WEBVTT

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Bees are everywhere,

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all but unnoticed as they say
fly from flower to flower.

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They have existed much longer than men.
But over the last 8,000 years

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man and bee have become partners.

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In 2006, reports came out of America that millions
of bees had disappeared from their hives.

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It sounds like a science fiction,
horror film, but it’s not.

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Since the mid 1900s, beekeepers
have been extraordinary losses.

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Everywhere in the industrialized world,

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bees are dying and beekeepers
don’t know what to do.

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[music]

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Scientists from many disciplines

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have mobilized to confront
this global problem.

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In the last four years, what have they
learned? Can science provide an explanation,

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a cure, or a solution?

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Is it too late to save this tiny creature
and from extinction? Why should we care?

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[music]

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[sil.]

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Each year, beekeepers everywhere
performed the same spring ritual.

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And on sunny day, they open their hives to see
how their bees survive the rigors of winter.

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Over the last four years this
ritual has become a nightmare.

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In Europe, in America’s, beekeepers
find losses of 30 to 80%

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and no one knows why.

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It’s more than just my income.

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It’s… These are my girls, my bees, so I hate to
see, you know, I feel like I led them down some

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because you know, obviously we didn’t
do things right here possibly.

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We could have done more for them to save
them. So it’s uh… Yeah, it’s sad for sure.

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Like thousands of other beekeepers,

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Ben Hogan will have no
honey harvest the summer.

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But it’s not the loss of honey that
has scientists like Bernard Vaissiere

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at the French National Institute for Agricultural
Research devoting countless hours to studying bees.

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Bees are fundamental to
the human food chain.

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Most of our food crops are pollinated by bees and that
includes almost every fruit, vegetable, oil, and not.

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[music]

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[music]

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Seeking nectar at the heart of the flower,

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bees inadvertently transfer pollen to the female
organ of the plant. The elaborate beauty of flowers

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is not evolved simply for our pleasure,
it serves to attract pollinators

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and signals a food source for bees.

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With fewer bees, crops
become less productive

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or toothless fruitful. And
scientists are asking

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what’s the fewest bees we can get away with
and still have a workable agriculture?

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It’s a question no one would have
thought to ask just a few years ago.

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But there is a global crisis in the making,
the agricultural demand for pollinators

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is growing much more
quickly than the supply.

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In 2006, the danger became clear,
melodies swept through American apiaries,

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bees simply started disappearing
leaving empty hives.

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Scientists named the phenomenon
Colony Collapse Disorder, CCD.

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Alarmed by the sudden threat to the
national agricultural economy,

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the US Congress called on
beekeepers and scientists

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to explain the deadly melody. For a moment
anyway, the bees had a voice in Congress.

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May Berenbaum spoke for the
CCD Scientific Task Force.

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Even before CCD we estimated

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if honeybee numbers continue to decline at
the rates documented from 1989 to 1996,

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managed honeybees in United States
will cease to exist by 2035.

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Colony Collapse Disorder is an unusual phenomenon
characterized by the sudden massive disappearance

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of the majority of workers
in honeybee colony,

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leaving behind viable brood or larvae,

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small contingent of nurse bees and a
healthy Queen and abundant food supplies.

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Colony Collapse Disorder progressed
inexorably from state to state.

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Everywhere the same
scenario, abandoned brood,

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abandoned honey, no
corpses around the hives.

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Urgency mounted as a total
of 35 states were affected.

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Scientists suspected a new pathogen, perhaps
a newly introduced or mutated virus.

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One of the early discoveries
was a new virus

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Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus, which had
never been described before in America

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and that got a lot of attention. And in that initial
screening, there was a relationship that we still see

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between that virus and CCD.

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The breakthrough promise to cure a magic
bullet, but hope was short-lived.

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As a complete explanatory factor
Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus

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really fell short a few months
after that report was released,

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when other investigators
went into their freezers

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and pulled out specimens and demonstrated that
IAPV has been in the US since at least 2002,

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which entities the appearance
of Colony Collapse Disorder.

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A dead end. And scientists
have had to ask themselves,

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if this phenomenon might not have a single
cause, is it a convergence of several factors

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or is there one primary
cause that weakens bees,

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allowing pathogens to take a heavy toll? For now at rest
just a sudden disappearance of bees, cause unknown.

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Pesticides have been
invoked virus diseases,

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have been invoked cell telephones been invoked, UFOs
have been invoked, all sorts of sort of things.

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Some of them sensible, some
of them just cockamamie,

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but nonetheless we really don’t
know what uh… what initiates it.

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The mystery only deepened as reports came
in of Colony Collapse around the world.

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Massive bee deaths in South America,

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in Taiwan, in China, in India.

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Five million bees reported disappeared
in just 48 hours in Croatian

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and all over the rest of Europe,
millions of unexplained deaths.

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But is it a single illness
without a recognized cause,

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it’s impossible to say.

