If This Police Rescue Story Isn't Just the Bee's Knees . . .

TROY, MI – The bees, if you haven’t been paying attention, are in trouble.

But not in Troy, where police officers decide that rather than call an exterminator to remove the hive of the important but swarming pollinators, it would be better to call in experts and relocate the bees.

In a news release, police said they were called to a business in the northwest corner of a strip mall at John R and Big Beaver Road on June 1 to deal with a “massive swarm of honey bees” that had clumped together in a small tree. The area sees heavy pedestrian traffic, and the bees were reportedly creating a hazard for passersby.

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“Officers recognized that the honey bee population is dwindling and, in lieu of contacting an exterminator, contacted the Southeast Michigan Beekeepers Association,” the police department said. “A beekeeper arrived on scene and captured the entire swarm alive.”

The bees, which collectively weighed about pounds, or about 10,000 bees, will be relocated to a honeybee farm in Clarkston.

The Trouble for Bees

Some studies show three of four bites of food are dependent on pollinators, the rapid and major declines in bee populations threatens food security in the U.S. and globally.

The USDA said Colony Collapse Disorder is caused by multiple factors, including parasites and pests, pathogens, poor nutrition and “sublethal exposure to pesticides,” complicated by factors such as the narrow genetic base of honey bees in the United States.

However, a report released earlier this year by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, said pesticides are killing off bees and butterflies, endangering the survival of global agriculture.

The assessment found that pesticides, including neonicotinoid insecticides, threaten pollinators worldwide, although the long-term effects are still unknown. A pioneering study conducted in farm fields showed that one neonicotinoid insecticide had a negative effect on wild bees, but the effect on managed honeybees was less clear.

About 16 percent of the world’s vertebrate pollinators “are being driven toward extinction by diverse pressures, many of them human-made, threatening millions of livelihoods and hundreds of billions of dollars worth of food supplies,” according to news release about the study.

The study also showed:

• More than 40 percent of the invertebrate pollinator species, particularly bees and butterflies, are facing extinction in some areas.
• There are 20,000 species of wild bees, as well as some species of butterflies, moths, wasps, beetles, birds,bats and other vertebrates that contribute to pollination.
• Three of four bites of food, or about 75 percent of the world’s food crops, depend at least in part on pollination.
• The annual value of global crops directly affected by pollinators is in the $235 billion to $577 billion range.
• The volume of agricultural production dependent upon animal pollination has increased 300 percent over the past 50 years.
• Almost 90 percent of wild flowering plants depend to some extent on animal population.
• Western honeybees produce about 1.6 million tonnes of honey every year.
• 16.5 percent of vertebrate pollinators are threatened with extinction globally.
• More than 40 percent of the invertebrate pollinator species — particularly bees and butterflies — are facing extinction.

Image credit: Dan Hankins via Flickr / Creative Commons