Don´t forget the pollinators

"The Forgotten Pollinators" is already something of a classic. Yet, the book is surprisingly unassuming. I had expected some kind of scholarly anthology, and was therefore pleasantly surprised. The book is very easy to read, and is obviously directed at the general public, or at least at nature-lovers and perhaps gardeners. Environmental activists will also find it interesting.

Most people are familiar with only one pollinator: the European honeybee. "The Forgotten Pollinators" give the reader a quick overview of many others, including birds, bats, butterflies and solitary bees. The two authors, Stephen and Gary, also share some of their memorable moments in the wild.

But the book also has a serious side. The forgotten pollinators aren't simply "forgotten" by the general public. Many of them are threatened, often by pesticides and insectides, and sometimes by competition from introduced honeybees. Even worse, the honeybees themselves are under threat from a variety of epidemic diseases and parasites, and even from "killer bees". (For some reason, the book doesn't mention CCD or Colony Collapse Disorder. Perhaps it was published before this mysterious new disease became an acute threat to apiculture?)

Consumers often don't understand that a wide variety of food crops are dependent on honeybee pollination. Even meat production is dependent on honeybees, since the plants grazed by the animals are pollinated by them. The authors point out that this is only the tip of the iceberg since many crops are pollinated by other insects. For instance, alfalfa in the American West is pollinated by wild alkali bees. Bumblebees are also important pollinators. Many of these "forgotten pollinators" are acutely threatened. If the honeybee populations collapse due to mite infestation, disease or even attacks by Africanized "killer bees", whole sectors of American agriculture will be in serious trouble, especially if no alternative pollinators can be found. Rachel Carson didn't just predict a silent spring without birds, but also a fruitless fall. The world's food production is already somewhat shaky, and it probably won't be able to take a steep decline in pollination services.

If CCD (not mentioned in the book) takes out even larger chunks of the world honeybee population, there might not be enough time to replace them with bumblebees, solitary bees, butterflies and the other options proposed by Buchmann and Nabhan. A genetically engineered "superbee" might perhaps do the trick - but what if it meets a resilient supermite? In the near future, the fruitless fall of Carson might become an even more important topic on the political agenda than climate change.

Two other books dealing with this subject are "A World Without Bees" by Benjamin and McCallum, and "Fruitless fall" by Rowan Jacobsen.