Good news or soylent bees?

 

A propos Anton´s latest video on YouTube: like everyone else, I assumed the "bizarre discovery" was that honeybees EAT DEAD HUMAN BODIES and that this somehow ends up in our honey, making it SOYLENT GREEN. 

Instead, the (non)bizarre discovery is that millions of mining bees live at a New York cemetery and turn out to be extremely important pollinators of commercial crops (in this case, apples). Which might mean that the "bee apocalypse" has been postponed...again. Thank god, by the way!

I prefer apples to soylent any day.  

The light-bringer

 

Guess what, guyz? They discovered a new species of bee in Australia. The bee has horns (?!) so the scientists named it after...you guessed it...Lucifer. No plausible deniability there, LOL. 

It´s full scientific name is Megachile (Hackeriapis) lucifer. Or just Megachile lucifer if the concept of subgenus makes your head spin. 

Now, we eagerly await all the conspiracy theories on the web about the devil´s new bee, the Club of Rome, and what have you!

Devilishly distinctive new bee discovered in Australia

A spring without bees

- Yes, I´m a genetically modified bee! Any probs?

Please read the plot summary of this movie at Wikipedia below! Strangest take so far on Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), aliens, flat earth and conspiracy theory?

Bugonia (film)

The white pill?

 

So the disappearence and mass death of the Western honeybee has been solved. Not by Anthroposophical organic farming, zero population growth or a ban on eating honey. But by high technology, specifically the invention of a new pollen substitute which can feed the bee colonies indefinitely. 

Western (and therefore modern) civilization has been saved. Cornucopia next? 

Or no?

Blott Sverige svensk honung har

 

Är inte helt förvånad, ärligt talat. 

Bluffen: All importerad honung oäkta visar nya tester

"Single bee is making an immortal clone army"

LOL. I really like this site, called Live Science. Here we go again...

Parthenogenesis or "virgin birth" is apparently a more complex phenomenon than I assumed (based on my senior high school biology). I don´t really understand the technical aspects of this article, but the bottom line is that the workers of the South African Cape Honeybee can reproduce asexually by a process similar to cloning. Many of them are genetically identical to a bee that lived in 1990! Usually, of course, worker-bees can´t reproduce at all. 

As for virgin birth, apparently the usual form leads to a deterioration of the genetical material over time. Not so in this case. The new superbee can succesfully infiltrate and take over hives of the African Lowland Honeybee. The clones don´t need a queen, nor do they perform any useful work. They just parasitize their host colony until it collapses. Then, it´s apparently on to the next one! The scientists are baffled by this behavior, since it´s dysfunctional and hence presumably should be selected against. 

But surely there is *another* species of animal that behaves in pretty much this manner? You know, Homo something sapiens... 

Single bee is making an immortal clone army

A real killer

This must be the funniest product sold by Amazon. It's - wait for it - killer bee honey?! Apparently, when the Africanized honey bee isn't busy killing people, horses or regular honey bees, they actually produce their own honey! Well, they are bees, after all. Even better, the honey is organic and has a fair trade label. Thus, when you buy this honey, you're actually making the world a better place. How about that? It's kosher and gluten free, too. Besides, bees are "matriarchal", so as a feminist in good standing, I warmly recommend this product. I'd say it's a real killer. Save the planet, buy killer bee honey today!

A bee in the bonnet

A review of the "MonsterQuest" episode "Giant Killer Bees" 

Killer bees are no urban legend, but this episode of "MonsterQuest" is an example of the sensationalist media hype surrounding this rogue hybrid. The token sceptic (who is a trained entomologist) tries to tell the producers that killer bees can't live in cold or dry environments. Despite this, the "documentary" attacks the scientific viewpoint, choosing instead to believe in the words of an anthropologist whose main area of expertise seems to be the killer bee as cultural metaphor?! Yet, he claims that killer bees could spread all the way up to Canada and Alaska...

