Honey Bee Suite » bees and agriculture

USDA updates hardiness zones

Rusty — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:41:53 +0000

Last Wednesday the USDA released its newly redrawn Plant Hardiness Zone Map. The map is based on the average lowest winter temperature in a given area—not the lowest temperature ever—and is calculated from data collected over the last 30 years. The new map was compiled at Oregon State University using GIS software.

Plant Hardiness Zones are used by gardeners, nurseries, farmers, or just about anyone who wants to know if a particular plant will thrive in a particular area. They are also used by scientists studying changes in animal distribution or the spread of invasive species, insects, and plant pathogens. A variety of federal and state agencies also use the information for projects and predictions.

The USDA is careful to say that the new map is not useful for studying climate change, and it points out the many of the changes in the map are due to better technology and better data manipulation. However, it is interesting to note that many areas in the United States were bumped into a warmer zone, and two new zones were added at the high end of the scale. The new zone 12 has average low temperatures of 50-60°F, and the new zone 13 has average low temperatures of 60-70°F.

It seems to me that if the changes were due solely to better data collection, the changes would occur in both directions—some areas would drop into a colder zone, some would rise into a warmer zone, and some would remain the same. But according to the sources I’ve read, the changes were nearly all in the warmer direction. And if two warmer zones had to be added—not just one—it means that some areas have average low winter temperatures that are more than 10 degrees warmer than previously calculated. That’s hard to explain by bad data.

The warmer map has several implications for beekeepers. For one thing, flowers may bloom earlier than they used to, especially in northern areas, and the growing season may be slightly longer. The mix of available forage may change as plants, previously confined to the south, slowly expand their distribution. The bad news is that warmer winter temperatures allow the spread of insects such as small hive beetles and wax moths that are routinely killed by freezing temperatures. Even the northern spread of Africanized honey bees can be accelerated by slightly warmer winter temperatures. All very interesting . . . and all very messy.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite.com

Follow this link to the interactive map where you can enter your zip code to find the details of your hardiness zone.

New USDA Hardiness Zones 2012

Are glacier lilies and bumble bees out of sync?

Rusty — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 19:19:32 +0000

A new study, conducted in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, suggests a disturbing relationship between climate change and the pollination rate of a specific flower, the glacier lily. The research—performed over a 17-year period by Professor James Thomson from the University of Toronto—is due to be published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

Scientists have been arguing for years about whether a “pollination deficit” actually exists. Bits and pieces of information accumulated over the course of about two decades seem to indicate that the number of pollinator species—as well as their population densities—is decreasing. Growers of many different crops—from blueberries in Canada to cherries in China—have reported a decreasing availability of pollinators.

The reasons for pollinator decline are many and include pesticide use, habitat loss, habitat fragmentation, poor nutrition, and parasitic mites. But the study by Professor Thomson is unique in that it attempted to measure the effects of climate change by controlling for the other factors.

Thomson and his group purchased a remote plot of land isolated from many of the common disturbances known to affect native pollinators. Furthermore, he based his study solely on a plant/pollinator combination native to the location where the research took place. No non-native species were introduced.

Thomson studied the pollination rate of the glacier lily. In the experiment, the fruiting rate (the number of successful pollinations) was compared between two groups of lilies—those pollinated by hand and those pollinated by native pollinators. Over the course of the 17 years the numbers continually diverged with the naturally-pollinated lilies producing fewer and fewer fruits as time went on. The divergence was especially great in the early spring.

Because the research plot was far from agricultural and population centers, Thomson believes that the major difference in the plant/pollinator environment over the 17-year period was that caused by climate change. He believes that the change in pollination rate is due to the divergence of bloom time and bumble bee emergence—a situation that can easily be brought about by climate change.

In nature, plants tend to respond more quickly to changes in temperature than insects. So while plants bloom earlier in warmer conditions, pollinators don’t emerge until a certain period of time has passed—causing the two events to happen on slightly different schedules. This is enough to cause losses in pollination, especially in the early spring—just as Thomson’s results demonstrate.

While this is just a small piece of the climate change puzzle, the information points to an area where more research is desperately needed. The more we know about the possible results of climate change, the better our policy decisions can be.

Rusty

Glacier lily. Flickr photo by Nordique.

More Than Honey—a film about bees and bee people

Rusty — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 16:23:07 +0000

Of the many on-going bee projects across the globe, one in particular has caught my attention. The project, a documentary film entitled More Than Honey, will be “a film about bees and beekeepers, about pollen and honey, about biology and business.” The film is an international endeavor directed by Markus Imhoof from Switzerland and co-produced by Ormenis Film (Switzerland), Thelma Film (Switzerland), zero one film (Germany) and Allegro Film (Austria).

