In this world, there are those that can dance, and those that can’t, and I mean really, really can’t. If you’re one of those people who’s not blessed with dancing abilities, you’ll agree that your moves, for the sake of everyone else’s well-being and your own dignity, only come out in the most private of situations. That is, of course, unless you have a couple drinks. I know I’m not alone when I say that consuming a few too many cocktails always seems to bring out the dancer in me. Like I’m sure the rest of you ungifted ones feel, this dancer only comes out after a few drinks for a reason. It is not a pretty sight. And while we can wake up the next morning and laugh about our attempts to break it down in front of the entire bar, a couple bad moves are not a laughing matter to a species that relies on dancing for survival.
Bees, unlike humans, are all born with an ability to dance. In fact, dancing is one of the key components to Honey Bee life. Bees depend on communicative dances to find food sources, scout out new hive habitats, and keep things running smoothly in the colony. Dancing is a way that hive members interact with each other and has been for thousands of years. Since 2004, however, we have noticed a dramatic change in nearly 30% of all Apis mellifera worker bee dancing patterns. As many of you may already know, bee populations around the world are currently facing a mysterious threat called Colony Collapse Disorder. In CCD, healthy hives will randomly collapse and die out over a very short and sudden period of time. There is little understanding as to what happens during CCD or why it wipes out almost one third of hives on an annual basis, but we do know that in most cases, the worker bees simply stop returning to the hive.
While there are many things that could be causing Colony Collapse Disorder ranging from climate change to industry stress to invasive mites, I, along with many others, would argue that pesticides are main contributor to CCD. In our current agricultural system, we use pesticides on a majority of our crops and flowers. There are certainly benefits to using pesticides, but there are also a whole lot of downsides and one of them is the way that they impact bees. Honey Bees use nectar and pollen from flowers to feed themselves and produce their own honey. With that being said, when we add pesticides to crops we are subsequently changing their food sources.
Why, you may ask, does this matter, or have anything to do with Honey Bee dancing patterns? Well, think about it. A pesticide is a chemical toxin made to interfere with neurological activities of insects. In other words, when we use pesticides we are essentially creating a series of neurological nectar “cocktails” for the bees to drink. Sound familiar? Like we all know, mind-altering substances do not generally bide well for our dance moves. The same goes for bees. This could be a possible explanation as to why worker bees, the ones who drink the nectar and communicate with each other through dances, randomly leave the hive.
There are thousands of different types of pesticides, some worse than others, that currently affect bee populations. I will post information about more specific types later on, but for now I just wanted to give you all an introduction on the impact that pesticides can have on bees and the link between these toxins and CCD. For those of you interested in pesticides, countries like Germany and France have actually begun to outlaw some pesticides because of bees.
Below is a link to an article about Clothianidin, a pesticide banned in Germany and France.
For the meantime, help save the bees by signing this petition to ban Neonictinoid pesticides in the US!
