The Buzz on ‘The Great Honey Bee Die-Off’

This classic case of false alarmism ties back to a single tech company.

“The loss of bees puts the entire global food supply at risk, and because of this, the race is on to save them,” states a December tech newsletter. “Save the Bees reports that bee populations have decreased by more than 50% in the past 75 years, while human populations have increased by over 130%.”

“Bee populations in the United States are declining at a rapid, unprecedented rate,” Ohio State University first reported in 2020. Phys.org added last May that “Honey bee populations may collapse due to ineffective defenses,” while the Associated Press further asserted, “Nearly half [48 percent] of US honeybee colonies died last year.”

Collapsed? Like physically imploded?

It’s the Bee-pocalypse! Terrible food shortages, including honey!

And it’s all false.

Not the Only Honey Bee

Yes, pollination is important. But not so much as you might think. And there are probably a lot more pollinators out there than you can imagine.

“Three-quarters of our crops depend on pollinators to some extent, but only one-third of global crop production does,” notes the website Our World in Data. “This is because many of our largest producing crops (staples such as cereals) are not dependent on them at all.” Further, “[v]ery few crops are completely dependent.” Indeed, “studies suggest crop production would decline by around 5% in higher income countries, and 8% at low-to-middle incomes if pollinator insects vanished.” Not good; but not the bee-pocalypse.

Never mind that while at a Fargo Airbnb last year, a honey bee violated the unwritten “Leave us alone and you won’t feel our sting” truce with humans. (Obvious pun opportunity here.) Well, okay, I did slap at it while asleep. Still, I think adults should be able to work out their differences without getting jabbed.

Our proposition is simple: Are bees endangered to the point where they cannot pollinate what’s needed or wanted or supply our honey fix such that perverted stuffed bears that run around with red shirts but no pants will suffer? No and no. We don’t need a “Save the Bees” concert headlined by Sting and the Bee-52s.

It helps to know that honey bees are hardly the only pollinators around. Lots of other creatures get frisky and help plants procreate. These include:

• Other bees: There are over 20,000 species of bees, including honey bees, yes, but obviously lots more that may be lesser pollinators but still helpful.
• Butterflies: These are prettier than bees and important pollinators for many flowering plants. They are attracted to brightly colored flowers.
• Moths: They are nocturnal pollinators and thus attracted to flowers that bloom at night. Orchids are a favorite. But inside the house I kill them because they eat my wool, and in Colombia they grow to the size of bats, which creeps me out.
• Flies: Here’s the poop: Flies pollinate many plants, including some species of fruit trees. They are attracted to flowers that have a strong odor and are often found near rotting fruit.
• Hummingbirds: All that wing-flapping builds up an incredible appetite, and they are in constant search of nectar, thereby spreading pollen.
• Beetles: These are important pollinators for many plants, including some species of magnolias and water lilies. They are attracted to flowers that are large and have a strong scent. Yoko Ono poses them no threat.
• Wasps: These pollinate many plants, including figs if you give a fig. Even though they don’t collect pollen, they do visit flowers constantly to seek nectar for their own energy and inadvertently transfer it. Although this is a less efficient form of pollination, it works and is quite impactful to our ecosystem. Actually, the only beekeepers I personally know are WASPs.
• Ants: Some type of ants are important pollinators for many plants, including some species of wildflowers.

Now add in some species of bats, rodents, and lemurs. Yes, even monkeys in the trees do it.

In addition, some plants are self-pollinating and do not require pollinators. Home gardeners and greenhouse operators can do manual pollination using a paintbrush or cotton swab. Nobody has tied hand-pollination to going blind or growing hair on the palms.

But queries to Chat GPT-4 well reflect the media hive mentality. I asked, “Has the U.S. experienced a shortage of honey bees for pollination?” “Yes, the U.S. has experienced a shortage of honey bees for pollination in recent years,” it responded. It then cited a survey that it said reported: “Beekeepers lost nearly half of their managed colonies between April 2020 and April 2021. This is the second-highest death rate on record, and it poses a threat to the food supply and the environment.”

Sounds ominous. Unless you know that Chat simply reflects whatever it’s fed, and sometimes you have to give very specific prompts or just rephrase them. So I then asked it, “Does that mean there are not enough honey bees for pollination?” It answered, “There is no evidence of that.” (RELATED from Michael Fumento: Conversing With Chatbots)

Hives Wax and Wane

The “lost” terminology often shows up in apocalyptic beehive stories, and it’s misleading. Hives are constantly lost … and new ones are made. “Between January 2015 and June 2022, the US lost 11.4 million honey bee colonies,” one source declared, “and added 11.1 million.” Some writers cut off that last part.

So the world isn’t ending, and women and minorities won’t suffer most. (Reference to an apocryphal New York Times headline.) And, not incidentally, that survey Chat referred to found that the number of United States honeybee colonies “remained relatively stable.”

