Stay-at-home bees live longest

Bees play a fundamental role in food production: they pollinate a wide range of crops and the honey variety delivers valuable food products to humans. According to the Germany University of Hohenheim, bees provide services to the figure of 70 billion dollars per year.

The global decline of bee populations is a huge concern. In recent years the use of pesticides in agriculture, and attacks by parasites and diseases, have had a detrimental impact on bees. Per Kryger, a senior scientist at Denmark’s Aarhus University, says "a world without bees would be a whole lot poorer."

Genetically adapted to their environment

Kryger and other scientists from an association called Prevention of Honey Bee Colony Losses (COLOSS) have carried out research to find out how bees can have the best chances of survival. Usually, beekeepers purchase queen bees from other regions to maintain their bee colonies. But Kryger's team has found that bees which are adapted to their local environment fare much better in their chances of survival than bees that which have been imported from a different region.

According to COLOSS, local queens live an average of 83 days longer than colonies with imported queens. Kryger says the most effective way to maintain the bee population's natural diversity is to strengthen the breeding programs with local honey bees." It would also help to prevent the collapse of bee colonies, optimize sustainable productivity and make it possible to maintain continual adaptation to environmental changes," he says.

Fellow beekeeper president of the German Association of Beekeepers, Peter Maske, agrees. Maske, who tends to about 50 bee colonies, says many bee keepers have found the same results: regionally adapted bees can cope better with the challenges of modern life.

"The main threat comes from the varroa mite and the viruses it carries. Then there is a lack of food, if the right plants are not available once the spring has passed. Another major problem is the illness nosema and the effects of pesticides, especially the controversial nicotinoids," he says.

Bees depend on humans

Currently, there are about 750,000 bee colonies in Germany. 50 years ago, there were almost three-times as many colonies. Added to threat of varroa mites, another problem is that beekeepers don’t keep enough hives to be able to select and compensate for losses, says Maske.

"There were times when people kept a lot more hives so that they could earn a bit extra from selling the honey. These days, it’s getting fashionable to keep bees but people don't take on enough separate hives."

Many people believe that they're helping conserve bees by setting up their own beehive. But Maske says it's just not enough. Healthy colonies need an environment that offers them enough nectar and pollen to keep them going all year round. They also need humans to help them cope with the varroa mite and make sure it doesn't spread.

Friedel Mirbach, chairman of the Bonn association of local beekeepers, agrees. He has seven colonies in his garden housing about 300,000 honeybees and several more in neighboring fruit orchards to optimize the pollination of his cherry trees. His queen bees mate with drones from the same neighborhood.

Mirbach, too, believes in keeping local bees: "buying bees from some other region rarely leads to an improvement of any kind," he says. "Bees who are from the area seem to adapt particularly well to changes in the climate."