Are honey bees killing wild pollinators?

There has been over the last decade a growing number of folks concerned that honey bees are having negative impacts on native bees and pollinators. This issue came very much to the fore this spring when researchers from Concordia University in Montreal published the paper “Decline in wild bee species richness associated with honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) abundance in an urban ecosystem”, a paper that was lauded in a David Suzuki Foundation press release published May 23, 2023, “Buzz kill: Study shows urban beekeeping bad for wild bees.”

Note the escalation in language from “associated with” to “study shows”.

The Concordia study attributed *all* native bee declines to starvation resulting from competition with honey bees, making no mention of three of Randy Oliver’s “Four Horsemen of the Bee Apocalypse”: habitat loss, forage loss/degradation, and agri-spray effects (Varroa infestation in honey bees themselves being the fourth). The Suzuki Foundation press release also fails to list any other drivers of insect or wild pollinator decline.

Insect declines are all around us. But it’s so fashionable to point to a non-native species, and make the old mistake of equating correlation with causation. Something we can only do if we limit our observations to the highly disturbed environment that exists today.

Many of us are old enough to remember that summertime car grilles and windshields used to be plastered with insect remains: I credit the gruesome but fascinating study of my dad’s car grille as my first steps into a lifelong fascination with the natural world. The fields that were firefly-studded on my childhood summer nights are empty of fireflies now.

It is not honey bees who have driven that change.

It is worth noting that for 500 years, honey bees and native bees and pollinators throve side-by-side in abundance in the Americas. But in the mid 20^th century, populations of native bees and pollinators (as well as all other insects) began a steep decline. What caused this change?

The cause was human wrought effects on the landscape: habitat and forage losses to development, resource extraction and agriculture; and the enormous impact of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and fertilizers in urban spaces, farms, woodlots, roadways and railways.

We have in the Pacific Northwest an equivalent debate, the seal vs. salmon debate. Seals, sea lions and salmon coexisted here in rich abundance for millennia, but now salmon stocks are shockingly depleted. For decades there have been loud calls for seal culls in the name of salmon conservation, and seals and sea lions are routinely (illicitly) shot by salmon enthusiasts. Which is a shame, because even if you could exterminate every seal and sea lion along the coast, salmon would not recover. Why? Because the real factors driving salmon stock decline would persist: loss of spawning grounds, changes to river access, overfishing, ocean pH and temperature change, pollution.

And those factors are probably giving the seals and sea lions trouble too.

So when folks call for reducing or ending the keeping of honey bees, they need to remember: exterminating honey bees would not do a single thing to help the native bees and pollinators. What they need is restored/increased forage and habitat and much less environmental contamination. Honey bees need these things too, and a rising tide of change would float all pollinator boats.

The movement to ban honey bees in defense of native bees is not only poorly thought out, it will distract us all from what has to be done to help both insect populations: restore and improve habitat and forage, and remove enduring pesticides from the landscape.

I urge every beekeeper to write both Concordia University and the David Suzuki Foundation to raise objections to the simplistic, misleading idea that honey bees are the drivers of native bee and pollinator declines.

And keep planting those flowers.

Recommended Reading: “A Sting in the Tale” by Dave Goulson