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Summer in Provence is a sun drenched
paradise for bees and beekeepers,

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but there’s trouble in paradise.

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Even here, bee populations have
been steadily and quietly declining

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for more than 60 years.

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Everywhere in the world,

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declines in bee populations, have followed
the development of industrial agriculture.

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The post-world war demanded
food for a hungry population.

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And in the name of
efficiency and productivity,

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chemicals and machines would
turn to a war against nature.

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Government policies transformed the landscape
to serve the needs of modern agriculture.

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Pedro’s were plowed under,
field enlarged and leveled,

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technicians replace farmers as agricultural
specialists and beekeepers faced a new challenge

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as every insect was chased
from every flowering crop.

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In the night, when the
bees are in their hives,

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Jean and Rémi Brun move their colonies.
Sixteen hours of grueling work,

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two million bees moved over 200
kilometers from (inaudible)

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to the lavender fields of Provence.
Despite heavy stress on the bees,

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they have to do it twice a year now, both
to protect their babies from insecticides

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and to bring them to fresh flowers.

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But there is yet another threat
for the bees to deal with.

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In the 1980s, a new pest arrived in France
destroying bee colonies and beekeepers.

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Varroa seen among bee colonies in Asia.

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Over the last 30 years, a worldwide market
in Queens and especially bread Bees

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has spread Varroa into nearly every honeybee
colony in Europe, Africa, and the Americas.

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Varroa is parasitic blood-sucking might.

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It’s very small, it’s only about
two millimeters in diameter

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and it fixes onto the bee’s body like a crab
louse and it bites the bee and sucks its blood.

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And in the process of doing that, it…
it infects the bee with any virus

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that it has to be carrying. So the overall
effect on a bee colonies, it weakens the bees

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and they tend to get viruses
and in particular the queen,

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who lives a lot longer than the other
bees, she tends to be badly affected.

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Fighting Varroa is trying to kill a bug
on a bug. It’s hard to find a chemical

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to kill the mind and not harm the bee.

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Overtime, the chemicals lodge in the wax
defusing a constant low dosage of pesticide

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and then a cruel and vicious circle that
might become resistant and the bees weaken,

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do without chemicals, the colony dies.

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And so the introduction of Varroa
mite into the country and the 1980s

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had a real effect on the ability of viruses
to get transmitted from colony to colony.

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And so that’s probably what’s killing most of
the colonies. We’re usually blamed Varroa,

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but it’s probably the viruses that
the Varroa mite are… are mediating.

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Bees with this remarkable
trait of resistance,

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managed to control the population of
Varroa mite by killing infected poopy

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and ejecting them from the colony. It’s
a real form of social cooperation.

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But how do these resistant honeybees differ
from those millions dying from Varroa?

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[sil.]

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Dr. Le Conte send samples to Gene Robinson,

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leader of the team that sequenced
the honeybee genome in 2006.

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My colleague Yves Le Conte in France has identified
some honeybees, some strains of honeybees

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that are more resistant to
Varroa than other strains.

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He sent samples of those
strains to my laboratory

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and we analyzed their gene activity
using the microarray technique

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to see if we might get some clues
about the basis for the resistance.

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And we were very pleasantly surprised
to see that the main differences

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between the strains that are more resistant to
Varroa compared to those that are more susceptible.

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The main differences had to do with activity
and genes associated with behavior.

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Varroa resistance is a collective

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rather than individual form of immunity,
it’s called hygienic behavior.

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Compared to other insects that have been
sequenced, honeybees have fewer genes for immunity

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and detoxification. The
individual is by nature weak

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in the face of pathogens and poisons.

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But incredibly strong genetic
disposition for social cooperation

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can compensate in part for this
weakness in individual honeybees genes.

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The gene suggests that the resistant
strains may be more sensitive

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to some odors associated
with the presence of Varroa.

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That kind of information can lead to
improvements in breeding strategies,

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to be able to breed more
resistant honeybees.

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But is it really quite
so easy as it sounds?

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Artificial insemination is more suited to
the laboratory than they are appearing.

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The Tibor Szabo, senior and junior are commercial
Queen breeders and with bees dying everywhere,

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business is good.

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The scientists all over the world they are talking about,
you know, we… we want to breed bees, resist on to demise

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or some of them they are tolerant
to demise. But how can we get that?

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Breeding a bee that’s resistant to Varroa mite is
like breeding sheep that are resistant to wolves.

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Yeah. It maybe possible but it’s
extremely and we are not sure how.

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The bees have an incredible reproductive
potential. And as long as we can maximize it,

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we can stay ahead of a lot of its
problems, but it’s a constant effort.

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[music]

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The life of the colony
depends on the Queen.

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There’s only one. She’s the
mother of every bee in the hive.

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Workers feed and groom her day and night and
encourage her to lay up to 2,000 eggs up day.

