I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
ALBUQUERQUE—Ken Hays is fielding calls from New Mexico residents who are anxious to get swarms of bees off their property. The calls come every few minutes, although nearly as often, a call will come in from someone wanting to take those swarming bees in for their own hives. Or someone might be asking for advice on a problem, such as a sterile queen, in the hives they already have.
It’s early afternoon and Hays, who was away from the phone all morning while checking his own bees, says he’s already had more than 20 calls. “That’s normal this time of year.”
Hays is president of the New Mexico Beekeepers Association. And the “normal” number of calls is one indicator that New Mexico’s bees are faring better than in most places around the world, including the neighboring states of Colorado and Texas, where instances of the phenomenon known as bee colony collapse are decimating hives and putting beekeepers out of business.
Swarming, in fact, indicates healthy hives: It’s the time when a colony is fllush with honey and a full workforce and, like an ameoba, is big enough to divide. A newly emerged queen or the sitting queen is allowed to leave with a “swarm” of workers to create a new colony elsewhere.
“We haven’t really had a major problem with it,” Hays says of colony-collapse disorder in New Mexico.
Longtime master beekeeper and former New Mexico State Bee Inspector Les Crowder concurs, saying New Mexico bees in general are healthier than in other states for a couple of reasons: development of a strong New Mexico breed and the fact that few beekeepers travel to other states to hire out their hives for pollination.
Possible trouble
Yet that’s not to say bees are not threatened.
“All of our pollinators are in trouble, including hummingbirds,” Crowder says.
Hays says pesticides can wipe out hives, especially by aerial spraying, and advises beekeepers to be careful where they place bees: “near a water source and flowering plants—away from spraying.”
And Hays is convinced hives must be kept away from genetically modified crops. “That’s where you see colony collapse,” he says. Hays says out of more than 200 hives he has “scattered all over” New Mexico, the only ones he’s lost to die-off were 20 hives situated next to fields of genetically modified corn. “Everybody around there lost bees,” Hays says.
Less obvious than pesticide use, it’s hard to know whether a neighbor is growing GM crops. But Hays, a master gardener who raises more than 500 apple trees near Bosque Farms, says he can tell just by looking when a field is planted in GM corn.
Instead of harrowing between rows, the farmer will use the herbicide Roundup to kill weeds, he says. Normally, one can’t spray without killing the crop as well, but GM corn is genetically modified to remain unaffected. In fact it thrives when sprayed.
Monsanto, manufacturer of Roundup and of genetically modified crops, including corn and soybeans, confirms this on its Web site:
Roundup Ready® crops contain genes that confer tolerance to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup® agricultural herbicides. Roundup agricultural herbicides will kill crops that do not contain a Roundup Ready gene.
The implication for bees is that “the pollen becomes poison and kills insects,” Hays says. “I have lots of hives. I’m not hurting. (But) I don’t want any bees around GM corn.”
Crowder, who used to keep bees south of Albuquerque but is now in Peñasco, concurs, saying he thinks bees around GM crops are dying because they cannot digest GM pollen, “although I haven’t seen a good study on that.”
The bee’s inability to digest the pollen could be compared to human inability to digest Olestra, a fat alternative product that passes through the body and is used to reduce caloric intake.
Crowder says beekeepers he knows in the Chihuahua state of Mexico are experiencing problems they attribute to GM corn, and Mexicans are fighting to keep GM corn from taking over native corn plants. German beekeepers also suspect GM crops in colony collapse.
Research into colony collapse
Recognizing that colony collapse threatens about a third of the nation’s food sources, Congress put $75 million —or $15 million annually over five years — in this year’s farm bill specifically to fund research into the causes behind it. One of the bill’s provisions is that the U.S. Department of Agriculture annually report on results of the research into colony collapse.
In New Mexico, pollination by bees is essential for signature crops like chile and pecans. And, of course, another bee benefit—honey— is the condiment of choice for New Mexico’s Native American-inspired dessert: sopapillas.
Fully one-third of the crops we eat will not grow without pollination, including apples, berries, nuts, squash, soybeans, avocados, melons, some vegetables, like cabbage and broccoli, and herbs.
Given the stakes, some question whether enough is being done, as did New Mexico Independent’s sister publication, the Washington Independent, in a recent article.
The San Francisco Chronicle noted that the farm bill puts a “few million” toward colony collapse when what is at stake is a $21 billion bounty of almonds, avocados, berries, melons and other produce in the state of California alone.
