Honeybees collect nectar from an Eryngium plant at Great Dixter in Northiam, East Sussex, on 4 August 2013. Photo by Chris Helgren/Reuters

Helen Jukes
is a British writer and writing tutor. She is the author of A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings (2018) and her work has appeared in BBC Wildlife, the Junket and LITRO, among others. She tutors on the creative writing programme at the University of Oxford, and also works with the Bee Friendly Trust in London. She lives in Derbyshire in the UK.

‘When I’m manning an information stall,’ my beekeeper friend Paul told me recently, ‘there’s one question I’m always asked: “Bees are in trouble, aren’t they?” I tell them: “Honeybees in the UK, not really; honeybees in the US, yes; wild bee species globally, yes.” Then I cram in as much detail as I can about the biodiversity crisis before their eyes glaze over and they wander off in the direction of the ice-cream van.’

Paul does himself an injustice – I could listen to him rattle on for hours. He’s one of those people with a knowledge gleaned from years spent watching the bees in his garden, watching the fields and hedgerows, chewing the fat with other beekeepers, and sifting through endless articles and research papers online. He makes the information interesting, by which I mean he adds colour to it, adds experience, adds story, shoehorning little anecdotes and details that make vertiginous issues such as biodiversity collapse pressing in a good way – a rallying way, a way that makes one want to step up and take note and make a difference.

He’s right about honeybee populations, too. Apis mellifera, the western honeybee, is a member of the genus Apis, known for its production of wax and honey, and for the fact that it lives collectively, as part of a colony. While losses in the US and Europe over the past two decades have focused attention on the plight of this species, at least in the UK and Europe populations now appear relatively stable.

In the US, where honeybees were brought over with European settlers in the 17th century, the situation is more complicated. Beekeepers report winter losses of around 30 per cent (this rose to nearly 40 per cent in the winter of 2018-19, the highest figure ever recorded in the 13 years since the survey commenced). So, although total hive numbers have improved since the declines brought about by Colony Collapse Disorder, this is being achieved mostly through increasingly invasive practices: beekeepers offset losses either by replacing colonies or ‘splitting’ existing ones, taking a portion of eggs, larvae, bees and food stores from a healthy colony and placing them in a new hive with a queen reared specially for the purpose. Since the reasons driving the high loss rates remain unaddressed, beekeepers are essentially having to work harder now than they were a few decades ago just to ‘stay in one place’.[…]

Read More: https://aeon.co/essays/why-keeping-bees-means-thinking-about-landscape-as-a-system