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She gives off a chemical signal, a pheromone,
that calms and coordinates the workers.

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Should have pheromone weaken
or should she stop laying,

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the workers will raise a new queen.
A queen less colony is doomed.

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The art of the breeder is
to trick the worker bees

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into thinking they need a new queen.

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There’s line in each cage, we do that
because if they can access each other,

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they’d fight. The queens are
worth between $20 and $30 each

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depending on the amount
that the customer buys.

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If they buy over 100 queens, here they are $20 each,
so this box will be worth $2080 to the beekeeper.

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You could make 104 hives with this one box.

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[sil.]

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The market determines the character of honeybees.
Beekeepers favorite bees that are gentle and productive

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and that’s what breeders try to deliver.
In North America, just a few 100 breeders

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supply the hundreds of thousands of Queens
bought and sold on the continent each year.

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The result is an increase in
the uniform bee population,

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made worse by the fact that honeybees
are not native to North America,

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they were imported by colonists in the 17th
century. All the bees share a limited gene pool.

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[music]

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Anytime you have a lack of diversity, the population is more
likely to be susceptible to diseases or to… to problems.

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And so we do think that… that is
potentially one of the things

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that could be contributing. We don’t think it’s
the cause of CCD or a decline of honeybees.

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But as far as honey bees go, it
could be one of the weaknesses in…

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in our population of honeybees.
If bees around the world are weak

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in the phase of disease,
it’s largely due to man.

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Trying to breed the perfect bee
can eliminate trades bees need

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in order to adapt to a
changing environment.

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Long before man appeared, bees were
adapting to local conditions on their own,

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tuning themselves to their regions.
Tough black bees from northern latitude

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learn to store more honey in a shorter time

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to survive a long winter.

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The aggressive native Black Bee has learned
to live in this harsh Scottish climate

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through thousands of
generations of adaptation

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and Willie Robson has adapted
his beekeeping to their needs.

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Our father taught beekeeping in the 50s.
And I remember my father saying, well,

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we’ll start away with those that die good
returns. And from then on we’ve worked on…

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on that principle. That if they
didn’t manage to survive the winter

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than that was a good… that was a good way to
be. And our aim which is what we’ve achieved

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is to have total natural resistance
to all unknown diseases of bees.

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As Varroa progresses we’ll have to hope that they
will start to become resistant to that as well

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and that probably will
occur not in my lifetime

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but within the next 50 years. The bees are
well able to adapt to these sort of things.

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Using traditional methods,

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Willie Robson has become one of the largest honey
producers in Scotland. The foundation of this philosophy

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is a simple trust in nature.

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I think as soon as you start
breeding them pure for docility,

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and honey production, uh… you breed out

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a whole lot of other necessary qualities

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and that brings in itself trouble. Once you
breed out that the disease resistant element,

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uh… you never recover, that
never… never recovered,

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then… then you’re required to put in
chemicals to control the disease.

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There’s only a very fine line that you
can take when meddling when nature

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before you get into trouble, you k now.
And the trouble cost you ten times

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as much as you would think, you know.
Trouble gets in…

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Trouble with anything, any living thing
is…is a real headache, you know.

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In an ideal world, Willie
Robson would be a model,

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but it’s too late. If beekeepers everywhere

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adopted total natural resistance,
most of their bees would die.

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Without this large scale force of pollinators,
the entire agricultural economy would collapse.

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Agriculture developed over centuries

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in an environment with a diversity of pollinators.
The domestic honeybees just one of many bees

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that visit crops.

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There are at least 19,000 species of wild bees
on the planet, but they’re disappearing too.

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[music]

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All right, this is a small one. So we got
over 30 species of bees in my backyard

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and that’s without me spending
much time looking for them.

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Is a little sweat bee.
Declines in wild bees

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have been documented since 1992, but
no one knows the original populations.

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Different species of bumblebees that used to be
fairly common have just gone through the flow.

00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:09.999
Some of them we can still find in out of the way
places, you know, high mountains in Colorado

00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:14.999
or in… in Northern BC, uh… but
we can’t find them in places

00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:19.999
where sometimes they made up 30% of the bees you’d
find somewhere, now they’re completely gone.

00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:24.999
Lawrence Packer, runs a largest
wild BEE Lab in the world.

00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:29.999
Wild bees are responsible for the pollinating
most of the wild flowers out there.

00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:34.999
And so imagine what would happen if all of a
sudden the reproduction of wild flowers stopped

00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:39.999
. There’d be no fruit and
berries to feed the birds.

00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:44.999
There’d be no nuts and berries to feed the
bears. The squirrels would be in trouble.

00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:49.999
The whole terrestrial ecosystem as
we know it would be very different

00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:54.999
if all of a sudden all of the bees disappear.
Some wild bees are very specialized pollinators.

00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:59.999
They might seek food from
a single flowering plant.

