9. Are We Really Still Putting Chemicals in the Beehive?

Are We Really Still Putting Chemicals in the Beehive? 9

Since the mid-1980s, the world of beekeeping has really gone through some changes. Before then, it was pretty simple: get a beehive, get some bees, put the bees in the hive, watch them for the summer, harvest their honey, feed sugar if needed. Next spring: repeat this process, with the same bees. Split them as they prepare to swarm, and increase the size of your apiary at will.

With the advent of the varroa mite, this idyllic picture changed drastically. The use of miticides in beehives became the norm, and “when to use which chemical” became the lesson taught in beekeeping courses everywhere. Your granddad probably wouldn’t recognize the way we keep bees today.

Mightier Mites All of this new beekeeping education was well-intentioned, of course. Beekeepers do not want to lose their bees, and if killing the mites with a simple chemical worked, well then...why not? But the shortsightedness of this attitude became evident when the early chemical treatments began to lose their effectiveness. The pests they were meant to fight evolved and became resistant to the active ingredients in the treatments.

Resistance and Synergistic Effects This resistance became the driving force behind the search for a new and more effective chemical to ward off pests. When one was found, we said, “Yay! A treatment that actually works!” Until once again, the pests developed resistance and were able to withstand the new treatments, and their effectiveness was diminished as well.

Now we had a new and different problem: the synergistic effects of multiple miticides. Synergistic effects are described as: “The interaction of two or more substances to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects.” We see this issue in other areas as well. The one that comes most readily to mind is pharmaceuticals. Remember how the last time you presented a prescription at a pharmacy and were asked straightaway by the pharmacist, “What else are you taking?” The concern that drives that question is real—it’s about synergistic effects. There is a real possibility that otherwise helpful drugs could interact with each other in a way that could cause a serious health problem, or even be fatal.

But we don’t ask the bees, “What else are you taking?” or the equivalent: “What else has been put into your hive?” The synergistic effects of putting one treatment after another into a beehive are impossible to quantify. The specific effects of individual treatments when used alone are one thing, but the potential reactions to the many possible combinations of chemicals and the differing quantities, timing and toxicities are myriad and impossible to track.

Persistent Pesticides in the Bees’ Wax When miticides were first developed and registered for use in beehives to combat varroa mites, the typical testing seemed to indicate that they were safe for use in the hive. The bees did not die immediately upon coming into contact with the treatments, but mites did, and the treatments were pronounced safe.

However, beeswax is lipophilic, meaning it absorbs fat-soluble substances such as miticides and other pesticides. As beekeepers continue to use toxic treatments in the hive, these treatments build up in

that special stuff that the bees’ nest is constructed of—their beeswax comb—the heart and the skeleton of their hive. The combs they build inside the beehive are used to store their honey and as a nursery, where eggs are laid and young bees are raised—two very special and important purposes!

Ultimately though, those same combs are eventually recycled and the wax is reused to make new sheets of foundation. Unfortunately, the pesticides we began using in the 1980s don’t just evaporate when the wax is rendered...instead they persist, and even accumulate. Now even freshly made foundation wax is contaminated.

Weaker Bees Bees don’t die from their initial exposure to the active ingredients in products like CheckMite+® and Apistan®. But what have been the longterm effects of these products as they build up in the wax, stopping just short of killing the bees outright? Sure, the chemicals killed most, though not all, of the mites (whose survivors went on to develop resistance to this myriad of toxins)—but who was watching for the long-term cumulative effects on the bees?

Longevity and fecundity of queens; virility and fertility of drones; strength, health and resilience of worker bees; learning ability and memory; development of young bees through all the stages of their life cycle: from egg, to larva, to pupa, to bee; the vitality of the hive as a whole; the ability of bees to navigate from hive to sources of forage and to find their way back again—all of these have been affected since beekeepers began contaminating the bees’ wax in the name of protecting the bees.

Figure 9.1. Plastic foundation in place of contaminated wax? Which is the lesser of the two evils here? Credit: Internet marketing photo.

Is Plastic Really Better? One pragmatic response to discovering the contamination in beeswax foundation was to make foundation from something else, namely, plastic. This certainly eliminates the contaminated beeswax problem, but it leaves one wondering about how many new toxins are being introduced into the hive through off-gassing and other toxins frequently found in plastic.

The fact remains that the very nature of the preprinted embossed hexagons found on sheets of foundation—being all one size and slightly too large—whether constructed of plastic or wax, still makes it difficult for the colony to raise drones, and still adversely affects the gestation cycle of the worker bee, which supports the varroa mite’s reproductive success.

Beekeeping Sans Foundation— Does Natural Wax Do Anything at All? If one accepts the notion that an insect with 65 million years of practice at doing a thing probably knows how to do that thing quite well, then the idea that we humans, with our big brains and our opposable thumbs, could improve upon their process is preposterous. Yet the use of foundation began in the late 1800s, and its perceived benefits are extolled throughout the beekeeping industry.

The benefits of foundation seem to accrue primarily to the beekeeper, not necessarily to the bees, including: making it possible to harvest honey using an extractor, which subjects the comb and the honey to strong centrifugal forces in order to sling the honey from the comb; making hive inspections faster, by enforcing the creation of straight combs; and by making it easier for the beekeeper to handle the frames with less finesse while inspecting the hive.

If one further accepts the notion that the accumulation of persistent pesticides in beeswax foundation is a bad thing, then a beekeeping system that includes chemical treatments and uses foundation made from recycled contaminated beeswax is fraught with issues.

Figure 9.2a. These lab test results show the natural wax from a Gold Star top bar hive is

clean! Credit: Christy Hemenway.

Figure 9.2b. These lab test results show the natural wax from a Gold Star top bar hive is

clean! Credit: Christy Hemenway.

So in the summer of 2010, when I got the opportunity to submit a sample of natural beeswax from a year-old, overwintered top bar hive from Maine to the lab that did the testing for a research project published by some great folks at Penn State, I was really excited. Was the wax going to be as clean as I hoped? I sent in the sample, as instructed, and a few weeks later, I received the lab results.

It took a moment to decipher them. All of the chemicals that were being tested for showed a result, in PPB, of N.D. What the heck was that, I wondered? I searched for the legend, and N.D., it turns out, stands for “Not Detected.” Not detected? Really? Wow. None of the chemicals they were testing for were found in our natural wax sample.

We feel very strongly that the wax in a beehive should be clean, natural beeswax, made by bees, for bees...so those lab results were nothing short of vindicating. It really is “All About the Wax!”

In a nutshell, under Methodology/Principal findings, the authors stated:

We have found 121 different pesticides and metabolites within 887 wax, pollen, bee and associated hive samples. Almost 60% of the 259 wax and 350 pollen samples contained at least one systemic pesticide, and over 47% had both in-hive acaricides fluvalinate and coumaphos, and chlorothalonil, a widely used fungicide.

And under Results, they stated: “Only one of the wax, three pollen and 12 bee samples had no detectable pesticides.” (journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0009754)

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