Earlier this week, the East Midlands Environment Agency proudly tweeted that they had placed honey bee hives on an ecologically important site that they own. As you might imagine, the response from pollinator experts such as myself, conservation NGOs, and some beekeepers, was not positive, as you can see if you look at the comments beneath my tweet:
By coincidence, overnight I received a message from someone in the USA asking for advice. Here’s a redacted version of their message:
My community has a 4 acre serpentine barren site that is part of a larger string of these unique barrens ….. Honey bee hives have recently been located adjacent to the barrens. Can you advise me as to the best way to determine whether there are, and to document any, adverse effects to the serpentine barrens native pollinators?
The question of how managed honey bees can impact wild pollinators and the pollination of wild plants is one that frequently comes up in the talks and training that I do. Many beekeepers share these concerns – see for example this very detailed blog post by Mark Patterson.
Going back to the question of how to assess any impacts, the simple answer is that it’s not easy and it relies on having good data. This was my response to my American correspondent:
Ideally you would need to take a before-and-after approach where you have data on things like number of native pollinator species, their abundance (including nest sites), rates of visitation of different pollinators to flowers, and fruit or seed set from particular plants. You’d then compare what was going on before the hives arrived with what’s occurring since their arrival.
If you don’t have the “before” data it’s much more difficult to assess if there has been an impact from the honey bees. However, the advice of most conservation groups is to adopt the “precautionary principle” and not site hives on or adjacent to areas of nature conservation value, especially if they are relatively small areas. See for example the Bumblebee Conservation Trust’s advice: https://www.bumblebeeconservation.org/managed-honeybees/
The precautionary principle is a well established concept across a range of areas, including health and engineering, as well as nature conservation. In the latter it needs to be more widely applied, especially when it comes to questions of where to site honey bee hives, and how many.
Prof. Jeff Ollerton - ecological scientist and author 
Given the density of honey bees across the whole of the UK, the onus should be on the beekeeper to show that any site is capable of carrying hives without impacting other pollinators. There is a sort of romantic acceptance – even amongst those who should know better – that somehow beehives are always a Good Thing when almost always the reverse is true. It is great to see estates like Blenheim actively removing managed hives from their estates and surrounding farms.
Thanks Guy, that’s a great point.
Jeff:
You’ve opened a real can of worms here. The possible answers to this question can and do turn real nasty in Australia. I suggest you discuss the matter with Graham.
Peter ________________________________
Hi guys,
Yes, I have been interested in impacts of honeybees for quite some time, and been involved in the issue of siting bee hives in or near conservation reserves. My publication (The effects of introduced honeybee (Apis mellifera) on Australian native bees. G. H. Pyke and L. Balzer. N.S.W. Nat. Parks & Wildlife Service, Occasional Paper 1985 Vol. Number 7) was used for years to justify an attempted ban on putting hives in NSW National Parks.
I have also published about honeybees and the precautionary principle, which is often misinterpreted (The introduced honeybee and the Precautionary Principle: reducing the conflict. G. H. Pyke. Australian Zoologist 1999 Vol. 31 Pages 181-186)
Always happy to discuss, though Jeff seems to have things well in hand.
Regards,
Graham
Thanks Peter & Graham, much appreciated.
As a beekeeper, this is an interesting topic. I certainly don’t ascribe to the “honey bees contribute to biodiversity and are universally beneficial” … more times than not it’s ‘beewash’ and a simple way to claim green credentials in the eyes of the customer (who is probably not well enough informed). However, the converse – some sort of blanket ban until proved otherwise in that environment (how will this be achieved with the ban?) – seems draconian. How far from reserves would bees be banned? Foraging distance? Usually no more than 2 km, but can be up to 6-8 km. That’s a large exclusion zone for a small field-sized SSI, for example. Swarm migration distances can probably be that high as well (though usually much less).
Surely a better way to approach the topic would be to define parameters that account for forage availability, seasonal variation and pollinator presence/pressure to help understand which areas should be honey bee-free, and which can cope (and at what density). I don’t agree with Guy Thompson’s view that hives are almost always not a good thing … particularly when you take into account other benefits like crop pollination, public awareness, local (not imported) honey, farmer buy-in etc.
Clearly hive density is untenably high in some areas … but there’s little information that can be used by beekeepers (or native/solitary bee conservationalists) to define what the carrying capacity of an environment is. If I want to put half a dozen hives on a field of OSR how do I know the environment can cope with them once the crop goes over? If the field margins are no more than a barbed wire fence and a metre of herbicide sprayed ground then is it the honey bees that are at fault or the inexorable damage that’s previously been done to environment?
The Blenheim estate is an interesting one. Like you I am still waiting for the genetic data on the bees. My prediction is that removal of bees from the surrounding areas will reduce the influx of swarms to the estate. There may be self-sustaining populations there, but with 4-5 hives per square km in that part of Oxfordshire – surrounding hive-free parkland with ample old trees with cavities – there are other explanations which need to be excluded first.
Agreed, there’s a lot of unanswered questions around this topic and I think that more work needs to be done. But until it is, putting hives close to or on small protected areas of ecological importance has got to be discouraged.
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