|
|
| |
|
| |
Buzz Kill - Page 2 |
| |
|
| |
Since turning up in Florida in 2005, the killers have spread north. They are now the Sunshine State’s dominant race of bees and the most successful invasive species ever brought to the Americas. Estimates put their arrival in Georgia any time between ten minutes from now and 2010. “I tend to believe they’ll be here sooner rather than later,” Barry Smith of the Georgia Department of Agriculture has said. University of Georgia entomologist Keith Delaplane explains that, while the aggressive bees are not officially Georgia residents, the state does have some bees behaving badly, and those bees might already have “killer bee” genes.
In 1956, the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture asked geneticist Warwick Kerr to trot over to Africa and bring back some African bees for breeding experiments, with the goal of creating a hybrid bee well suited to the tropics. It soon became apparent that the African bees had one hell of a nasty temper. The multitude of predators and competitors in their homeland had caused natural selection to favor unpredictable, aggressive behavior. The following year, a clueless beekeeper released twenty-six African honeybee queens. Once African honeybees, which have dominant genes, began to breed with European honeybees (the docile bees we rely on for crop pollination), they created Africanized honeybees (AHBs)—or “killer bees,” as sensationalist media outlets call them. Not being a sensationalist media outlet, this is where we start calling them Africanized.
After their release, AHBs spread through South America at a rate of about 200 to 300 miles a year. Because the belligerent bees can’t handle harsh winters, they petered out right around the thirty-fourth latitude in South America. Flip the map and you’ll find the Northern Hemisphere’s thirty-fourth latitude corresponds roughly to Duluth, about twenty-five miles north of Atlanta. The Georgia Beekeepers Association is “confident that AHBs will at least reach the Atlanta area.”
Africanized honeybees do everything the honeybees we’re familiar with do, but to the extreme. Twenty-five to thirty percent of a European honeybee hive will react if disturbed; eighty to eighty-five percent of an Africanized hive will mobilize. A European hive will stay irritated for about three minutes, an AHB hive for an hour or more. European hives defend their nests from disturbances within twenty yards, AHBs up to 100 yards, chasing a perceived threat for as much as a mile. “You can think of it kind of like a yellow jacket’s nest—only magnified 1,000 times,” Delaplane says. (These bees are also worryingly Machiavellian in their quest to conquer all obstacles. Like something straight out of Shakespeare’s quill, AHBs have been known to enter a European hive to seek out the queen, battle through her guards, kill her, and replace her with their own queen.)
It’s important to know that an AHB’s sting is no more venomous than that of a European bee, but their increased defensiveness means they’re ten times more likely to sting. Each sting marks you with a pheromone that identifies you as the intruder and causes more bees to attack. It is this propensity to sting—and to sting in great numbers—that spurred the “killer bee” moniker.
Those who aren’t allergic to bee stings—between 95 and 99.5 percent of us—can handle about fifteen to twenty stings without medical treatment. Even a massive number of stings doesn’t always lead to the worst. The Journal of Medical Toxicology documented an eighty-three-year-old who survived after being stung by more than 400 AHBs. A man in Africa who made the horrifically misguided decision to hide from attacking bees by submerging himself in water sustained 2,243 stings over the course of four hours. He, too, made it through the ordeal.
Okay, you can relax now. Sort of.
Imagine this: Africanized honeybees have arrived in Atlanta. You’re having a fine time mowing your lawn when suddenly you hear strident buzzing. Agitated bees are all over you. They’re beginning to sting.
What you do now makes all the difference. In this case, your first instinct may get you killed. Standing in one spot and swatting only reinforces the belief that you’re a threat. Instead, run. Running in a straight line gets you away from the hive and is the best way to convince them that you don’t want trouble.
Get into a building or vehicle if you can. And stay there. No matter how many bees have managed to sneak in with you, you’re still better off in a place where you can limit the number of stings.
In addition to his beekeeping duties, Bill Owens is also a Monroe firefighter and EMT. He travels the state with UGA’s Delaplane and with Barry Smith, Georgia’s apiary inspector, training—or trying to train—emergency responders to handle AHB incidents. He admits preparedness is lacking. Asked how many of Georgia’s emergency responders are truly ready for an incident, he pauses, then says, “None.”