00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:04.999
And if the bee disappears,
so does the flower.

00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:10.000
You see a tulip there?

00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:49.999
[music]

00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:54.999
Wild bees don’t have Varroa. They don’t
have viruses in common with honeybees.

00:24:55.000 --> 00:24:59.999
But something is killing both populations.

00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:04.999
And the impact of loss pollinators
goes far beyond the human diet.

00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:09.999
For Paul Ehrlich,

00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:14.999
a founder of the science of co-evolution, bees
have the task of keeping the world alive.

00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:19.999
It’s very scary

00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:24.999
to see bees and other pollinators not doing well because
they are, what are sometimes called mobile links,

00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:29.999
they move around and connect things in nature. When the
things that connect things in nature aren’t doing well,

00:25:30.000 --> 00:25:34.999
that’s not a great sign. One of the most
important aspects of how evolution works,

00:25:35.000 --> 00:25:39.999
of how we get the organisms that populate
our planet, that support our lives

00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:44.999
and that of course evolution created us,

00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:49.999
is not just evolution operating under the,
pressure is created by the physical environment

00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:54.999
that is by cold or winds or something, but of
course other organisms create selection pressures.

00:25:55.000 --> 00:25:59.999
So that for example, uh… plants and
bees have evolved together over…

00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:04.999
overtime, so that the bees get
their nourishment from the plants

00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:09.999
and the plants get their sex from the bees.

00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:14.999
These kinds of co-evolutionary complexes are among the
most important aspects of the whole process of evolution.

00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:19.999
[sil.]

00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:24.999
It’s not just bees and flowers that
evolve together. Co-evolution is a web

00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:29.999
includes one creature that
has a critical impact

00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:34.999
on every living thing, man. For
the first time in history,

00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:39.999
the scale of the activities of the human
system finally are impinging in a big way

00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:44.999
on the natural system and that’s why
for the first time in human history

00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:49.999
we have the threat of a collapse
of a global civilization,

00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:54.999
or else we may go down the drain
in part because of the bees.

00:26:55.000 --> 00:27:03.000
[music]

00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:09.999
There is a place where all
the elements of collapse

00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:14.999
have been carefully prepared.

00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:19.999
A place engineered beyond nature, where
monoculture has replaced biodiversity.

00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:24.999
It’s an ecology totally
dependent on the whim of men.

00:27:25.000 --> 00:27:33.000
[music]

00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:39.999
It’s called the Central
Valley of California.

00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:44.999
At the end of February when
every flower of 700,000 acres

00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:49.999
of blooming almond trees needs pollination.

00:27:50.000 --> 00:27:54.999
Over 36 billion bees are needed.

00:27:55.000 --> 00:27:59.999
It’s the world’s largest
seasonal animal migration.

00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:04.999
Without bees, wind pollination produces
about 40 pounds of nuts per acre.

00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:09.999
With bee pollination, they produce
3,000 pounds per acre, 60 times more.

00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:14.999
80% of the world’s almonds grow here.

00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:19.999
If you look at almonds in California,

00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:24.999
that’s the biggest story there is.

00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:29.999
Umm… Right now half of the colonies in the country
get moved to California for the almond pollination.

00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:34.999
By 2012, we expected 86%
of present day number,

00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:39.999
colonies to move into California for pollination. Now
if the number of cars decreases at the present rate,

00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:44.999
then every colony in the country conceivably
would need to be in California for pollination.

00:28:45.000 --> 00:28:49.999
You know, almonds makes more money for the
California economy than grapes and wine do.

00:28:50.000 --> 00:28:54.999
And so there is that need,
that real need for those bees.

00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:59.999
How do almond grow, where
they get the bees they need?

00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:04.999
They place a call to a cramped and
cluttered office on a side street

00:29:05.000 --> 00:29:09.999
in Bakersfield, California, where Joe Traynor
has spent 40 years putting beekeepers

00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:14.999
and Orchard owners together.
Joe Traynor is a bee broker.

00:29:15.000 --> 00:29:19.999
Oh, yeah, Frank… here Joe.
When I started in 1960s,

00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:24.999
there was enough bees in California to take care of
the entire, which was about 100,000 at that time

00:29:25.000 --> 00:29:29.999
and the rental fees for bees at
that time was about $3 a colony.

00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:34.999
But since the acreage expanded,
650,000 bearing acres now.

00:29:35.000 --> 00:29:39.999
There’s not enough bees in California to handle
that, so we get bees from all over United States

00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:44.999
and it’s the transportation cost of
bringing those bees out to California,

00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:49.999
it’s driven the price up, it’s…it’s
anywhere $138 to $200 rental fee now.

00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:54.999
Joe Traynor promises beekeepers

00:29:55.000 --> 00:29:59.999
a good price for the rental of their hives and promises
growers strong hives for efficient pollination.

00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:04.999
[sil.]

