Dano on Bees - Lack of Same

“What gets measured gets managed” is a common phrase that we’ve all probably seen before. In ecology, that proposition is a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, there is no question that botanists, wildlife biologists, oceanographers, and glaciologists need much more data to understand the “natural” world. On the other hand, more information allows humans to act and manage, and it is clear that human action is not always best – for whatever situation you find yourself in. The spate of recent wildfires is partially a result of past human action: putting out all fires in order to preserve the forest fiber resource (for human use). The trees that are going up near Yosemite – and especially the trees near the sequoia groves – are a good example.

The situation we find ourselves in right now is that we have appropriated vast swathes of the earth’s land surface to grow our food (and food for our food). We have also moved around bees to help pollinate a good portion of the food we eat – and the food our food eats (e.g. alfalfa for beef cattle). In addition, bees are part of the pollinator population that moves genes around via pollen. We need to have genes move around the environment so plants can have genetic diversity – the more diverse your gene pool, the better chance you have to adapt to surprise (in ecology, surprise is called “emergent properties”). One look at royal families across the globe shows us the importance of needing new genes.

In order to produce more food, developed nations have embraced “efficiency” – industrialized agriculture, refrigerated distribution, picking fruit when unripe and using ethylene later on to “ripen”. We also move bees around on trucks and even have attempted to breed “Africanized” bees to more efficiently pollinate crops.

What is starting to happen now is that our management is running up against limits. Our western forests cannot be managed to exclude fire, include homes, supply water, provide fiber. Our built environments are managed in such a way to include vegetation as well – for greenery, cooling, quality of life. Managed landscapes need to be…well, managed. Management of landscapes in the midst of people means managing conflicts – pests, visibility, infrastructure damage.

Recently we heard about the effects of managing some trees in Oregon. These trees were planted to provide shade for parked cars, and to mitigate the extra heat caused by the car park (parking lot). These particular trees – lindens (Tilia spp.) – tend to attract aphids, which feed on the tree and then excrete a substance we call ‘honeydew’. This honeydew sticks to cars and makes car owners sad, and they complain to the mall management. Mall management often tracks such complaints to see if they affect sales numbers. So the management company of the property where these trees were planted asked the landscape maintenance contractor to spray the lindens to kill the aphids. The maintenance crew should have said no, but instead they chose a product called Safari to apply; Safari has been shown – via measurements – to be effective at aphid control. This product resulted in the deaths of several tens of thousands of bees that were visiting the linden flowers.

Another common urban tree, the ash (Fraxinus spp) is being attacked in the eastern part of the United States by the emerald ash borer (EAB). Our British friends have their ashes under attack, but by a different pest. Anyway , our response has been…well…interesting. Many cities have chosen simply to cut all the ash down, infected or no. The combination of preventive cutting and post-attack cutting has removed millions of trees. Researchers are just now starting to quantify the effects of these trees being cut down – removed trees reduces pollution filtration and absorption by leaf surfaces and human cardiopulmonary health is negatively affected. Another response has been to use a treatment called a “soil drench” with a product called imidacloprid. Those of you following bees and colony collapse disorder may know this product – it is now banned in the EU because of the suspected effect on bees. Turns out there are some initial reports coming out of Canada about a recent massive bee die-off near fields of corn possibly planted with seed treated with imidacloprid. Some researchers in the US still aren’t convinced of the relationship, however.

So our management appears to have some unforeseen effects that bode ill for the future if we can’t get pests under control. Bees may be an excellent indicator for ecosystem health, especially in human-managed ecosystems. Bees are certainly an excellent indicator for what we know, what we don’t know, and how far we have to go to have good data for policy. Yet the EU has acted out of precaution. Who will be next?