A year ago, the team organized a statewide educational seminar in Macon, a chance for first responders from every municipality to learn about the impending arrival of Africanized honeybees. Only thirty or so attendees showed. Delaplane notes that there is a “horrible, indefensible knowledge void.” He says, “I’m afraid we’re going to have to have some dramatic stinging incident before people want to learn about them.”
Owens agrees, but as a firefighter, he can understand the hesitation. “The police deal with people who break laws, and firefighters have become a catchall for other hazardous situations. They have a lot on their plates, and with so much to deal with—fires, medical emergencies, new Homeland Security issues—I can’t blame them for waiting until it seems like an urgent matter.”
Expense is also a factor. The equipment required to deal with AHBs is expensive, and protective suits run about $150 each (standard firefighting gear contains gaps that provide entryways for bees).
Florida, already home to AHBs, has managed to educate and equip its emergency responders, but, in a reactionary move Delaplane calls “totally wrong-headed,” some local governments have banned beekeeping. He explains that the fewer European bees in an area, the faster AHBs can move through.
Fifteen years ago, back when AHBs had barely stuck a wing into the U.S., Gwinnett County banned beekeeping from non-agriculturally zoned areas in anticipation of their arrival. The Georgia Department of Agriculture responded by creating code that discouraged counties and municipalities from restricting the keeping of honeybees. It worked. There are currently no laws, or plans for laws, against beekeeping in the state of Georgia. And that’s a good thing. Because right now, the world needs every European honeybee it can get.
Gone, baby, gone.
We need European honeybees not just because they defend against AHB genes but also because, as elementary school taught us, honeybees are important crop pollinators. Yet the bees are disappearing. Not growing ill. Not dying. Just vanishing.
In October 2006, commercial beekeepers began reporting losses of at least 30 percent of their hives. Some lost as much as 90 percent of their colonies in a matter of weeks, victims of what scientists call colony collapse disorder (CCD). More than a quarter of the U.S. honeybee population—tens of billions of bees—has disappeared, according to an estimate from the Apiary Inspectors of America. In 2006, Georgia beekeepers reported losses of 49.6 percent—the third-highest loss rate among the thirteen states surveyed.
It’s the kind of mystery that gets attention. Häagen-Dazs launched a new flavor, Vanilla Honey Bee, to raise money for research. Hillary Clinton, Barbara Boxer, John Kerry, and fifteen other U.S. senators (none representing Georgia) requested that $20 million be allocated in 2009 for funding research on the decline of honeybees. Author Douglas Coupland set to work writing a soon-to-be-released novel set in the near future when bees are extinct. The story was—if you’ll indulge just once—generating a lot of buzz. “Never in my life have I seen people care about bees the way they do now,” says Jamie Ellis, a University of Georgia alumnus who teaches in the University of Florida’s entomology department.
Ask fifty scientists what causes CCD, and you’ll get fifty different answers. They blame traditional pests and diseases. They blame the way bees are managed and moved around for pollination. They blame poor genetic diversity among queens. Genetically modified crops. Malnutrition. Varroa mites and associated pathogens. Undiscovered pests. Undiscovered pathogens. Chemicals. Fungi. Toxins in the environment. Increased virulence of existing viruses. New viruses. Or everything at once. Outside scientific circles, you’ll hear theories about cell phone signals, unusual solar activity, power lines, shifts in magnetic fields. Real X-Files stuff. And let’s not forget the Rapture of the bees, secret Russian plots, and Osama bin Laden.
A life without bees is a fruitless endeavor.
The UGA bee lab is situated on an idyllic plot of flowered farmland in Watkinsville. The narrow white building is stocked with more equipment than the average beekeeper would ever need—veils, bee suits, smokers, pollen traps, weighing cages, queen-rearing equipment, and hive tools galore. Behind the lab, about fifty colonies are arranged in a rough semicircle. This inconspicuous apiary may be where the global CCD problem is solved.
In June, the USDA granted $4 million for CCD research to seventeen scientists across the nation. UGA leads the group. It’s ahead of the pack because Delaplane has spent his entire eighteen-year career working to stop declining bee populations. CCD itself is believed to be a fairly recent phenomenon, but bee numbers have been falling since 1945.
UGA researchers believe the solution relies, at least in part, on something called integrated pest management (IPM), which encourages alternatives to the harsh chemicals used by many beekeepers. In April, Delaplane filed his final report on an EPA-funded study showing that IPM not only works but also is profitable for beekeepers. Researchers will repeat the study on a larger scale with the USDA’s
$4 million. |
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
