Where are all the bees going…?

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I thought it was about time to get on to my serious interest. I mean I have several other potentially less serious interests like:

How much chocolate can one person eat at time? (I’d say lots…mmmmm :) )

Can Matt Smith make it as the new Doc Who? (Jury still out on that one…)

Can I finish editing the 80 000 words of novel I have sitting on my computer in time to get a free paperback copy? (Wish me luck!)

Will Nicky or Dovitz ever win a GP whilst I am watching?
(Yes Nicky won MotoGP in 06, but since I started following him things have gone a little bit FUBAR. I do worry that I may be to blame. I do tend to curse my puppies…)

And many more things besides…but my serious interest at the moment, the one that actually leads to me being paid, involves bees. Anyone who has seen the news recently, or watched Doctor Who for that matter, will know that honeybees are vanishing! Last winter saw honeybee losses of almost 30% in the UK! In the USA things are even worse!

The big question now is; Where are the bees going?

In Doctor Who the answer was simple. Many honeybees aren’t actually Earth Natives. They’re aliens from another planet and when they realised that Earth was in peril they did the only sensible thing and bailed. (Which makes me wonder…now that the Daleks have been defeated yet again, will they come back? The bees not the Daleks, we know the Daleks will be back!)


In the real world however things are not so simple. Which is actually a good thing for me! You see I get funding from various people who want the answer to that question. If it was a simple answer (O you know, they just don’t like us any more so they’ve moved out) then I’d have to find another research topic and more funding. As it is…(Well you see it’s a complicated combination of various potential causes all acting in synergy to lead to the gradual decline of several pollinator species, most importantly the honey bee…) I get lots of money to explore honeybee behaviour!
And what have I learned so far…

Well, quite a bit actually but here’s just 3 simple facts:
1. Bees don’t like being squeezed, caught in hair or having anything stolen from their hives when you aren’t covering them liberally in smoke…any of these offences will lead to stinging. (Ow!)
2. Putting bees in the fridge for about half an hour will make them dopey so that you can handle them! (which is cool-no pun intended-and useful for setting up various experiments).
3. Putting bees in the fridge for too long will kill them (which is not so cool and means you need to start the experiment again).

And the point of this post…where are all the bees going? Well that one we’re still working on. We’re pretty sure by now that bees aren’t heading back to their home planet, nor are they just moving out to better accommodation elsewhere. In fact large numbers of them are dying. The big question now is why? And as predicted the answer is not at all simple with causes including; disease, pesticides, bad husbandry, lack of a balanced diet, bad weather, decreased gene pool and many others besides…Which means I’m set for the next couple of years.

Don’t worry though, there is a silver lining. Whilst bee numbers in various places (including the US and the UK) are tumbling fast with no simple combatable cause, honeybee numbers elsewhere (like Scandinavia) are actually on the increase! In fact many scientists now are saying that the mass hysteria surrounding disappearing honeybees and CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder) has all been taken way out proportion. Don’t get me wrong, there is still a problem (don’t stop funding bee research!) but the problem may not be as drastic as it’s been made out to be.
Which means that we can get back to worrying about a million and one other problems like; invasive alien species are taking over the world! GM crops are the work of the devil! Living causes cancer! Prophets predict end of world next year! …