Bees have ways to deal with the warming of the land, but researchers fear their future

Williamsport, Ohio – Sweat covers the face of Isaac Barnes under the veil of its beekeeper while it prevents honeycomb boxes from its hives to its truck. It is a training session in what looks like a sauna as the temperatures from June at the end of the morning increase.
Although Barnes was hot, his bees were even warmer. Their body temperatures can be up to 27 degrees Fahrenheit (about 15 celsius) higher than air around them. While global temperatures increase under climate change, scientists try to better understand the effects on managed and wild bees when they pollinate crops, collect nectar, honey and reproduce.
They noticed that the flying bees bringing together nectar avoided overheating on the hottest days using less but harder wing beats to maintain their body temperature below dangerous levels, according to a study published last year. Scientists also say that bees – like people – can also face by withdrawn in a cooler environment like shadow or their nest.
“Just as we go in the shade, or we sweat or we could work less hard, bees do exactly the same thing so that they can avoid heat,” said Jon Harrison, environmental physiologist on Arizona State University and one of the authors of the study.
But that means that bees are unable to do what they are doing normally, said Kevin McCluney, professor of biology at the Bowling Green State University.
“They do not go out and do not get more nectar. They do not mate. They do not do things that bees would do otherwise,” said McCluney.
Generally, most bees are tolerant of heat, but as the climate warms up, some experts think that their ability to push illnesses and bringing food together could become more difficult. And the loss of habitat, the increased use of pesticides, diseases and lack of fodder for managed and wild bees are all listed as potential contributors to the world decline of bees and other pollinators.
“If you are not well nourished and your body is intoxicated with pesticides and you have a lot of diseases in your body, you will be less tolerant of heat than if you were healthy,” said Margarita López-Ribe, an expert in health of pollinators with Pennsylvania State University.
Earlier this year, the preliminary results of the annual American beekeeping survey revealed that beekeepers have lost almost 56% of their managed colonies, the highest loss since the start of the survey in 2010.
In the United States, almost all bee colonies managed in the United States are used to pollinate agricultural crops such as almonds, apples, cherries and blueberries. Fewer pollinators can lead to less pollination and potentially lower yields.
“It is a very fragile system if you think about it,” said López-Uibe. “Because if something is wrong, you have these great cultures with high value that will not have enough bees for pollination.”
Back in the hives of Barnes in Ohio, thousands of bees fly while it brings together boxes to bring back to his farm for the production of honey. Nearby, some of its bees land on Asclepius flowers, a little vegetable diversity in an area dominated by the fields of corn and soybeans.
For Barnes, who exploits Honeyrun Farm with his wife, Jayne, one of the challenges that heat can pose to her 500 hives of bees repels parasitic mites that threaten bees. If temperatures become too hot, it cannot apply formal acid, an organic chemical that kills mites. If it is applied when it is too hot, bees could die.
Last year, they lost almost a third of the 400 hives they sent to California to help pollinate commercial almond groves. Barnes thinks that these hives may have been in poor health before pollination because they could not ward off mites when it was hot of months earlier.
“Dead hives do not pollinate almonds,” he said. “It is a real training effect that goes back to heat in summer.”
Sometimes heat helps. Here in Ohio, the hives of Barnes produced an exceptional harvest of honey while they feasted on the nectar of soybeans nearby while the plants flourished in the heat. However, the lack of diverse plants for bees to feed in an area dominated by the fields of corn and soy is not ideal.
And even the native flowers appear irregularly, said Barnes. In the fall, its bees are looking for food on Goldenod, but these flowers appear later. And even then, he completed his hive with additional food to keep them healthy in the winter.
“Each blooming plant is something that the bee can use,” said Barnes. “And each plant is affected by climate change.”
It was only over the past decade that people have become aware of the global pollinator’s decline, Harrison, from Arizona State University said. Data is limited to the quantity of climate change and thermal stress contributes to the drop in pollinators.
“This is a relatively new objective for biology,” he said. “I think it’s super important, but it’s not studied a ton.”
The budget proposed by the Trump administration would eliminate the research program which finances the USGS Bee Lab, which supports the inventory, surveillance and natural history of the Nation’s wild bees. Other subsidies for the search for bees are also in danger.
American senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon said that American pollinators were in “serious danger” and that he will fight for federal funding. Pollinators contribute to the health of the planet, to the cultures we cultivate and to the food we eat, he said.
“Rather than taking daring measures to protect them, the Trump administration has proposed an imprudent budget that would be part of funding for critical research aimed at saving significant pollinators,” he said in a statement to the Associated Press.
Harrison said that his research on this subject would stop if cuts were carried out in its federal funding, and it would be more difficult in general for scientists to study the disappearance of bees and other pollinators and improve the way they prevent these losses. Not being able to manage these deaths of pollinators could cause the fact that the price of fruits, vegetables, nuts, coffee and chocolate jumps or becomes rare.
“Hopefully, even if such research is founded in the United States, such research will continue in Europe and China, preventing these extreme scenarios,” said Harrison.
___
The climate and environmental coverage of the Associated Press receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find the AP standards to work with philanthropies, a list of supporters and coverage areas financed at AP.ORG.