We all have that favorite food that we love, but there are few of us who would choose to eat it, and nothing else, for the rest of our lives. Not only would consuming one type of food be disgusting and repetitive, but it would also prevent us from gaining the nutritional benefits that come with a balanced diet. When it comes to food, the more diversity the better. A diverse diet ensures that one is getting enough vitamins, minerals, proteins, carbohydrates, and fats necessary to living a healthy life. This is true for all humans, and it is also true for all bees.
Bees use pollen and nectar from flowers to feed themselves and the hive. Nectar provides bees with carbohydrates, while pollen is a source of proteins and fats. The worker bees eat these plant parts while they are at the flower, but they also bring them back to the hive to make the three foods crucial to bee life: honey, bee bread, and royal jelly. Honey, which we all know and love, is the distilled nectar stored in the hive to feed the queen, drones, and young worker bees and sustain the hive during seasons when food sources are unavailable. Beebread is stored pollen that provides bees with proteins, lipids, nitrogen, and amino acids. Lastly, royal jelly is the substance made by young worker bees to feed hungry larvae. The combination of these three types of food keeps a healthy hive buzzing. (Buchmann)
While the three food sources provide bees with the basics, it is important that they do not all come from the same type of flower. Like us, bees need to eat a balanced diet. And since they only consume nectar, pollen, and honey, this diversity needs to come from the original feeding source—the flower. Getting food from different kinds of flowers provides bees with lots of nutritional values leading to benefits like enhanced immune systems. Bees only visit one type of flower for an extended period of time (allowing for pollination of each species!), but the type of plant shifts throughout a season. For example, a colony may take nectar only from Dandelions in early spring and then transition to Goldenrods later in the season. This feeding mechanism not only ensures that multiple types of plants are pollinated, but also guarantees that bees receive benefits from a range of pollens and nectars. Each plant species’ pollen is composed of a unique composition of proteins and amino acids. By using pollen that comes from different plants, the bees are rewarded with a multitude of amino acids and proteins thus contributing the vitality of the entire colony.
One of the problems our current ecosystems face is a decline of biodiversity. As our natural environments shrink and our meadows and forests are converted into mono-crops, many species, especially bees, face a shortage of food and nutrients. Bees can still obtain food from a limited amount of plant species, but it is probably not the healthiest way for hives to do so. Instead of living in environments filled with many different plant species, bees used for commercial honey production are now trucked from mono-crop to mono-crop with an expectation to pollinate entire fields and provide us with enough honey for human consumption. For example, a single hive may move from pollinating a peach orchard in Vermont to an almond grove in California within a matter of a couple weeks. This not only limits the types of flowers bees can visit during nectar collecting seasons, but also puts an incredible amount of stress on colonies. This is a lot to ask of bees, and we are experiencing the consequences of it through problems like Colony Collapse Disorder.
While bees play an essential role in pollinating our crops, it is unwise for us to simply see bees as tools rather than as a species. When we think of Honey Bees as tools to pollinate, we forget that they are living creatures with needs of their own. By doing so, we fail to remember that like us, bees need a diet composed of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates from a wide range of plant sources to ensure that they are getting enough nutrients and health benefits to sustain their colonies. If we want to rely on bees to pollinate our crops, we need to do so in a way that is best suited for the bees. With the way our population is growing and our current food system is set up, it may be unreasonable to provide a way for all bees to live the best possible lives, but we can try our best to form ideal environments for many more bee colonies than we do now. Over thirty percent of the world’s hives collapse on an annual basis. If we continue to treat bees the way that we do this number will most likely increase.
There are many ways that we can help bees, but one of the most important things that we can do is reestablish the ecosystems that bees rely on to survive. This means we need to protect our meadows, forests, and poly-culture farms. Even a simple act such as planting a small pot of wildflowers in an outdoor window box provides bees with a healthy feeding source. We can save the world’s bee colonies, but we can only do so if we give them a place to live. This is where we need to start.
Cited Sources:
Buchmann, Stephen L., and Banning Repplier. Letters from the Hive: an Intimate History of Bees, Honey, and Humankind.New York: Bantam, 2005. Print