This remarkable statement is "proven" by an experiment in which a colony of killer bees survives cold storage by huddling together in the centre of the hive. Now, it took me about 15 minutes of research to find a scientific website (University of Florida) which indirectly debunks this "experiment": killer bees store much less honey than "European" honey bees, and would therefore die if forced to remain inside the hive for a more extended period of time. That's why they can't live in areas with long winters. The "MonsterQuest" experiment proves nothing.

Nor do I see the point of collecting killer bee samples from Nevada and Arizona - to the best of my knowledge, nobody denies that killer bees have been found in these states, certainly not Nevada! A quick glance at a Wiki range map could have solved *this* little mystery in about 15 seconds... The experiment supposedly proving that killer bees have become more aggressive is intriguing, but given the general character of this show, I'm going to assume that it, too, is bunk until proven otherwise...

I'm not the only one complaining about this particular episode of "MonsterQuest". Ironically, they are at their best when chasing Bigfoot! Something tells me the squatch won't have to cope with aggressive bee swarms when he's out looking for honey in British Columbia or Alaska, LOL.

Michael Moore (who claims that killer bees are an urban legend and hence don't exist at all), you have been forgiven!

Fear of a Black Planet

Spoiler warning! Spoiler warning! Spoiler warning!

Why do people call "The Swarm" a disaster? I mean, it *is* a disaster movie, right? The corny plot revolves around Texas being invaded by vicious killer bees. Not content with killing peaceful Texans on picnic, they derail trains, make a nuclear power plant explode and wipe out several towns in gruesome fashion. Eventually, the bugs are lured out to sea, where they are incinerated en masse in a dramatic finale. What more can you ask for, LOL.

"The Swarm" is also fascinating - if that's the right word for it - as cultural studies. Is it really about killer bees? Or is the lethal insect simply a metaphor for something else entirely? The film ends with the following bizarre statement: "The African killer bee portrayed in this film bears absolutely no relationship to the industrious, hard-working American honey bee to which we are indebted for pollinating vital crops that feed our nation." I'm not the only person who suspects that "African killer bee" means "Blacks, Hispanics and illegal aliens". Not to mention Communists.

If anything, this subconscious racism is the real disaster!

On a deeper level, I think modern Westerners consider killer bees to be a scandal. Honeybees are supposed to be our docile servants, "hard-working" and "industrious" in their unselfish service to Western civilization. Yet, here comes a bee that aggressively defends its honey, kills intruders and couldn't care less about feeding our nation. Small wonder people are upset. Especially if the pesky bug turns out to come from sub-Saharan Africa, that liminal zone beyond proper civilization and decorum...

Killer bees remind us that we're not really in charge around here anymore. Maybe we never were.

There is no such thing as free honey

They are big, they are bad, they are many, and they will soon come to a beehive near *you*. Especially if you are insane enough to live in Texas! Weirdly, they also produce organic honey?! The killer bees are here to stay, so you better get used to it. Besides, what did you expect from a planet that also spawned rattle snakes, fire ants, the Black Widow and the bubonic plague? Mercy? Organic honey free of charge, or what?

Non-sensationalist, but the narrator needs a world map

Finally, a non-sensationalist documentary about "killer bees". Yes, they are aggressive and dangerous, and they really are the result of a failed scientific experiment during which fierce African bees were cross-bred with docile European honeybees. However, the killer bees can't live in temperate or cold climates, their aggressive behaviour (inherited from their African forebears) is a natural evolutionary adaptation to predators in Africa, and they actually produce honey. At a glance, killer bees are virtually impossible to tell apart from honeybees, since they *are* honeybees. Both the African and the European honeybee belong to the same species (Apis mellifera). Indeed, the scientist who inadvertently "created" the killer bee, Warwick Kerr, was interested in African honeybees precisely because some of them are highly productive. Nor did Kerr "create a monster" - his hybrid bees simply inherited the aggressive defence tactics found already in the African honeybee.

My only problem with this program is that the narrator (or perhaps his ghost writer) has completely misunderstood African geography. He places Tanzania in southern Africa and Kenya in West Africa?! Actually, both nations are in East Africa - they even border each other! Ironic that a documentary signed National *Geographic* is in bad need of a world map...and a compass.

