Honeybees and Air Quality

William Klopfenstein

Gardener and Beekeeper

• Types of Bees– Native bees

• Bumble Bees• Mason Bees• Other bees

– Non-native bees• Honeybees

– German or British– Italian– African– Russian

• Most people are familiar with bumble bees.

• Nearly 20 types in Illinois.• Mason bees are smaller than honeybees.• Some will have had experience with sweat

bees.• These three types, and all other native

bees, are called “solitary bees” because they do not live in large colonies.

Bumble Bee Life Cycle

• The queen bee hibernates alone in a burrow in the soil.

• In spring she emerges, finds flowers for nectar and pollen, chooses a nest site and starts laying eggs, fertilized by an earlier mating.

• Soon a small colony forms.• In fall, the fertile queens again burrow into

ground to survive winter. Others die.

Honey Bees

• Honey bees are not native to the Americas.

• Brought over by early settlers.• First bees brought were dark-colored bees

from Germany or Britain.• Later came the lighter-colored bees from

Italy.

German Bee

Italian Bees

African Bee

• Russian bees were imported to combat varroa mites (Varroa destructor)

• Italian bees are generally easy to handle.• African bees are smaller and good honey

producers, but are easily agitated.• Have reputation for being aggressive.• Probably won’t get to Illinois because of

our cold winters.

Honey Bee Life

• There are three kinds of bees in a honey bee hive.– Queen, one only.– Drones (males), a few hundred.– Workers (females) many thousands.

Importance of bees.

• When I ask school children this question, I always get the same answer: honey!

• Then I tell them no.• When I ask for another reason, usually

one kid finally says, “pollination.”• That is the correct answer.• More about that follows.

• Many plants have the female part (pistil), and male part (stamen) in the same flower.

• Some have separate female and male flowers on same plant. (melons)

• Some species have separate female and male plants. (Persimmon, Gingko)

Pollination

• About one third of our food results from pollination by bees, commonly honey bees.

• Fruits like apples, peaches, etc.• Small fruits, blueberries, raspberries,

blackberries, strawberries, etc.• Melons, cucumbers, pumpkins, etc.• Also needed for pollination to produce

seeds for garden and agricultural crops.

Pollination 2

Pollen Baskets

Pollination 3

• Some plants are pollinated by the wind.• Grasses, including many important cereal

crops.• Soybeans, except that pollination by bees

can increase yields. • Many trees, grasses, and flowers. (Think

hay fever.)

Some food crops do not require pollination

• Greens• Root crops

Does Air Quality Affect Bees?

• Two years ago, scientists at the University of Southhampton in England reported that some compounds in Diesel exhaust reacted with odor compounds in rape flowers which made it difficult for honeybees to locate the flowers.

• NOx (nitrogen oxides)

• Nitrogen makes up 78% of the volume of our air.• It is generally quite unreactive.• In the Diesel engine, NOx is produced in fairly

large quantities.• Most vehicle manufacturers installed systems to

remove the NOx from the exhaust of their Diesel engines.

• VW cheated. (And eventually got caught by scientists at the University of West Virginia.)

• After that British paper was published, it was reported in many publications.

• Many predicted the end of pollination by honeybees.

• This was especially predicted for China which has some of the worst air quality in the world.

Air Quality in Baoding, China

• Many publications talked about hand pollination by humans becoming necessary in China.

• Fruit tree planting expanded into new areas.• Lack of native habitat for local bees.• Native Asian honeybee replaced by European

honeybees.• Some hand pollination for economic reasons.

– Apples require cross pollination.– For insects, requires 25% of trees to be of pollinator

variety.

Hand Pollination Sichuan Province

• A couple of things were bothering me.• The USA produces about 180 million lbs of

honey per year.• USA consumes about 450 million lbs/yr of

honey.• The Chinese export a lot of honey.• Chinese honey imports banned since 2011.• “Honey Laundering” goes on.• Earlier this year Feds confiscated 450,000 lbs.

of illegal Chinese honey in Houston.

• If Chinese are exporting honey, they must have productive honeybees.

• Land area of China is only slightly larger than USA.

• China has about 8.8 million honeybee colonies.• USA has about 2.8 million colonies.• China is rapidly expanding blueberry and

raspberry plantings. Both require insect pollination.

Air Quality in Baoding, China

• About 85% of Chinese apple production is in six provinces near Beiging.

China has bad air quality.

An estimated 4400 people die each day due to air pollution.

They appear to have productive honeybee pollinators.

How can we reconcile these facts with the British study on NOx?

• That study looked at only one kind of flower.

• Every kind of flower has a different mix of chemicals which produce the aroma.

• Roses don’t smell like lilacs, etc.

• I believe that there are at least two deficiencies in the British paper.

• 1. The levels of NOx were much higher than one would encounter in air.– The USA maximum level of NO2 is 107 micrograms

per cubic meter, averaged over a year.– In their study, they used 35,500 micrograms per cubic

meter!– Also added 26,200 micrograms per cubic meter of

NO.– The US does not currently have a standard for NO in

the air.

• 2. Their method of analysis might be flawed.– They filled one set of glass bottles with the Diesel

exhaust mixture.– Filled another set with pure air.– Then added mixture of odor compounds found in the

rape flower.– Placed a thread into the bottles at intervals to adsorb

the chemicals from the air.– Placed thread into gas chromatograph to analyze.

• They found that one of the odor compounds could not be detected in the bottle which contained the Diesel exhaust.

• Said that the components of the exhaust had destroyed that compound.

• Although they stated that these nitrogen oxides are very reactive, they did not check to see if the NOx reacted with their thread.

• An online search suggested strongly to me that it might.• That could explain the failure of the thread to adsorb

certain compounds.

Summary

• I am NOT advocating for air pollution.• Air pollution kills!

– 1.6 million early deaths per year in China.– 200,000 early deaths per year in USA.

• But, I don’t believe that a convincing case has been made that NOx has a serious effect on honeybees’ ability to locate flowers.

• Thank you for your attention.• Any Questions?