Domesticated bee numbers soar amid buzzing demand

Colony collapse disorder may not be a global problem, researchers say, but demand for pollinators still outpaces supply.

By Agence France-Presse

Wed, May 06 2009 at 8:00 PM EST

BEE PLUS: U.S. and European beekeepers have battled a mysterious disease known as "colony collapse disorder" for years, in which honeybees vanish from their hives. A new study suggests CCD may not be as widespread as many feared. (Photo: Gary Kazanjian/AP)

The number of domesticated bees is on the rise worldwide despite declining numbers of wild honey bees in the United States and Europe, a study said Thursday.

"The honey bee decline observed in the United States and in other European countries including Great Britain, which has been attributed in part to parasitic mites and more recently to colony collapse disorder, could be misguiding us to think that this is a global phenomenon," said Marcelo Aizen of Universidad Nacional del Comahue in Argentina. "We found here that is not the case."

He is one of the co-authors of a study, published Thursday in the June edition of the U.S. magazine Current Biology, which analyzed data from the Food and Agriculture Organization on the number of domesticated bee hives to examine whether we are heading for a world pollination crisis.

Researchers found that commercial domesticated bee hives have increased 45 percent in the past 50 years, to match growing demand for honey among a growing human population, but not necessarily for pollination purposes.

Most large farming operations for corn and rice do not depend on pollination by bees, the study noted.

But demand for other popular crops such as fruit and nuts, which do depend on pollination by bees and other insects, has tripled in the past half century, raising doubts that there are enough insects to do the task.

These include such fruits as mangoes, cherries, plums and raspberries, which are now found on almost all supermarket shelves.

"We were particularly astonished when we found that the fraction of agricultural production that depends on pollinators, which includes all of these luxury agriculture items, started growing at a faster pace since the fall of communism in the former USSR and Eastern Europe," said Aizen.

"Although the primary cause of the accelerating increase of pollinator-dependent crops seems to be economic and political, not biological, their rapid expansion has the potential to trigger future pollination problems for both these crops and native species in neighboring areas."

The concern is that there may be a fall in crop production with not enough bees and insect populations to tackle the job.

An increased demand for agricultural land could also speed up the destruction of habitats that support hundreds or thousands of species of wild pollinators, which would in turn cause a drop in crop yield, he warned.