It's fascinating to read the reactions to this objective documentary at other forums. Thus, one viewer claims that "Attack of the Killer Bees" doesn't show a single killer bee! Has he watched too many horror movies? Several others call Kerr "mad", and one fears that the killer bees will soon reach Wisconsin...

It seems it will take a long time before the general public will grok this one. But then, getting a more realistic perspective on killer bees might be harder than learning the basics of African geography.

Research library ambrosia

"Bees of the World" is a curious book. It's a boring, super-scientific reference work of the kind found in research libraries (and perhaps research laboratories). It's the kind of book a budding professor of entomology consults when he wants to know the exact number of subgenuses of the genus Augochlorella, search for scientific papers on the subgenus Pereirapis, or contemplate why female bees of the subgenus Ceratalictus have a epistomal suture forming an obtuse paraocular lobe and a basitibial plate poorly defined on the anterior edge. Well, you get the picture.

Despite, "Bees of the World" comes with several blurbs, just like books sold in the commercial market. Apparently, the work is an "instant classic", "ambrosia" and "magnificent". Closer to the truth is the blurb from Southeast Naturalist, which calls it "this definitive reference" and a "useful guide for entomologists". No doubt!

Humorously, the Western honeybee is a detail in this mastodon encyclopaedia which presents 1,200 genera and subgenera. Of almost 1,000 pages of dense text, only two are devoted to Apini, the "tribe" of the true honeybees. Killer bees aren't even mentioned.

I'm not sure how to rate this instant classic, but in the end I give it three stars. Michener's ambrosia is clearly off limits for the general reader. Please don't confuse this book with the more popularized book by Christopher O'Toole and Anthony Raw, somewhat confusingly also titled "Bees of the World".

Evil twin

"Killer Bees: The Africanized Honey Bee in the Americas" by Mark Winston is a book about the so-called killer bee, one of the most notorious insects of the Western hemisphere. More formally known as the Africanized honeybee, this dangerous insect established itself in Brazil in 1956, and has gradually spread to all tropical and subtropical regions of the Americas. Due to its aggressive nature, the bee has gotten quite a reputation and become a "pop insect", featured as a villain in countless horror flicks and novels, not to mention sensationalized media reports. But yes, the Africanized honeybee *is* dangerous, and have killed humans, pets, livestock and - most importantly - European honeybees, creating havoc in Latin American beekeeping. The European honeybee is the "nice" honeybee we are used to, and has been introduced all over the world to boost honey production. The Africanized honeybee or killer bee is descended from the African honeybee. It should be noted that both European and African honeybees belong to the same species, Apis mellifera ("Western honeybee"). This means that killer bees and "normal" honeybees are difficult to physically tell apart, despite major differences in behavioural patterns. It's almost as if the killer bee is the evil twin of the European honeybee...

Winston's book was published in 1992, before the killer bee had established itself in the southern United States. The author is a biologist, and the book is to some extent based on field research in French Guiana and Venezuela. The main point of "Killer Bees" is to asses the future impact of this invasive species on U.S. beekeeping and honey production. This part of the book feels dated. The chapters on killer bee behaviour are more interesting. Deadly or not, I admit I was fascinated by the offensive tactics of the Africanized bees...

The legendary aggressiveness of these bees is an evolutionary adaptation to their original homeland, Africa, where honeybees are under constant threat from predators, including the honey badger and (ironically) man. Killer bees can pursue a real or perceived attacker for up to one kilometre, and attack virtually anything that gets in their way in the process. The bees spread by swarming or absconding, and can fly considerable distances until settling down on a new nest site. The more docile European honeybees (the "normal" honeybees we are used to) are no match for the killer bees. The latter either attack and take over European hives, or mate with European bees, gradually taking over their gene pool. Beekeepers might discover, much to their shock and dismay, that their hives have been "Africanized" and very difficult to manage. Another trait facilitating their rapid spread is that killer bees can build nests essentially everywhere, both in the open and inside cavities. Some colonies have been found on ships. Winston's research team kept empty beehives at their research station, only to witness how a large swarm of killer bees entered through the open window, taking the hives by storm.

