In 2015 the Department of Agriculture decided to give €1.6 million to farmers who agreed to leave a tonne of builder’s sand in the corner of a field and attach bee hotels to tree trunks. The department claimed it would benefit our 80 species of solitary bees. A few years later, while writing a piece about Ireland’s wild bees and how a third of them were predicted to disappear off the map by 2030, I asked scientists if there was evidence that these measures would make a difference. Not one said yes.
Unsurprisingly, however well-intentioned, this use of public money did little to stem the disappearance of wild bees from the Irish countryside. Starvation from a lack of flowers and homelessness from a lack of wild spaces have driven them to the brink; our 78 solitary bee species and 21 bumblebee species continue to decline. These include the once-widespread common carder bee, which is now showing worrying losses, and the now vulnerable larger carder bee, for which Ireland had long been a European stronghold.
I was thinking about bee hotels and misplaced attempts to help nature while reading about companies and community groups funding beehives in the belief that it’s helpful for nature and will “save the bees”. It won’t; worse, scientists now say it may be causing damage.
We have one honeybee species in Ireland, and researchers say it’s increasing in number and can be considered “mini-livestock”, since it’s managed and farmed for honey. Since 2011, the number of beekeepers in Ireland has shot up by 87 per cent, matched by an 82 per cent increase in the number of hives – there are now 27,493 of them spread across the country. In more recent times, corporations have shown an enthusiastic willingness to sponsor these hives.
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Each hive can contain up to 60,000 individuals, so one city rooftop or allotment could potentially host half a million bees. A single bumblebee nest, meanwhile, is home to 400 bees.
If wild bee species weren’t under such intense pressure, there wouldn’t be a problem. But they’re hungry because the wildflowers they feed on, such as dandelion, knapweed, clovers and birds-foot trefoil, are rapidly dwindling. Honeybees and wild bees rely on an increasingly scarce resource, and researchers are worried that as honeybee numbers continue to rise, they’ll monopolise access to nectar and pollen-rich flowers, depriving wild bees of a chance to eat. Not only that, but wild bees might also be susceptible to harmful pathogens from honeybees.
[ Irish deer populations have become rampant, and the trees are paying a priceOpens in new window ]
In Denmark, scientists from Aarhus University identified six critically endangered wild bee species with a high food overlap with honeybees. They concluded that hives should not be placed in areas close to the threatened wild bees, for fear they could be pushed away.
Cities can act as wild bee refuges because of the abundance of flowers in parks and gardens. In Paris, increasing hive numbers caused problems for large solitary bees and bumblebees, suggesting that honeybees outcompete them for nectar and pollen. The authors say that instead of adding more hives to cities, we should instead increase the number of flowers and nesting habitats for wild bees.
In Montreal, beekeeping has become so popular that the number of colonies surged from 238 in 2013 to almost 3,000 by 2020. But scientists discovered that sites with higher numbers of human-managed honeybees had the fewest wild bee species, particularly small solitary bees.
Are there enough flower-rich urban spaces in Ireland to keep up with an increasing density of honeybees? Should there be a cap on the number of hives? Should hives be allowed in the countryside within and around legally protected areas, such as our national parks and uplands?
In a new study on the Wicklow uplands, scientists from UCD and Sweden’s Lund University examined the potential impact of honeybees on wild bees. Their work, which will be published soon, found that as honeybee density increased, the size of the bumblebees declined.
The authors conclude that if we want honey production while protecting wild bees, we need to know how many hives are appropriate
UCD’s Dara Stanley and Katherine Byrnes, and Lund University’s Lina Herbertsson, looked at heather-rich sites in Wicklow. In late summer, when other flowers have died, plants such as heather are a vital food source for wild bumblebees, and the nectar acts as a kind of “bee medicine”, protecting them from parasitic infections. Heather honey is a premium product sold for its distinctive flavour and antimicrobial properties. In late summer, beekeepers often bring their hives to the uplands to allow the honeybees to feed on the flowers.
Stanley, Byrnes and Herbertsson chose sites with known nearby apiaries and surveyed the activity. In all, 182 honeybees and 145 bumblebees were recorded – what they were feeding on, their size and the number of flowers they visited per minute.
They found smaller bumblebees in areas where honeybee densities were high. Normally, smaller bumblebees aren’t the best foragers, so they stay in the nest instead. But if food is scarce due to competition with honeybees, they could be forced out to work. The larger-bodied bumblebees might have flown farther away, outside the study site, to escape the competition.
The extra energy it takes to find food, along with more time away from the nest and caring for the brood, could affect the health and fitness of the wild bees. The authors conclude that if we want honey production while protecting wild bees, we need to know how many hives are appropriate, especially in protected areas.
In the end, piles of sand, bee hotels and honeybee hives won’t help wild bees. Instead, we should be planting more wildflowers, avoiding using chemicals and getting comfortable with messy, neglected areas. The simple things in life – enough food and somewhere quiet to live and breed – are all they really want.
