SHEPHERDSTOWN – The West Virginia Eastern Panhandle Beekeepers Association is offering instruction and support for area beekeepers in an effort to protect bees.
Laurae Hughes-Cummings, the president of the West Virginia Eastern Panhandle Beekeepers Association, said that the classes have local beekeepers mentor and teach students on how to raise and care for the bees.
Hugh-Cummings said that now more than ever beekeepers are raising and keeping bees because many medicines are plant based. Morphine, which is the basis of most pain-killers, is extracted from opium poppies for example.
Hughes-Cummings said that between parasites, the decline in feral colonies, GMOs and pesticides, it is hard to say what is killing off bees, but scientists and beekeepers do know that bees are increasingly going extinct.
With the influx of the global economy, we are now getting shipments of goods from across the globe, and parasites hitch rides on these trades, Hughes-Cummings said. We now have small hive beetles, varroa mites, tracheal mites and many more that weren’t here 30 years ago.
Parasites live inside the trachea of honeybees and suck their blood from inside of the bee. Mites bring several diseases to bee colonies, such as diseases that cause wing damage.
From 1987 to 1995, the mite population increased and wild honeybee colonies were reduced to almost nothing. Domesticated bees, on the other hand, were not greatly affected until the summers of 1995 and 1996, in which some beekeepers lost up to 85 percent of their colonies, according to PBS. Feral colonies have no resistance to the mites, so they die quickly.
Hughes-Cummings said, “Now beekeepers have to treat our bees with medications to keep the mites from overtaking the colonies and killing all the bees. It’s nearly impossible to keep bees and not have to give them medications.”
The decline in feral bee colonies means that instead of forests and trees, there are shopping malls and restaurants. Bees require a large hole that contains nearly 10 gallons in volume, to make their home in the wild. These kinds of cavities are usually found in the middle of big trees, but with deforestation, there are not nearly as many suitable trees left.
Pesticides were created to keep bugs away from plants, but this also keeps bees away. Pesticides are toxic to bees and may be causing what scientists refer to as Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD for short. Hughes-Cummings said, “CCD is a collapse of the colony, and the bees all disappear. For some reason, they all just take off instead of swarming, which they do when the colony gets too big or they run out of room. With CCD, they’re all just gone. No one really knows why or where they go.”
Colony Collapse Disorder is said to be the largest factor in the extinction of bees. CCD was first thought to be bees migrating in the winter, according to Hughes-Cummings, but when the bees never returned, scientists and beekeepers knew there was a problem.
GMOs are genetically modified organisms and are killing bees just as fast as deforestation and pesticides. According to Hughes-Cummings, when bees feed on GMO crops, it messes up their ability to navigate and they can’t find their way home. The bees fly around lost until they eventually die.
Canola is grown to produce fuel as well as being used for cooking oil. Without pollination there would be less biofuel, which means that we would rely more on fossil fuels and run out of them sooner. Cotton is pollinated by bees and other insects, so without bees there would be fewer choices for clothing material; which would cause a greater reliance on man-made fabrics and that would further reduce fossil-fuel sources.
Since 2006, beekeepers have noticed their honeybee and bumblebee populations have been decreasing at incredibly fast rates. In Florida nearly 12 million bees died in 2011, and then in 2012, 37 million bees had died in Canada. That same year in the United States, nearly 25,000 bumblebees and honeybees died.
With the disappearance and impending extinction of bees, more than 15,000 dollars in fruits and vegetables are at risk. 70 out of the top 100 human food crops, which supply about 90 percent of the world’s nutrition, are pollinated by bees. Crops including: apples, cherries, broccoli, wheat and almonds.
According to Hughes-Cummings, helping the bee population is easy, simply let your dandelions bloom, and don’t spray your yard with pesticides.
Local beekeepers near Shepherdstown, W.Va include: Bee Tree Farms, Ernie’s Apiaries, CNJ Beekeepers Inc. and T&T Apiaries.