Apparently, killer bees *can* be managed, and the original African bee is a great honey producer in South Africa. They have also been more or less successfully managed in Brazil, which has a fairly advanced beekeeping industry. In other Latin American nations, the arrival of the killer bee has led to disaster, as poor beekeepers were forced to abandon their "Africanized" hives. Due to their aggressive nature, managed killer bee colonies must be kept in isolated areas, far away from any human habitation or livestock, but this is often impossible in regions with poor roads and few vehicles for transportation. Beekeepers must also use protective equipment, which may be expensive and is difficult to wear in a tropical climate. Interestingly, killer bees are quite docile when swarming, making it possible for Winston and his "killer bee team" to carry out their research without too much protective gear. One photo shows a man dressed only in shorts (the author?) looking on as a swarm of killer bees enters the research station!

"Killer Bees" is directed at a general audience, and very easy to read. It seems to be one of the few popularized book on Africanized killer bees, and is refreshingly free from the sensationalism that often mars this subject. I therefore give it five stars. Next week on Ashtar Command Channel: the curse of the fire ants!

Tristes tropiques

A review of "Ecology and Natural History of Tropical Bees" by David W Roubik. 

This is a scholarly, scientific book covering the most important aspects of the ecology and natural history of tropical bees. It's too dense and technical for the general reader, but I'm sure advanced students of entomology will find it a treasure-trove of information.

Topics covered include biogeography and the age of bee groups, foraging and pollination, aggression during foraging, natural enemies, parasitic bees, ecology of Africanized honeybees in tropical America and tropical beekeeping. BTW, "Africanized honeybee" is the scientific euphemism for killer bee!

The life of bees doesn't seem to be an easy one. If the life of entomologists is any easier, having to pay 78 dollars for a book like this, I cannot say. ;-)

Still, I give this perhaps too technical book four stars. But, once again, this is not really for the general reader.

The world is a beehive

The world is a beehive, and I just stepped right into it!

Most people assume that there is only one kind of bee: the honeybee (with the killer bee as an unfortunate spin-off). I certainly thought so, until I read this book. Actually, there are about 25,000 different species of bees! You heard me. Not twenty-five, but twenty-five THOUSAND. How's that for a mindjob?

Apart from "our" Western honeybee, there are mining bees, mason bees, carpenter bees, leaf-cutter bees, even sweat bees. And, of course, bumblebees! I always thought that bumblebees weren't really bees, but belonged to a different category altogether, rather like hornets or ants. That's certainly how the common man in Sweden sees the situation. Every non-biologist or school teacher talk about bees, hornets and bumblebees as if they were three different things. In reality, bumblebees are very closely related to honeybees. The British authors of "Bees of the World" even say that bumblebees are more "bee-like" than honeybees. I suppose this is why British bee books sometimes put a bumblebee on their front cover - it's considered archetypically, Platonically bee-ish by the general public. Nobody in Sweden would agree. An interesting cultural difference!

I was even more surprised to learn that many of the solitary bees (mason bees, etc) can be found right here, in Europe. I must have encountered them many times over, but never noticed, simply assuming that they were odd-looking honeybees. Finally, "Bees of the World" solved another mystery from my childhood: Who makes circular holes in the leaves of rose bushes? We knew that a nasty neighbour sometimes stole the flowers, but this... It's the bees, stupid!

"Bees of the World" is a real nerd book, written by two enthusiasts for other enthusiasts. I must admit I'm now one of them. I've read almost the entire book from cover to cover in just five days. The authors mentions the honeybee only in passing, and concentrate on the lesser known bee families, giving rather detailed information on pretty much everything from their nests and mating habits, to their intricate social behaviour and even parasites. Even the "solitary" bees turn out to be quite social, and some of the parasites are other bees! There are also sections on the interaction between bees and flowers (the chapter on orchids being particularly intriguing), drones (some of them roost like birds), cuckoo and robber bees, bees that nest in empty seashells, and "stingless" bees that can fry your skin instead, giving you terrible burns! The only thing conspicuously missing are the killer bees - just one picture of those.

