These bees that worry you so much? They kill wild bee species

The honey bees you care about bring down the native bumblebees.

A new study shows that viruses infecting honey bees spread to wild bee species. This conservation disaster is potentially much more serious than that of better known honey bees, as isolated native pollinators are gradually disappearing. Several species of pollinators have been listed as threatened or endangered. Some have not been spotted in years. Others may have gone from existence without anyone noticing it.

Meanwhile, honeybees have an industry that raises new hives and seeks solutions to support them.

"The honeybee is a livestock animal," said Samantha Alger, a graduate student at the University of Vermont and lead author of the new article published in PLOS One. "Being concerned about pollinator conservation and using the bee as an iconic image is about as logical as being concerned about the conservation of birds and using chicken as an iconic image."

Wild bees pay about $ 4 billion a year in the United States by providing free pollination services. And bumblebees have a unique talent for extracting pollen from tomatoes and pumpkin flowers to improve yields. This is the key to feeding more people without plowing in wilder habitat.

It's true that bees have had a hard time recently. They are plagued by swarms of blood-sucking parasites named Varroa destructor, that transmit diseases from one bee to another. Add to that the stress of transporting across the country in flatbed trucks and absorbing traces of pesticides, and you can begin to understand why tons of dying bees are dying.

But we have not devoted so much research and public attention to all wild bees that are far more likely than honey bees to go out. And Algiers research suggests that bees are part of the problem. Her team discovered that she left viruses on flowers and could infect wild bumblebees.

"We thought finding these viruses would be like finding a needle in a haystack," Algiers said, "but we found them in 19% of the flowers near the apiaries."

Algiers says wild bees are important pollinators of our food crops and flowers. And of course, these species have real value even if they do not help us produce food or produce pretty flowers. Maybe we have demoted by focusing on bees and ignoring others. But, in a different sense, this new evidence suggests that to save wild bumblebees, we may need to heal the bees.