Who will keep the bees?

An uncertain future faces a declining buzzing population, and the professionals who care for them.

By RAFFI WINEBURG
Honeybee population is in trouble, with a myriad of problems causing their decline. (photo credit: ERIN PHILIPS)
Honeybee population is in trouble, with a myriad of problems causing their decline.
(photo credit: ERIN PHILIPS)
The first thing you see when you come to the Horesh farm are the boxes. There are hundreds of them – large wooden boxes with white paint chipping from the sides. Some are stacked neatly on pallets, others just tossed in a messy pile.
Yonatan Horesh flips a lid from one of the boxes, peering inside pensively, “I’m cleaning them now, I do it with a lot of fire and new paint. Maybe next year we will fill them up,” he says. “Maybe next year.”
His boxes are apiaries, the former home to thousands of honeybees. Now, they’re all empty.
Horesh is a commercial beekeeper whose father began keeping bees in the early 1950s. His farm is located in Pardess Hanna-Karkur and he’s an unfortunate actor in a global bee drama: Since 2006, a phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has ravaged bee populations across the world. Israeli bees have not been spared.
Some people might be glad to hear that the stinging insects are dying off.
But bees are essential to our agricultural system. They pollinate some 90 different fruits and vegetables, and it’s estimated that one in every three bites of food is directly or indirectly affected by bees. Without bees, say goodbye to apples, almonds and avocados.
Thus, a bee die-out is no cause for celebration.
For almost a decade, researchers have worked to find what’s causing CCD, and halt the rapid loss of the honeybee.
They are still working.
Most recently, a study from the Harvard School of Public Health showed a strong link between CCD and neonicontinoids – a class of neuro-active insecticides. Researchers have linked CCD to insecticides as well as pesticides, parasites and pathogens from its outset.
Most likely, CCD is caused by a combination of all these things, along with others.
“It’s a lot of many small reasons that came together, like the perfect storm,” says Horesh. “You have little problems that accumulate and together, you get a very big problem.”
The big problem is that there is no solution. This year, Horesh gave his bees every known treatment for just about every known ailment. It didn’t help.
Horesh’s bees are in trouble, but he still tends to the survivors. So far, he and roughly 500 other beekeepers in Israel have managed to stave off crisis.
Yet the future of beekeeping remains unclear.
This June, Horesh’s daughter, Ella, 15, will travel to Pszczela Wola, Poland (population: 195), to compete in the fifth International Meeting of Young Beekeepers (IMYB). Representing each of the 25 competing countries is a team of three 13- to 16-year-olds. For a time, Ella had no teammates. Now, rather than go to Poland alone, she’s training a venturesome friend in beekeeping to join her.
They are still one teammate short.
Israel’s dearth of young beekeepers is not unique. In roughly two decades, the number of beekeepers in Israel has declined by 30 percent. In the US, that statistic is closer to 75%. In other words, the bees are not attracting new keepers.
“In 20 more years, there will be fewer beekeepers. There will be nobody to do this,” says Ella. “Most of the beekeepers are old people, or the age of my father.”
Her father, a youthful 49, corrects her: “Most beekeepers are 70 years old.”
This decline in fresh-faced beekeepers represents a broader move of young people away from agricultural professions.
Even within agriculture, however, beekeeping is an odd choice: What type of young person enters an industry whose very existence is uncertain? As such, beekeeping finds itself in a sticky situation: Bees keep dying, warding off potential caretakers – but if no one takes care of the bees, there surely won’t be any left.
The IMYB was therefore created to address this problem. Its main goal: “To point out that beekeeping in general does not have a future without the young generation.” The IMYB and programs like it can certainly stir up interest.
But convincing youngsters to live and die by the bee is another issue.
Ella is, in fact, an exceptional participant at the IMYB, born into beekeeping.
Almost all of her European counterparts at the competition are hobbyists. Even if they wanted to become commercial beekeepers, they likely couldn’t. Startup costs for a commercial beekeeping outfit are upwards of $300,000.
Beekeeping then, is a dwindling aristocracy.
For Ella and her siblings (who are now too old to compete at the IMYB), the prospect of becoming professional beekeepers is daunting.
Ella laughs sheepishly when asked if she will take over the family business.
“It’s very hard work, and they don’t want us to,” she says, nodding toward her parents.
Her mother, Rechela, quickly contradicts her: “You have to learn something else first... and if afterward, you choose to work [with bees], they will be here.”
It will be a tough decision. But young people will have to make it, for the sake of the bees – and for us.