And New Mexico beekeepers and others question whether USDA’s research will include a critical look at GM crops, giant corporations like Monsanto or industrial agriculture itself, which promotes the use of GM crops, pesticides and monoculture, all of which have been implicated in colony destruction. Monoculture is vast acreages planted in one crop, which means flowering occurs all at once, leaving no food for bees when the flowering stops. When crops are more diverse, they flower throughout the growing season, offering a continuous food supply for bees.
Monoculture also encourages migratory beekeeping, where keepers take their bees hundreds of miles across the country to fields that are in need of pollination. As University of California, Berkeley biologist Claire Kremen told the San Francisco Chronicle, congregating millions of bees in one place creates an opportunity for transmission of parasites and diseases.
Transportation is also hard on the bees.
Crowder has taken his hives to California for almond pollination but stayed away in recent years in the interest of his own bees’ health. The California bees, he says, “look terrible.”
Migratory beekeepers are “under tremendous stress,” he says, ”and so are their bees.” Crowder says he knows of one migratory beekeeper who “walked away” from 25,000 colonies. “He just couldn’t deal with it anymore. They’re in a lot of trouble, and that’s why we need more small-scale beekeepers.”
Master beekeeper Les Crowder, surrounded by bees, holds a bar comb from one of his “top bar” hives at Tesuque Pueblo’s farming operations. (Photo By Denise Tessier)
Crowder demonstrates the gentleness of a bee by holding it. (Photo By Denise Tessier)
Worker bees on the cells of a traditional frame comb. Finger is pointing toward the long narrow body of a queen. (Photo By Denise Tessier)
Bee-built comb on a hive’s “top bar.” The dark yellow combs hold pollen. (Photo By Denise Tessier)
The perils of commercial beekeeping
Crowder has worked both sides of the fence. He says he once worked for a commercial outfit with 4,000 hives, where pesticide was sprayed to kill wax moths. It’s not supposed to hurt bees, but after an application, Crowder says, “you could literally see the bees rubbing their eyes.”
He thinks commercial beekeeping in general is hard on bees. The scenario he describes almost sounds like that of factory-farmed chickens, crammed into little cages with a conveyor belt on one end to deliver feed, another belt on the other to carry off eggs and waste. Except in this case, the bees are living in frames stacked atop one another.
“We force them into contaminated hives and keep them in the same combs year after year,” Crowder says.
When bees walk on a man-made plastic honeycomb in a frame, they leave on it whatever they’ve tracked in from outside the hive, whether it’s pesticide or car exhaust or bacteria. “Any fat-soluable or water-soluble contaminant remains” on the combs, he says.
In nature, bees make their own wax combs, and in a symbiotic relationship, wax moths eat old combs the bees leave behind as no longer worth cleaning. Crowder teaches his beekeeping students to make “top bar” hives—a kind of cradle-shaped hive topped with long bars from which the bees hang their combs—and encourages students to help the bees keep a clean environment by culling the combs when they gain a certain opacity.
In culling the combs, “We’re taking the role of wax moths.”
Some large-scale beekeepers at one time had wax moths irradiated as a “pest” in Lousiana, Crowder says, and “it was a disaster.”
Crowder thinks pesticides, specifically those used to kill bee mites, are a factor in colony collapse.
Although Hays and Crowder have often traded their expertise with each other over the years, on this subject they disagree. Hays says, “Miticides don’t hurt bees; they only kill mites.”
In the long run, however, Crowder says miticide use keeps bees from developing resistance to mites. In fact mites have become resistant to miticide.
Crowder says he lost all his bees to mites one year, while Hays, who used a miticide, didn’t. After that, Crowder obtained Russian bees resistant to mites. Crowder says the bees would grab mites off their fellow bees and grind them with their mandibles; the chewed remains of mites could be found at the bottom of Crowder’s hives.
Bees have different way of dealing with disease and pests, but they can’t develop resistance if they’re exposed to chemicals, whether it’s a miticide or antiobiotic. “The fact that feral bees are coming back is a clear indication of natural mite suppression,” Crowder says.
Bees are not native to the Americas. “We have to sift through and find the bees that fit here,” Crowder tells beekeeping students. “We need to find our own bees that are New Mexican, as you will.”
In fact that’s one of the reasons New Mexico’s bees are doing well compared to other places.
“Bees this year look better than ever,” Crowder says. “To me, it not the doom and gloom situation” it is for commercial keepers. “Small-scale and feral bees (at least in New Mexico) are OK.”
“I think we’ll have our own New Mexico breed because our queens are breeding with feral bees now,” Crowder says.
Editor’s note: This is the first of two articles on raising bees in New Mexico. The second deals with home and urban beekeeping and can be viewed here.