00:30:05.000 --> 00:30:09.999
My job is to put the bee in prosperities
path. My job is to identify

00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:14.999
where she will do best. So I have to kind of think like
bee. I have to think about the resources available and…

00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:19.999
and… In pollination work
it’s… it’s a contract.

00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:24.999
So I’m guided by revenue,
enhancing the revenue.

00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:29.999
Like you can hear it.

00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:34.999
Can you hear it? For John Miller,

00:30:35.000 --> 00:30:39.999
the sound of bees is the sound money. And
we’re looking for flight, we’re looking for…

00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:44.999
I want to see what the dancing
ladies are doing here.

00:30:45.000 --> 00:30:49.999
Here, look at this bosom right here.
See this guy,

00:30:50.000 --> 00:30:54.999
he just opened and the pollen grains
are on the right on the, right on the,

00:30:55.000 --> 00:30:59.999
into the flowering parts. This guy is
yesterday’s blossom and it’s all set.

00:31:00.000 --> 00:31:04.999
See the difference between this and this.
The pollen’s been forged and gathered and…

00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:09.999
and stirred up by the honeybee as she
rummaging around on the blossom.

00:31:10.000 --> 00:31:14.999
John Miller is one of a handful of industrial
beekeepers who keep their bees in perpetual motion,

00:31:15.000 --> 00:31:19.999
traveling thousands of
miles to pollinate crops

00:31:20.000 --> 00:31:24.999
all over the country. Some years we do
better in the pollination business,

00:31:25.000 --> 00:31:29.999
we’ll make an income off the almonds.

00:31:30.000 --> 00:31:34.999
Some of the bees then go to Washington State
for the apples. So we have opportunity

00:31:35.000 --> 00:31:39.999
to get two earnings centers but the apples
don’t pay nearly as good as the almonds.

00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:44.999
Then we go to the honey production in North Korea(ph).
Well, some years it’s dry and some years as wet,

00:31:45.000 --> 00:31:49.999
and some years it’s warm and some years it’s not
so warm, it’s farming. And you roll the dice.

00:31:50.000 --> 00:31:54.999
Every year you got to be comfortable
with a lot of risk, its farming.

00:31:55.000 --> 00:31:59.999
You know, some years are good
and some years are terrible.

00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:04.999
But even a good year can be terrible for the
bees. There’s stresses of moving, reorientation,

00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:09.999
sudden changes in diet and climate,
infestations, medications,

00:32:10.000 --> 00:32:14.999
the bees have no chance to adapt. We
have to push these hives and we know it.

00:32:15.000 --> 00:32:19.999
You know, it’s the middle of winter out here and we’re trying
to get those hives to where they’re just busting with bees

00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:24.999
because they then have the
strength and numbers,

00:32:25.000 --> 00:32:29.999
the capability to launch a big flight
into a big concentration of flowers

00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:34.999
because these trees all
bloom at the same time.

00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:39.999
Bingo, baby.

00:32:40.000 --> 00:32:44.999
A migrant beekeeper

00:32:45.000 --> 00:32:49.999
can make 75% of his income in just
three weeks of almond pollination.

00:32:50.000 --> 00:32:54.999
But to do so, means pushing
his bees without limit.

00:32:55.000 --> 00:32:59.999
As we’re maintaining the hives, when we find a hive
that’s substandard or the queen is failing or missing.

00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:04.999
We find the old queen, we kill her

00:33:05.000 --> 00:33:09.999
and add brood or eggs from another hive, add a
new way to do that hive, so we don’t lose it.

00:33:10.000 --> 00:33:14.999
With over 600 million bees,

00:33:15.000 --> 00:33:19.999
Ron Spears is one of the largest
beekeepers in the world.

00:33:20.000 --> 00:33:24.999
Maybe 7 to 10 years ago you could pretty much get two seasons
out of them. With the miticides that were putting in the hives,

00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:29.999
the constant movement of the
hives and the long season

00:33:30.000 --> 00:33:34.999
that the queen continues to laid, you know,
up to 10 or even 11 months in some cases.

00:33:35.000 --> 00:33:39.999
The queens just get wore out. Umm… They… It’s… it’s
stock just like horses or cattle or anything else and…

00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:44.999
and they lose their ability to lay umm… you
know, the 1500-2000 eggs that they need…

00:33:45.000 --> 00:33:49.999
need to lay every day to sustain
a strong colony of bees.

00:33:50.000 --> 00:33:54.999
She’s up against the screen facing them.

00:33:55.000 --> 00:33:59.999
She cannot survive without
worker bees around her.

00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:04.999
Ron Spears buys queens from Hawaii,

00:34:05.000 --> 00:34:09.999
seven to eight thousand per year.

00:34:10.000 --> 00:34:14.999
With industrial pollination,

00:34:15.000 --> 00:34:19.999
the honeybees intimate relationship with
place and season is irrevocably broken.