Recommended, if you can tear yourself from that honeyjar of yours.

PS. Is the insect on the front-cover really a bee? It looks like a DRONE FLY! :-D

To bee or not to bee. Is that really the question?

Alison Benjamin and Brian McCallum are two British reporters and amateur bee-keepers. Benjamin works for the British daily paper The Guardian. Their book "A world without bees" was published earlier this year, and deals with the mysterious mass deaths of honeybees all around the world, the so-called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). While some people belive that CCD doesn't really exist, for instance the current Wikipedia writer on the subject, others consider it a serious, global threat to bee-keeping. Benjamin and McCallum certainly belong to the latter camp, claiming that one third of US beehives and two-thirds of those in France have been wiped out by this mysterious condition. Most scientists seem to agree that CCD does exist, but so far no good explanation have been offered, at least none everyone agrees with. The two authors have interviewed researchers who blame pesticides, fungicides, the varroa mite, climate change, new viruses, or even mobile phones (that's a fringe position). Indeed, CCD could be a combination of several different factors. Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV for short) is a prime suspect, but correlation is not necessarily the same thing as causation. Perhaps something in the environment is causing bees to loose their resistance to killer viruses?

The authors own position isn't entirely clear-cut, but their favorite hypothesis seem to be loss of genetic diversity. Most honeybees around the world apparently belong to the same group of Mediterranean subspecies, and the same goes for feral honeybees. These have interbred with wild honeybees, creating a situation in which the honeybee gene pool is virtually the same the world over. When the varroa mite struck, and developed resistance to pesticides, millions of honeybees quickly succumbed - their gene pool was too narrow to develop defenses against the parasite. Benjamin and McCallum therefore strongly supports conservation efforts aimed at preserving local subspecies of wild honeybees. They mention a particular attempt in Denmark, and describe the conflicts this has created between different factions of bee-keepers (the local bees are less productive than the Mediterranean breeds).

The bee-keeping industry seems to take the opposite position from that of the authors: the industry wants to genetically engineer a resilient, resistant and high-productive superbee. The authors fear that this will narrow the gene pool even more. What happens if (or when) the superbee is challenged by an equally resilient superbug?

The book then describes the chilling effects of a world without honeybees. If you think only the honey would disappear, think again! Many important crops are dependent on honeybees for pollination, including alfalfa, apples, almonds, cotton, citrus, soya beans, onions, broccoli, carrots, sunflowers, melons, blueberries, cherries and pumpkins. A world without bees would be a world without fruit, vegetables, juice, health food (the soya) or clothes (the cotton). Alfalfa is used as cattle feed, so a world without bees would also be a world without meat! To drive home the point, the two authors have visited California, where the highly profitable almond orchards are pollinated by honeybees from all over the United States, driven there on enormous trucks. If the honeybees would be wiped out by CCD, an entire industry would be gone. Already today, food prices are going up, due to ethanol production and other factors. CCD doesn't exactly help...

One solution to the crisis mentioned in the book is to use other insects as pollinators, including solitary bees and bumblebees. There are several research projects to that effect in the US. Meanwhile, habitat change have driven bumblebees to near-extinction in some areas, and other insects live too far away from agricultural land to be of much use. Once again, the authors feel that a more environmental-friendly policy is the bottom line.

Is the author's alarmist perspective true? No idea. Until I picked up this book, mostly by chance, I never even heard of CCD. (Of course, I have heard of the varroa mite.) However, Alison Benjamin and Brian McCallum have written an easy-to-read introduction to the issue, after talking to both scientists, migratory bee-keepers, almond growers, and even conspiracy theorists. I recommend the book, and call on everyone to continue researching the topic.

The plight of the bumblebee

A review of "The Natural History of Bumblebees: A Sourcebook for Investigations" by Carol Ann Kearns. 

