To Bee or Not to Bee
quite literally, a drop—in its entire lifetime. And it takes half a gallon of honey to make a batch of signature bonbons at Mademoiselle Miel in St. Paul—or the life’s work of six whole bees for each tiny bonbon.
It’s one of the life lessons that St. Paul beekeeper and chocolate maker Susan Brown says she’s learned in her 18 years of beekeeping: Each drop makes a big impact. “What we have to give is really valuable even though it doesn’t seem like that much,” she says.
But it’s not just philosophical. The lives of these honeybees have become more fragile and sensitive over the last couple of decades, thanks to a storm of conditions that include colony collapse disorder. Like those drops of honey, seemingly tiny changes to these bees’ environments can have big impacts. And honeybees are just one type of bee: Minnesota’s native bees have been impacted too.
Heading into peak honey-making season, misconceptions about bees in Minnesota abound. We talked to beekeepers and other experts to set the record straight.
Are bees endangered?
You’ve seen the T-shirts, or maybe even purchased a tote bag emblazoned with “Save the Bees” at a farmers’ market. So, you may be as surprised as I was to learn that honeybees are actually not endangered—but some of Minnesota’s native bees are.
Honeybees have lived in the U.S. since the 1600s, arriving from Europe on ships. But they are far from the only bees here: There are more than 500 species of native bees in Minnesota. And about 25 percent of these native bee species are worse off now than they used to be, says Elaine Evans, an Extension educator and researcher at the University of Minnesota’s Bee Lab.
The movement to “save the bees” began in the 2000s with the rise of colony collapse disorder, in which most of a hive’s adult bees disappear. Suddenly, beekeepers’ work got a lot harder.
Mark Sundberg, president of the Minnesota Honey Producers Association, is the fourth-generation owner of Sundberg Apiaries. These days, he says, his biggest challenge is keeping bees alive.
“Sadly, we’ve just gotten used to losses of 25 to 40 percent in a year,” he says. “Trying to manage that is exhausting. We need to be cautious because they’re very delicate and they’re telling us a lot about what might be happening in the world.”
When Brown first started keeping bees on Twin Cities rooftops, keeping them healthy seemed simple enough. But since then, they have become more fragile. “Their system is so finely tuned that even the smallest change can impact it,” she says.
For example, when one of her hives was failing despite following all the recommended practices, she was at a loss. But, after discussing it with a coworker, she decided to move the bees 6 inches. “After that, it did fine,” she says. “They started flourishing from such a small change.”
In the meantime, the world spent a lot of energy trying to figure out what was going on, says Becky Masterman, who earned a PhD studying honeybees and helps with the University of Minnesota Apiculture Extension program. It quickly became obvious that honeybees were facing danger from several sources.
One problem was a mite, the “varroa destructor,” which was first detected in the U.S. in 1987. The mite is a vector for deadly viruses that can kill a colony within a few months. And pollen was becoming contaminated with neonicotinoids, pesticides toxic to bees. Changes to the habitats where bees forage were also limiting food options. As a result, honey production fell by about half, Masterman says. This, combined with a lower price for honey, meant beekeepers faced extreme financial challenges as well.
Battle of the bees
All of that concern perpetuated misunderstanding that honeybees were endangered, says Masterman, who cohosts Beekeeping Today Podcast. To be clear, she says, “In no way, shape, or form are honeybees endangered in the U.S.”
While the attention helped advance important research on honeybee health, it also perpetuated confusion—namely, people seemed to forget about all the other types of bees, some of which continue to be in more danger than honeybees.
“There was so much support for honeybees, but we should have always been concerned about native bees,” Masterman says.
Most native bees are solitary and impacted by habitat and pesticide issues, she says, but no one was talking about them. So, for some proponents of native bees, the honeybee became the enemy.
“Instead of, ‘Hey, there’s a habitat and pesticide issue out there [for all bees],’ it became a bee-against-bee issue,” she says, “which is really not productive, because they’re bees.”
Minnesota’s state bee, the rusty-patched bumblebee, a fuzzy pollinator distinguished by a rust-colored patch on its abdomen, has been on the federally endangered list since 2017. The round, fluffy yellow-banded bumblebee was considered for the listing, and the large American bumblebee and the rare variable cuckoo bumblebee are in the process of becoming listed—although some fear the variable cuckoo bumblebee may already be extinct, Evans said.
The bees themselves have learned to coexist pretty well, says Sundberg. “A lot of times, they don’t even go for the same floral sources. The bees are smart.”
In other words, if humans got their acts together, it would be fairly easy to support all bees. Like honeybees, native bees benefit from many of the flowers that people plant to attract pollinators. And they also benefit from less use of pesticides.
People do need to be aware of some subtle differences. Whereas honeybees are generalist foragers, some native bees are pickier, Evans said. These specialists can only survive on a small number of flowers, and they aren’t usually in the prepackaged “pollinator friendly” mixes you buy. One of her favorite bees, for example, collects oil only from one specific plant, fringed loosestrife, to feed its young.
How can we help?
You don’t need to become a beekeeper to save bees. In fact, you probably shouldn’t. When word spread about honeybees dying in droves, many well-meaning supporters misinterpreted that as a need for more beekeepers. A rush to buy bees and supplies ensued. But keeping bees isn’t the easiest hobby in the first place, and it’s even more challenging when the health of the bees becomes fragile.
“People who are terrified of bees thought they were helping,” Masterman says.
So, many beekeepers today are a bit reluctant to encourage the hobby. Leave beekeeping to the experts, they say.
Most of them consider it a gift, Brown says. “Every beekeeper I know feels the same way—they’re enchanted by the wonderful world of bees,” she says. “The bees become your teacher.”
More Ways to Help Bees
Make your backyard bloom: Plant seeds and start a habitat that supports both native bees and honeybees. Not all mixes labeled for bees contain the types of flowers that native bees need, but most native-to-Minnesota plants support some kind of pollinator, Evans says. “Having a diversity of them helps support all those different creatures,” she says. Also, since some native bees only forage for two or three weeks, consider planting things that bloom throughout the season so food will be there when the bees need it.
Make space: If you find native bees nesting in your yard—they often make homes in stems of flowers or tunnels in dirt—don’t disrupt them, Masterman says. Lending them your yard, even for just one season, could make a difference.
Be judicious about pesticides: Completely eliminating pesticides may not be reasonable, but questioning their use is also critical, Masterman says.
Be a citizen scientist: Native bees are harder to monitor, Evans points out, since their homes are often solitary and hidden—not as convenient to see as the boxes that house honeybees. “So, we’re still getting ahold of who is where,” Evans says. But taking a picture of a bee through an app like iNaturalist records its location for researchers.