00:34:20.000 --> 00:34:24.999
The vast monocultures say pollinate our
femoral and artificial landscapes.

00:34:25.000 --> 00:34:33.000
[sil.]

00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:39.999
Even in the midst of plenty,
bees can die of starvation.

00:34:40.000 --> 00:34:44.999
In a natural environment,

00:34:45.000 --> 00:34:49.999
many plants flower at the same time
providing a rich variety of pollens

00:34:50.000 --> 00:34:54.999
with many nutrients.

00:34:55.000 --> 00:34:59.999
But here, bees have little choice.

00:35:00.000 --> 00:35:04.999
There’s but a single pollen.

00:35:05.000 --> 00:35:09.999
Monoculture of the scale

00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:14.999
is frequent these days in American farming.

00:35:15.000 --> 00:35:19.999
Is possible, it’s a problem, especially if
there’s micronutrients that are at low levels

00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:24.999
or absent from that
particular diet of bees,

00:35:25.000 --> 00:35:29.999
pollen of the bee. There can be deficiency

00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:34.999
and so that requires a whole new management
scheme of feeding good quality protein fat,

00:35:35.000 --> 00:35:39.999
vitamins, minerals. That’s a whole
new way of managing colonies,

00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:44.999
were becoming more and
more like a pig farmer,

00:35:45.000 --> 00:35:49.999
a chicken farmer, in that we’re
supplying the diet to the animals,

00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:54.999
we’re not, we’re just turning these
animals loose into the wild and…

00:35:55.000 --> 00:35:59.999
and expecting them to pick up adequate
nutrition, we’re now having to think more like

00:36:00.000 --> 00:36:04.999
a normal livestock person. His is a
high that’s already been treated

00:36:05.000 --> 00:36:09.999
and this is a nutritional patty, this is a bag of
menthol and this is highland, which is an antibiotic.

00:36:10.000 --> 00:36:14.999
Would pretends to be science
at the service of the bee,

00:36:15.000 --> 00:36:19.999
is really science at the service of
a system that works bees to death.

00:36:20.000 --> 00:36:24.999
If the bees have to be fed and medicated, it’s
because they’ve been brought into an environment

00:36:25.000 --> 00:36:29.999
they can never adapt to, they’ve been
tricked, their instincts used against them.

00:36:30.000 --> 00:36:34.999
You have to feed them to stimulate
them, to get them to strength.

00:36:35.000 --> 00:36:39.999
If you don’t stimulate and prior to the bloom coming on,
then they aren’t strong enough by the bloom does come on,

00:36:40.000 --> 00:36:44.999
they get strong towards the end of the bloom
but not at the beginning of the bloom.

00:36:45.000 --> 00:36:49.999
They are just totally
different type of beekeeping

00:36:50.000 --> 00:36:54.999
and I don’t hold it against them, and
that is the nature of the business

00:36:55.000 --> 00:36:59.999
and every step that that’s taken
along that line, invites trouble.

00:37:00.000 --> 00:37:04.999
I wouldn’t like to be involved.
It’s not beekeeping

00:37:05.000 --> 00:37:09.999
and it’s just a minefield,
you know, sad really, uh…

00:37:10.000 --> 00:37:14.999
All the squelches of the
bee are assembled here.

00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:19.999
Parasites and viruses are bound. The
rhythm of the seasons has been broken.

00:37:20.000 --> 00:37:24.999
The earth is saturated with pesticides
and fungicides and chemical fertilizers.

00:37:25.000 --> 00:37:29.999
It’s a hell for bees.

00:37:30.000 --> 00:37:34.999
It was among large migrant beekeepers that
Colony Collapse Disorder first appeared,

00:37:35.000 --> 00:37:39.999
aggressive management in a terribly degraded
environment are among the interacting factors

00:37:40.000 --> 00:37:44.999
many scientists point to is likely causes.

00:37:45.000 --> 00:37:49.999
Beekeepers know that colonies
can simply lose morale and die.

00:37:50.000 --> 00:37:54.999
[music]

00:37:55.000 --> 00:37:59.999
I can’t do without the almonds financially,

00:38:00.000 --> 00:38:04.999
but I think this place is, it’s toxic.

00:38:05.000 --> 00:38:09.999
It’s just amazing that they can take
those extremes and still be alive.

00:38:10.000 --> 00:38:14.999
The Central Valley of California

00:38:15.000 --> 00:38:19.999
is a landscape so extreme, as to
almost seeing another planet.

00:38:20.000 --> 00:38:24.999
But bees live in nightmare in
much more familiar landscapes,

00:38:25.000 --> 00:38:29.999
like the gently rolling
hills of Southwest Germany.