This tiny booklet (only about 100 pages) is an excellent introduction to the behaviour and study of bumblebees. It also contains a bibliography with tips for further reading.

Most of the information in the booklet wasn't big news, since there are bumblebees pretty much everywhere both where I live and in other parts of Europe I use to visit. So yes, I knew that bumblebees can forage even at night, or during winter. That's one of the reasons why I don't like them: they are large, they can sting, and they can show up pretty much anywhere at any time! I also knew that bumblebees live in underground nests, and that their colonies are smaller than those of honeybees or certain wasps. It's also obvious that they belong to several different species. I don't know their names, so I simply call them "black-and-yellow", "black-and-red" and "small-and-orange".

Did I mention that I intensely dislike them? ;-)

Still, you learn new things every day. For instance, I had no idea (really) that bumblebees actually are bees, and closely related to the honeybees at that. In Sweden, bumblebees aren't called bees, and most people think of them as something other than bees, some kind of independent group.

From "The Natural History of Bumblebees", I also learned about their importance as pollinators, including for commercial crops. Apparently, bumblebee colonies are bred, bought and sold in the United States, usually to greenhouse owners, but occasionally to scientists as well. The companies breeding bumblebees have somehow managed to modify bumblebee behaviour to make them more efficient pollinators, but the exact details are trade secrets!

The most fascinating chapter in this book deals with predators and parasites. It turns out that the world of the bumblebee isn't very rosy. Bumblebee queens who lack a colony of their own, might attack and take over already established colonies, killing the resident queen in the process, and take over her worker caste, who meekly start serving the intruder. In the high Arctic, one species of bumblebee has specialized in attacking and hijacking colonies of another species. Further south, this particular species establishes colonies of its own. More sinister are the "cuckoo" bumblebees, which always attack and parasitize colonies of other species. Bumblebees also have to stay clear (if they can!) of a whole range of predators, such as "beewolves", actually a kind of wasp which habitually kills bumblebees and feeds them to their larvae, sometimes seriously decimating the bumblebee population in a given area. There are also robber flies that mimic bumblebees, the better to catch and devour a real one. Another enemy is the wax moth, the larvae of which quite simply eat *everything* inside a nest, including the brood, the food storage and finally the comb itself! Ants also attack and kill bumblebee colonies, if they can find one.

The plight of the bumblebees, as it were...

At least my favourite kind of flies, hoverflies, are more benign. Their larvae, living inside the bumblebee nest, only eat debris...

Other chapters in this book deal with bumblebee conservation, how to breed bumblebees in captivity, foraging behaviour, and the danger of bumblebee stings. There are also (bad) photos of all North American species. Some more curious pieces of information are also included: apparently, some scientists have observed bumblebees feeding on carrion, or gathering dew from aphids. (Is that why ants attack bumblebees? "You stole my cow, stranger").

Those who want more information about these insects should look up more comprehensive books on the subjects. But for amateur entomologists, "The Natural History of Bumblebees" is a very good introduction.

Civilization Collapse Disorder?

Michael Schacker's "A Spring Without Bees" is an alarmist book about an impending global food crisis caused by the - wait for it - collapse of beehives.

Ridiculous?

Not necessarily. Before reading this and other books on the bee crisis, I rather stupidly assumed that honeybees were good for honey, and that was it. In reality, honeybees are important pollinators of vegetables, fruits and nuts. And they are disappearing. During the 1990's, the varroa mite killed off a large portion of managed honeybees all around the world, and virtually all feral honeybees in the United States. For the past ten years, another mysterious disease has been running amuck among honeybees: Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). If the world's honeybee population shrinks even more, food prices might soar, leading to severe strains on an economy that isn't exactly booming.

Other pollinators are also threatened. The alkali bee pollinates alfafa, used as food for cattle. When the alkali bee population in the Western United States began shrinking, perhaps due to pesticides, they could be replaced by Canadian leafcutter bees. But now, these too are disappearing, due to parasites. Otherwise, habitat destruction or toxic chemicals seem to be the main reasons for sharp drops in pollinator populations: birds, bats, butterflies and bumblebees. One formerly abundant species of American bumblebee, Bombus occidentalis, is seriously threatened (Schacker believes it might already be extinct).