The fact is that hive numbers are always waxing and waning. This isn’t a factory assembly line; it’s nature. Staple crop outputs also wax and wane. While naturally human factors such as pesticides and alleged global warming get cited when they wane, there are much bigger culprits — such as weather and, when it comes to hives, the parasitic mite Varroa destructor, which helps transmit viruses.

Meanwhile, beekeepers try to match hives and bee populations to demand just as all commodity producers do. The only thing worse to a corn farmer than a drought is perfect weather and bumper crop. (Ain’t nobody on God’s green earth who loves to complain more than a farmer.)

Reflecting an agricultural trend going back centuries, we don’t need as many bees or hives as once required because technology and increased knowledge have allowed us to do more and more with less and less. U.S.-harvested cropland is about the same now as it was in 1900, even though the population is over four times greater and agricultural exports have absolutely exploded. With almost three-fourths of Americans overweight or obese, we don’t seem to be starving.

But somehow we need as many honey bees for pollination as ever? No, we are also making vastly more efficient use of pollinators. According to Agriculture Department data, “[T]he number of bee colonies in the US has fallen sharply since 2014, [and] this trend is expected to continue.” But why? The answer: “a decrease in floral resources.”

What about the honey supply? Rest assured we won’t be singing any refrains from a certain 1968 Bobby Goldsboro signature song. (True fact: If I so much as repeat a few lyric words, I and this publication could be sued for copyright infringement, so I’m being good.)

Honey actually comprises only a smart part of U.S. caloric sweetener intake, although it’s been on the rise and indeed is at “an all-time high.” Production is down just a bit from 1986 according to the USDA (they picked that origin date; not me), but imports have easily filled the gap. And, actually, the country exports a small amount of the sticky stuff. (It’s common for countries to import and export the same commodity.)

Worldwide? The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization “estimated the number of bee colonies worldwide to be around 101.6 million in 2021,” 47 percent more than in 1990. The British newspaper the Guardian ran a lengthy article essentially begging readers to stop raising so many so damned many honey bees, claiming the resources were needed elsewhere. (Winnie the Pooh’s representatives at Disney and the Hundred Acre Wood were unavailable for comment.)

False Bee Alarmism

We’ve had previous honey bee panics.

First Africanized “killer bees” moving up from Brazil were supposed to wipe out honey bee hives, and maybe a lot of people too. Who can forget such classics B-film bee films as Tsunambee (1975), The Swarm (1978), and The Savage Bees (1976). (Nobody made a film called The Bees from Brazil, nor I Was a Teenage Killer Bee. In fact, there’s nothing you would conceive of being fatal that’s less likely to kill you. According to a medical journal, one man survived over 2,000 Africanized bee stings. To quote 1 Corinthians: “O sting, where is thy death?” Or something like that.

Then from 1989 to 2008 in the U.S. there was an actual decline in hive numbers from over 3.5 million to fewer than 2.5 million, but beekeepers staged something of a recovery, and the figures held steady until this past year. “The overall bee colony population is relatively steady because commercial beekeepers split and restock their hives, finding or buying new queens, or even starter packs for colonies,” according to the University of Maryland’s Nathalie Steinhauer.

We can talk about numbers of bees and hives until we need an insulin injection to bring us back down, but by no meaningful metric are we short on honey bees. Meanwhile, technology will ensure that continues, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

Unfortunately, it appears a lot of the bee panic can be tied to a single tech company.

Beewise of Israel claims that its hives use artificial intelligence, plus robotics, to help keepers maintain ideal conditions. AI is proof that nothing is so fantastic that it can’t still be hyped, and this may well be a case of that. Certainly BeeWise technology looks expensive and smacks of overkill. If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door only if mice are posing a problem and your mouse trap is affordable.

Otherwise, you may have to spread a bit of false buzz. Beewise does, and the media just eat it up. “Israeli start-up Beewise is saving honey bees from extinction,” declares one newspaper headline. A tech newsletter calls it: “The robotic hive saving the bees and the food chain.”

Beewise may be the classic solution seeking a problem, thereby “requiring” the incredibly alarmist self-promotion.

I could drone on and on and continue to whisper sweet nothings, but Elton John might sing, “It’s a little bit punny.” (Not copyright infringement! I changed a vital word.) But point made.

The iconic children’s show Romper Room (1953–1994) had a popular “Do Bee” song listing rights and wrongs. “Do bee” this and “Don’t be” that. It probably never occurred to the writers to admonish, “Don’t be part of the hive mentality and don’t be spreading alarmist information about bees.”

Michael Fumento (mfumento@outlook.com) has been an attorney, author, and science journalist for over 35 years. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Sunday Times, the Atlantic, and many other fora.