00:38:30.000 --> 00:38:34.999
In May 2008, in Bade-Wurttemberg,

00:38:35.000 --> 00:38:39.999
machines planting corn seeds raised a cloud of dust
from the dry earth. The dust carried pesticide

00:38:40.000 --> 00:38:44.999
scraped off the treated seeds.
It’s settled on apple blossoms

00:38:45.000 --> 00:38:49.999
and flowering canola fields
over an area of 125 miles.

00:38:50.000 --> 00:38:54.999
Eleven thousand five hundred
honeybee colonies destroyed,

00:38:55.000 --> 00:39:00.000
330 million bees.

00:39:30.000 --> 00:39:34.999
Christoph Koch is one of
700 beekeepers affected.

00:39:35.000 --> 00:39:39.999
He lost 70% of his bees.

00:39:40.000 --> 00:39:44.999
The culprit was Poncho pro, a pesticide
based on the activation Clothianidin.

00:39:45.000 --> 00:39:49.999
It earns €237 million per year for
the German chemical giant Bayer.

00:39:50.000 --> 00:39:54.999
Poncho pro is painted on the seeds of corn

00:39:55.000 --> 00:39:59.999
rather than spray it on the growing plant.
The treatment was recommended

00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:05.000
by the regional minister of
agriculture, Peter Hauk.

00:40:45.000 --> 00:40:49.999
Everything seemed very clear, a simple accident.
But in the analysis by the National Laboratory,

00:40:50.000 --> 00:40:54.999
be showed doses of Clothianidin well
below the official lethal level.

00:40:55.000 --> 00:41:03.000
Clothianidin residue

00:41:10.000 --> 00:41:14.999
was found in wax and pollen. And
the German Food Safety Authority

00:41:15.000 --> 00:41:19.999
took the extraordinary precautionary step of
suspending permission for (inaudible) treatment

00:41:20.000 --> 00:41:24.999
and corn and canola. They
are compensated beekeepers,

00:41:25.000 --> 00:41:29.999
€2 million for their losses
without admitting fault.

00:41:30.000 --> 00:41:34.999
Nothing more was covered about the
unexpected findings in the Toxicology Lab.

00:41:35.000 --> 00:41:39.999
But on the other side of the border,
French beekeepers are certain

00:41:40.000 --> 00:41:45.000
that this new family of pesticides to
kill bees and not just by accident.

00:42:05.000 --> 00:42:09.999
Starting in 1994, French beekeepers found
their babies dying in disappearing

00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:14.999
around the sunflower bloom.
Honey harvest dropped by 60%.

00:42:15.000 --> 00:42:19.999
Something had changed.

00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:24.999
That same year, Bayer introduced a new system
of pesticide for sunflowers and corn, Gaucho,

00:42:25.000 --> 00:42:29.999
it would become its best selling pesticide
ever with €556 million per year.

00:42:30.000 --> 00:42:34.999
Beekeepers fought to
have the product banned,

00:42:35.000 --> 00:42:39.999
the battle raged for years.

00:42:40.000 --> 00:42:44.999
[music]

00:42:45.000 --> 00:42:49.999
Gaucho was a neonicotinoid systemic
pesticide like Poncho Pro.

00:42:50.000 --> 00:42:54.999
A small dose is painted on the seeds and spread
through the body of the plant as it grows.

00:42:55.000 --> 00:42:59.999
Bayer claimed that the product
had no effect on bees,

00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:04.999
the active agent metoclopramide
didn’t contaminate pollen or nectar.

00:43:05.000 --> 00:43:09.999
[music]

00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:14.999
But French researchers found toxic
residue in sunflower nectar and pollen.

00:43:15.000 --> 00:43:19.999
And in lab studies, doses as small as three
parts per billion affected the bees.

00:43:20.000 --> 00:43:24.999
Faced with contradictions,

00:43:25.000 --> 00:43:30.000
the Ministry of Agriculture suspended
Gaucho on the principle of precaution.

00:44:10.000 --> 00:44:14.999
But pollen and nectar are
not the only plant products

00:44:15.000 --> 00:44:19.999
contaminated by treatment
with neonicotinoids.

00:44:20.000 --> 00:44:24.999
In 2009, Italian researchers found
that corn grown from treated seeds,

00:44:25.000 --> 00:44:29.999
exudes a lethal dose of
pesticide in quotation water,

00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:34.999
a sort of sap. The drops can be
up to thousand times more toxic

00:44:35.000 --> 00:44:39.999
than the dosage found in nectar. Bees to
drink the water die in a few minutes.

00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:44.999
[sil.]

00:44:45.000 --> 00:44:49.999
Bayer counters that there is no proof that bees
come in contact with quotation water in the wild.

00:44:50.000 --> 00:44:54.999
And they claim, the laboratory
experiments no matter how spectacular,

00:44:55.000 --> 00:44:59.999
cannot reproduce what happens in the field.

00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:04.999
Fringe toxicologists look bell zones,

00:45:05.000 --> 00:45:09.999
was on the scientific committee
that studied the effects of Gaucho,

00:45:10.000 --> 00:45:14.999
he’s been testing the latest generation
of pesticides for over 15 years.