The author claims that the cause of CCD has been positively identified: the insecticide IMD. A large part of the book is devoted to proving this point. Other authors are less sure, and believe that the ultimate cause is still unknown. Naturally, the company producing IMD also denies responsibility. According to Schacker, the honeybees came back in France when IMD was banned by the government. He also claims that organic beekeepers (who obviously don't use IMD) don't have CCD. One hole in the argument is that Africanized "killer bees" aren't struck be CCD either. Are they immune to insecticides?

If pollinators start dying off all over the line, the result would indeed be what Rachel Carson called "a fruitless fall". Or even foodless! Colony Collapse Disorder might become Civilization Collapse Disorder, to use the author's words.

I don't deny that the ecological crisis is real, complicated and difficult to solve. But where should we look for solutions? To Schacker, the only solution is organic beekeeping...and organic farming. The author believes that this is a viable option. I don't. Can all agriculture the world over, or even in the United States, really go organic? I'm pessimistic. Shacker claims that organic farming is profitable because "green" products sell for more, but how many people can afford to pay more for their food? The argument sounds hopelessly parochial: welcome to prosperous American suburbia!

Michael Schacker blames "the mechanistic model of the universe" for our present predicament. Instead he wants more ecological and holistic thinking. Schacker seems to be a New Age-inspired Green, perhaps even an Anthroposophist. However, the author himself applies "mechanistic" reductionism when he attempts to pinpoint the exact cause of CCD. Indeed, the "machine model" is a methodological device enabling scientists to understand the material causes of co-evolution, thus making it *easier* to get a clue about what is going on ecologically speaking. I'm not a materialist either, but it's unclear how ecology would be enhanced by a vaguely "spiritual" method of research? Schacker is confusing reductionism as a method (which is often necessary in science) with reductionist materialism as a metaphysical standpoint, which is something else again.

I'm not saying "A Spring Without Bees" is a bad book, but personally I don't resonate with everything the author is saying. Perhaps I'm simply less optimistic? In the end, I give his work three stars.

Honey, I killed the bee

Rowan Jacobsen's "Fruitless fall" is a book about honeybees, beekeeping and, above all, the mysterious disease known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

For several years, honeybees all over the world have been killed by CCD. The disease is a kind of "bee AIDS", making the bees more vulnerable to a long series of lethal viruses. No explanation for CCD has yet been found. Among the main suspects are pesticides, viruses or fungal infections. The CCD is unrelated to an earlier pandemic which wiped out millions of honeybees worldwide: the varroa mite.

The author believes that CCD doesn't have a single cause. Rather, CCD is the end result of too much unnatural, industrialized, commercial beekeeping. Honeybees are soaked with pesticides and fungicides, stressed by migratory beekeeping, fed with bad pollen, and attacked by varroa mites (the author believes that mites cannot survive in "natural" hives). Small wonder the colonies finally collapse!

Jacobsen also points out the dire consequences if honeybees were to disappear. Most of our fruits and vegetables come from crops pollinated by honeybees, honey is used in a wide variety of products, and even meat and milk production might be threatened, since bees pollinate the plants eaten by the cattle. Of course, other pollinators exist, but they too are threatened. Wild bumble bees have already disappeared in many areas, probably due to pesticides, or perhaps diseases inadvertently introduced from European honeybees. In some parts of China and Brazil, crops are hand pollinated by humans - not a pleasant perspective.

The most interesting chapters of the book deal with attempts to create a more "natural" form of beekeeping. As already noted, Jacobsen believes that the standardized hive frames might be part of the problem. In more "natural" hives, the bees are better at detecting varroa mites. The author has also interviewed an organic beekeeper who uses Russian honeybees.

