Before I get into the the post itself, I wanted to provide a disclaimer of sorts - I'm a neophyte at best when it comes to going organic. We've been buying organic milk for the kids for a number of years and pick up organic this and organic that, mostly from Trader Joe's, but other than that, like I said I'm a neophyte at best.
That said, I somehow manged to get on the Organic Consumers Association's mailing list and after reading a number of DKos diaries on the so far unexplained collapse of commercial bee hives an item in the latest OCA newsletter caught my eye: Organic Bees Are Thriving While Pesticide Intensive Conventional Bee Hive Colonies Are Collapsing
I found one fairly recent diary, Honeybee dieoff: Round Species in a square Box, that picks up on similar candidate root causes for the collapse of commercial bee colonies, but that was a while ago, and the OCA article homes in on one very different aspect that I found most interesting:
Bees have been bred for the past 100 years to be much larger than they would be if left to their own devices. If you find a feral honeybee colony in a tree, for example, the cells bees use for egg-laying will be about 4.9 mm wide. This is the size they want to build the natural size.
The foundation wax that beekeepers buy have cells that are 5.4 mm wide so eggs laid in these cells produce much bigger bees. It's the same factory farm mentality we've used to produce other livestock bigger is better. But the bigger bees do not fare as well as natural-size bees.
The article goes on to say that:
Varroa mites, a relatively new problem in North America, will multiply and gradually weaken a colony of large bees so that it dies within a few years. Mites enter a cell containing larvae just before the cell is capped over with wax. While the cell is capped, the bee transforms into an adult and varroa mites breed and multiply while feeding on the larvae.
The larvae of natural bees spend less time in this capped over stage, resulting in a significant decrease in the number of varroa mites produced. In fact, very low levels of mites are tolerated by the bees and do not affect the health of the colony. Natural-size bees, unlike large bees, detect the presence of varroa mites in capped over cells and can be observed chewing off the wax cap and killing the mites. Colonies of natural-size bees are healthier in the absence mites, which are vectors for many diseases.
The article talks about other aspects of commercial bee keeping at odds with the natural order of things, much in the vein of the aforementioned diary from May 9th, all enlightening and worth the read.
Since few of us are likely to become bee keepers organic or otherwise, what's important for me is the economic, demand opportunity. If DKosers en masse head out to our local farmers' market or Trader Joe's or other organic outlet and opt for organic honey and organic whatever else is on your shopping list that we can afford, we'll do as much, if not more than anything else we can to help ensure the food supply and our very collective health and welfare.
Happy & sweet organic eating!