Although the film will look at reasons for the worldwide collapse of honey bees, “the focus is not on the death of bees, but on their lives . . . and how closely their lives and deaths are linked with ours.”

Now, here is what particularly intrigues me about this project. Although they are not beekeepers, these filmmakers have amassed a large amount of information, all of which they cannot possibly use in their film. Instead of letting this material go by the wayside, they are writing a blog about bees, beekeepers, the making of the film, and interesting asides as they come up.

The blog, written by Kerstin Hoppenhaus, the co-author of the project, has posed some difficult questions and unearthed some fascinating stories. I urge you to take a look at http://morethanhoney-blog.de. Most posts are in English or German, and other translations are available upon request.

Another thing that fascinates me is their attention to detail and accuracy. It was Kerstin who first wrote to me questioning the statistic that “bees pollinate one-third of the human diet.” Kerstin’s group and readers here at HoneyBeeSuite.com have been working to find the source for the calculations on which this familiar claim is based. If you’ve been following this discussion you know it is not an easy task.

A new question appeared yesterday concerning the distances bees have to fly to produce a kilogram of honey. Interesting stuff. It appears that German bees fly substantially different distances than English bees or American bees! How can this bee? Like the one-third question, all the mis-calculations seem to be based on other mis-estimations. On the lighter side, another recent post deals with the phrase, “the bees knees.” I’ve always wondered about that myself–what is it with bees knees anyway?

The fact that these insights are being posted for public consumption and comment gives me confidence that the documentary will be accurate and informative. It assures me that the film will not be based on often-repeated beekeeper rhetoric—but will rely on fresh ideas and clear thinking. I’m sold on the movie based solely on the questions being asked.

Rusty

National Honey Bee Awareness Day

Rusty — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 13:00:39 +0000

Today, Saturday August 21, is National Honey Bee Awareness Day. I read somewhere that the goal of this day is to “promote and advance beekeeping, to educate the public about honey bees and beekeeping, and to engage the public in related environmental concerns.”

It’s these “related environmental concerns” that are most troubling, and it will take more than a day or two of engaging the public to do anything about them. Although there is a lot of talk about environmental problems, there is very little action. We continue to burn fossil fuels, use pesticides, grow untested genetically modified foods, and dump garbage in our oceans while we talk about how terrible the whole thing is. We each think that we are entitled to do these things even though “they” shouldn’t be.

So if you really care about the bees—honey bees or any other type—you can start by doing something for the environment. There are limitless ways to help and you don’t have to go anywhere near a bee if you don’t want to. Furthermore, you can start anywhere you like because anything we can do to preserve the resources and biodiversity of the planet will help the bees—and ultimately the human race.

Rusty

A reader delves into the one-third question

Rusty — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 18:01:52 +0000

A while back I wrote Bees pollinate one-third of what? Do we really know? In that post I questioned the frequently repeated statement that “bees pollinate one-third of the human food supply” because I could never discover who calculated this number or how it was calculated.

I wanted to know if it was one-third by weight, volume, calories, dollars, species, or some other measurement. I wanted to know if the one-third was really pollinated by bees, or if that number included all pollinating insects, or if it included animal pollinators as well.

This research is a chore I managed to put off. But this morning I received an impressive review of published literature from an interested reader. You can read her original comments, which are appended to the original post. What she found is interesting. Everyone it seems–even in the peer-reviewed literature–is citing someone else when they publish these numbers. By following the citations backwards, she pinpointed a publication by McGregor (1976) as the source for most of these comments. But no one, so far as she can tell, ever shows calculations.

The suspect publication by S.E. McGregor, “Insect Pollination of Cultivated Crop Plants,” comes closest to providing something of value. But even this document mentions percentages of the human diet without further defining what is meant or how it was calculated. He writes about the number of food species pollinated by insects and about the acres of U.S. soil planted to insect-pollinated crops. From there–in a truly mind-bending leap of faith–he draws conclusions about the percentage of our diet that is derived from insect-pollinated plants.

So it looks like we still don’t have a complete answer, but I wanted to thank Jess for all her efforts at trying to solve this vexing problem . . . and for finding McGregor.

It occurs to me that this conundrum–of one author citing another ad infinitum–is something that we as individuals and societies must be wary of. It is so easy to believe often-cited statistics, advice, or beliefs just because they are often cited. We assume that if everyone says something, it must be true. In this case I am not saying that insects don’t pollinate one-third of the food supply, I just want to know how the calculation was made. Is that asking too much?

Rusty