An obvious problem with the organic solutions advocated by the author is that they aren't commercially viable. It's more difficult to extract honey from the natural-cell hives, and they can't be moved (and hence cannot be transported for pollination service). The Russian bees seem to be less productive. The organic solutions are for a world of local self-sufficiency in agriculture. But can they work in the overcrowded, industrialized and globalized reality of the 21st century? Somehow, it feels as if another solution than those Russian bees must be found, and fast!

My main problem with "Fruitless fall" is Jacobsen's style of writing, which often borders the frivolous. I guess I don't have his sense of humour (the title of my review mimics the author's style). Still, "Fruitless fall" is well worth reading. Another book on the same subject is "A world without bees" by Benjamin and McCallum, which I have reviewed elsewhere.

The human hive

"Bee" isn't really a book about the biology of bees or history of beekeeping, although a few chapters on this have been included. Rather, it's a book about the bee as a cultural or political symbol. The author is a lecturer in English literature. Indeed, the biology sections of the book contain sloppy mistakes. For instance, Preston doesn't understand the exact taxonomical relationship between ants, wasps and bees. She also constantly refers to the Western honeybee as the only honey-making bee, yet mentions other honey-making bees as well, sometimes on the same page!

But then, the book is really about humans...

Preston points out that the honeybee has traditionally been a positive symbol in Western culture. The bee was considered chaste, virginal, hard-working and co-operative. Christians connected it to the virgin birth of Christ or the perpetual virginity of Mary (for a long time, people had no idea how bees reproduce). The bee supposedly left the Garden of Eden already before the fall of man, and was therefore a perfect divine creation. During the 16th and 17th centuries, many royalists claimed that the hive was controlled by a king bee. Supporters of a constitutional monarchy claimed that the worker-bees could overthrow a bad king bee. And a admirer of Elizabeth I pointed out (correctly) that the "king" bee was really a queen bee! Still others saw the beehive as a republic.

Preston has detected a change of attitude towards the honeybee as a cultural symbol during the French revolution. Both the revolutionaries and Napoleon used the bee or the beehive as emblems. Because of this, the bee got a negative reputation in Britain. Suddenly, bees were seen less as the epitome of order and more as a dangerous swarm bent on destruction. The hostility to the bee was continued by the Romantics, who saw it as a metaphor for depersonalized industrial society. Likewise with Fritz Lang, whose famous movie "Metropolis" depicts enslaved workers as being similar to bees.

But the worst bee-scare came in the United States after World War II, perhaps due to the anti-Communist hysteria of the Cold War. The collectivism of the hive resembled that of Communism. Preston also mentions a few horror movies where the evil takes the form of women who turn out to be "queen bees". Strangely, Preston never reflects on whether these films could be anti-feminist. Of course, when the Africanized killer bee "invaded" the United States from Mexico, the movie industry had a field day. Many horror movies about killer bees use these insects as an obviously racist metaphor for Blacks, Mexicans or aliens in general. One particularly bad movie depicts the killer bees as eco-terrorists, and this even before eco-terrorism became an issue!

However, Preston also points out that the European honeybee was still seen as a positive cultural symbol in many contexts. In the United States, bees are still used as role models for children: "Be a Do-Bee, Don't Be a Don't-Bee". Indeed, it's difficult to believe that the negative attitude towards the European honeybee was ever the dominant trend. It's hardly a co-incidence that the negative views of the Cold War era were later projected onto the more aggressive and invasive killer bees!

Some new development not mentioned by the author are the varroa mite and CCD. My guess is that bees will eventually become symbols of human civilization itself. The next horror movie will feature gigantic mites...or terrorists inducing mass starvation through CCD. The honeybees (and ecologists) will be the good guys. Boring, right?

As already pointed out, "Bee" isn't really about bees. It's a book about the human hive. It's not a scholarly study, but rather a compilation of facts about bees as metaphor. Some chapters could need better editing. Frankly, you probably should approach this book with a grain of salt. I mean, a book that mentions both Virgil, Edmund Burke and "Candyman"? Still, if you have a beekeeper or Do-Bee in the family, it could perhaps work as a lighter birthday gift.