Many species of wild bees, butterflies and other insects that pollinate plants are shrinking toward extinction, and the world needs to do something about it before our food supply suffers, warned a United Nations scientific mega-report released February 26, 2015.

“Imagine a world without bees, because it could happen unless we do something about it,” said Dr. William Blodgett, a long-time Danville, Pennsylvania beekeeper who has eight hives.

“But it might be too late,” Blodgett said. “The damage to a bee’s reproductive system is done, thanks to many pesticides and other disruptors, and I don’t know if things can be reversed. We can’t get away from pesticides. They’re all around us, in the air, in the ground.”

Michele Colopy, a program director with The Pollinator Stewardship Council, agrees.

“Our pollinators are a natural resource we must protect,” stated Colopy during a the recent 10th annual Food and Growers Association Winter Conference in Batesville, Indiana. 

The insects are vital to human health, she believes. “One-third of our food supply is helped along by pollinators.”

She pointed out, “Pesticides conserve losses … but it is pollination that increases crop yields,” not pesticides.

Colopy also noted, “All of us can help, but we have to understand the issues and crisis.”

The 20,000 or so species of pollinators are key to hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of crops each year — from fruits and vegetables to coffee and chocolate. Yet two out of five species of invertebrate pollinators, such as bees and butterflies, are on the path toward extinction, said the U.N. report. 

Everything falls apart if you take pollinators out of the game.

Bees and other pollinators have become sterile, incapable of producing future generations of their kind, “and we’ll be all the worse for that,” added Dave Hackenberg, an owner of Hackenberg Apiaries, located in West Milton, Pennsylvania.

The trouble is that the U.N. report and Hackenberg, who is a world-class expert on honeybees, can’t point to a single villain.

“There is no one thing impacting the health of our bees,” maintained Colopy. “Colony collapse disorder…does not tell the whole story. It’s a piling on, a cumulative effect.” 

Among the culprits: the way farming has changed so there’s not enough diversity and wildflowers for pollinators to use as food; pesticide use, including a controversial one, neonicotinoid, that attacks the nervous system; habitat loss to cities; disease, parasites and pathogens; and global warming.

“Our pollinators are suffering in a number of ways. Historically, they always suffer from weather,” such as when snow covers blooms. Colopy explained, “we always had winter losses of bees.” When it is too cold for too long, 10 to 15 percent of the population freezes to death, numbers can to 40 to 60 percent if bees are eating toxic foods in the winter. 

“What is now occurring is heavy end-of-the-summer losses” due to pesticides, according to Colopy. “When bees should be building up their honey stores and getting ready for winter,” the honey and pollen bees have collected are laced with pesticides, making their environment and food supply toxic. 

“Pesticides, particularly insecticides, have been demonstrated to have a broad range of lethal and sub-lethal effects on pollinators in controlled experimental conditions,” the U.N. report said. But it noted more study is needed on the effects on pollinators in the wild. 

A 2010 survey of 23 states and one Canadian province, researchers found 121 different pesticides in over 800 hives. 

“Pesticides linger. They are in the pollen, nectar, soil and water. Pesticides will weaken the bees’ immune systems” said Colopy. She reported that the Pollinator Stewardship Council doesn’t “want to ban pesticides, but we want them to be used judiciously. All of us in the agriculture can work together to protect our pollinators in order to maintain and afford sustainable, healthy agriculture.” 

Doing something is crucial

“If we want to say we can feed the world in 2050, pollinators are going to be part of that,” Hackenberg said. 

The U.N. report is the result of more than two years of work by scientists across the globe who got together under several different U.N. agencies to come up with an assessment of Earth’s biodiversity, starting with the pollinators. It’s an effort similar to what the United Nations has done with global warming, putting together an encyclopedic report to tell world leaders what’s happening and give the options for what can be done. 

But these are problems that could possible by fixed, and unlike global warming, the solutions don’t require countries to agree on global action — they can act locally, said Robert Watson, a top British ecological scientist and vice chairman of the scientific panel. The solutions offered mostly involve changing the way land and farming is managed. 

One of the biggest problems, especially in the United States, is that giant swaths of farmland are devoted to just one crop, and wildflowers are disappearing. Wild pollinators especially do well on grasslands, which are usually more than just grass, and 97 percent of Europe’s grasslands have disappeared since World War II. 

“For some reason, humans love grassy yards,” but pollinators do not feed on grass. Colopy explained, “we need more bushes and trees and blooming plants and less grass. We need diversity in our ecosystem.” 

How citizens can help

Colopy recommends not buying plants in soil treated with a neonicotinoid, a type of insecticide. According to the 2010 study the insecticide has been found to be toxic to bees, including impaired learning and memory. 

Controlling mosquitoes with chemicals is the biggest reason backyard beekeepers lose their bees, according to Colopy. A cup of water can hold 1,000 mosquito eggs, instead of spraying for mosquitoes empty water from gutters, bird baths and areas of standing water. “We need to eliminate the breeding grounds for mosquitos and we will reduce pesticide use.” If you do have to spray for mosquitos, do it at night when mosquitos are out. 

Colopy observed, “We’ve got to be our brother’s keepers. What one farmer does affects his neighbor’s crop” and area beekeepers. 

Dandes writes for The (Sunbury) Daily Item. Blank writes for The Batesville Herald-Tribune.