CCD. (According to the NRDC website, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has allotted $20 million for research over the next five years, but the potential crop loss due to insufficient bee pollination is projected to be $15 billion.)

So it's a combination of education but then also taking the latent interest and concern about bees that's already out there, and channeling that into action so people get a chance to make a difference.

There are a few kind of 'bad guy' pesticides that are clear problems, they've been banned in Europe because they hurt bees and we'll take them one at a time, but overall we'd like to see EPA just better incorporate pollinator impacts into their risk assessment process when they're evaluating pesticides. So a lot of what we're trying to do here is more at that wholesale level to try and address the problem.

Is NRDC focusing on all kinds of bees, or just honeybees?

Absolutely, and the point that we are really trying to get across to people nowadays is that CCD is one symptom of a much bigger problem, which is that pollinators across the world have been in decline for decades, including commercial honeybees, but also many important native species. So CCD is not the only thing that's wrong. We know that bees are declining because of habitat degradation, maybe global warming plays a role, and with CCD in particular we think maybe pesticides, pathogens and the way these things interact are playing a role. But pollinators at large are in trouble, and that's something we really want to get across because while it's great that this kind of public awareness of CCD is out there, we still have other problems, and need to work on it as a bigger problem.

Is there any species that is projected to be the next victim?

Well something that's interesting is the problem with bats and white-nose syndrome. A lot of scientists are seeing connections between what's going on with the bats and what's going on with the bees. It's this mysterious thing that seems to be attacking their immune systems, there's navigation problems it seems like, they're coming out of the cave at the wrong time in the winter. And bats eat a lot of insects--some of them are pollinators but they also play this role in controlling insect populations. So there's some speculation by scientists that maybe they're getting a pretty heavy load of whatever the insects are being exposed to.

Maybe there's a pesticide connection, but we're looking at the bats as another species of kind of a canary in thea coalmine. You know, amphibians, bats, bees, these very small but very important species that may indicate something bigger is wrong with our environment if they are having these troubles.

The bat crisis seems to be really escalating. Looking at the science, it seems like the bat issue is in the same place the CCD issue was a couple years ago, which is that there's a huge problem but no one really knows what's going on and where to start. So I think that's the question--do we have anything to go on here?

To learn more about what NRDC is doing to help the bees, check out beesafe.org, and read one beekeeper's story as he struggles to keep his bees alive and healthy.