When l tell people I'm a beekeeper, at first they don't know what to make of it. It's pretty unusual I suppose to meet a beekeeper in the city, even though there seem to be a fair amount of beekeepers in Philadelphia. The more nature-attuned folks sometimes thank me for "saving the bees" and praise me for my service – "What you're doing is so important! The bees need our help." Even though I often use the hashtag #savethebees in my posts, that's a stretch. I'm not saving the honeybee population. The honeybees don't need to be saved. Native bees need the help.
Honeybees are not native to America. They were brought over by colonists in the 1600s for candle wax and sugar. As they swarmed, they spread west, which earned the honeybees the Native American nickname "white man's fly." (This is a similar story to the plantain, the plant that was brought over with colonists and spread where ever the white man went, becoming known as "white man's foot.")
Over 90% of the bees in America are native bees and most of them don't live in a colony or produce honey. Unlike native bees, honeybees are unique social insects - they are considered managed livestock, much like chickens and cattle, and live in hives with thousands of their sisters, and a few hundred brothers, along with their mother, the queen. While all bees - native and non-native - are subject to the perils of pesticides and monoculture (fields of predominantly one crop that provide very little if any forage for pollinators), honeybee populations ebb and flow through the season typically through the beekeeper's manipulations and management style, and other natural factors like swarming and disease. Native bees, on the other hand, are typically feral and their population is not manageable. A beekeeper can split a strong honeybee colony several times in the year to make up for colony loss. We do this in several ways, such as "splits." One type of split involves removing the queen from a colony and putting her in a smaller hive called a nucleus hive, along with frames of pollen and honey and empty frames where the queen can lay eggs. The colony where the queen came from can raise a new queen as long as they have a frame of eggs in the hive. One colony has been "split" into two.
Native bees, they're pretty much on their own. When their populations dwindle, there isn't much human intervention that can double their population. Pesticides will effect honeybees and native bees, so a location with heavy pesticide use will effect all bees equally. For the most part, weak honeybee colonies can be strengthened with frames of honeybees taken from a stronger more populous colony. If a honeybee colony has a high varroa mite population, a beekeeper can treat that colony to reduce the amount of mites, hence reducing the transmission of honeybee viruses that mites cause. For these reasons, the effects of pesticide and less forage in an ecosystem often has a much more longtime adverse effect on native, non-managed bee populations. To drive the point home, I started the 2023 season with seven colonies and ended up with a dozen colonies by splitting and capturing swarms from my hives.
Beekeepers aren't heroic, but we're often more aware of the local ecosystem. Honeybees serve as a bioindicator. Through close inspections of bee hives, beekeepers are in tune with changing climate, pesticide use in the area, diseases, and local forage levels, which provides helpful data for the native bees and pollinators in the area. I'm no superhero, but I do my part to promote awareness of our local environment and share what I know about honeybees and beekeeping. So while I'm not actually "saving the bees," #savethebees does make for an eye catching hashtag.
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