00:45:15.000 --> 00:45:19.999
He’s made the disturbing discovery

00:45:20.000 --> 00:45:24.999
that neonicotinoids induce different
effects at different dosages,

00:45:25.000 --> 00:45:29.999
even extremely low repeated exposure
can have strong unexpected effects.

00:45:30.000 --> 00:45:35.000
With these insecticides,
there is no safe dose.

00:46:30.000 --> 00:46:34.999
Sub lethal intoxication causes
nervous disorders, loss of memory,

00:46:35.000 --> 00:46:39.999
or temporary paralysis.
Catastrophic for honeybees

00:46:40.000 --> 00:46:44.999
and wild bees are alike. Is sub lethal insecticide
poisoning the root cause of disappearing bees?

00:46:45.000 --> 00:46:49.999
Maryann Frazier’s long
series of field studies

00:46:50.000 --> 00:46:54.999
showed that bees are continuously
exposed to many agricultural chemicals

00:46:55.000 --> 00:46:59.999
and it’s not just adult
bees that are affected.

00:47:00.000 --> 00:47:04.999
So the struggle in the beginning was,
are these things out there to monitor?

00:47:05.000 --> 00:47:09.999
Are the bee, are the pesticides they are now, they are getting into the
hive, into the bees, food into the wax where the bees are developing,

00:47:10.000 --> 00:47:14.999
that was our original question, that question
has been answered. Yes, they are there,

00:47:15.000 --> 00:47:19.999
they are getting into the hive. In some pollen
samples we found as many as 31 different pesticides,

00:47:20.000 --> 00:47:24.999
on average we find six
pesticides per pollen sample.

00:47:25.000 --> 00:47:29.999
It turns out honeybees are quite good monitors of the environment.
They pretty much pick up everything that’s out there.

00:47:30.000 --> 00:47:34.999
And while we think we put these things out there
and they go away, obviously that’s not the case.

00:47:35.000 --> 00:47:39.999
The honeybee genome revealed that

00:47:40.000 --> 00:47:44.999
just as bees are weak in immunity genes,
they are weak and detoxification genes.

00:47:45.000 --> 00:47:49.999
They have few defenses against pesticides.

00:47:50.000 --> 00:47:54.999
The interactions of different
chemicals found in the environment

00:47:55.000 --> 00:47:59.999
are a danger of unknown dimension for
bees everywhere, both wild and domestic.

00:48:00.000 --> 00:48:04.999
We have the evidence that these pesticides,
the beginning evidence that show that

00:48:05.000 --> 00:48:09.999
these pesticides in combination
have a synergistic toxic effect.

00:48:10.000 --> 00:48:14.999
So two or three pesticides they have
together in a pollen diet for the bees

00:48:15.000 --> 00:48:19.999
have an additive… There’s an
additive effect of those pesticides.

00:48:20.000 --> 00:48:24.999
But we’re finding that these things, particularly
some fungicides and pesticides can synergize.

00:48:25.000 --> 00:48:29.999
Meaning that they can be much… much
more toxic when they’re added together

00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:34.999
than either of these two things
are on their own or additively.

00:48:35.000 --> 00:48:39.999
In the fall of 2009, at Apimondia,
the World Bee Congress.

00:48:40.000 --> 00:48:44.999
The role of pesticides remained
controversial. But in the corridors,

00:48:45.000 --> 00:48:49.999
news was circulating about a breakthrough
study demonstrating a new type of synergy.

00:48:50.000 --> 00:48:54.999
The author was Jeff Pettis of the United
States Department of Agriculture,

00:48:55.000 --> 00:48:59.999
his co-author Dennis van Engelsdorp.

00:49:00.000 --> 00:49:04.999
We exposed whole colonies to very low levels of neonicotinoids
in this case and then challenged bees from those colonies

00:49:05.000 --> 00:49:09.999
with no eczema, a pathogen, the gut
pathogen and we saw an increase.

00:49:10.000 --> 00:49:14.999
Even if we fed the pesticide at very low levels,
we saw an increase in those eczema levels

00:49:15.000 --> 00:49:19.999
in direct response to the low level feeding
of neonicotinoids as compared to the…

00:49:20.000 --> 00:49:24.999
once they were fed normal protein.
You measure that effect at levels

00:49:25.000 --> 00:49:29.999
that you could not detect the pesticides. And so that brings up
the question if… if it’s having an effect at that low doses,

00:49:30.000 --> 00:49:34.999
we wouldn’t have discovered in our study
because it was below the limit of detection.

00:49:35.000 --> 00:49:39.999
The only reason we knew the bees had
exposure was because we expose them,

00:49:40.000 --> 00:49:44.999
otherwise we wouldn’t never have known they were exposed.
The take-on messages that interactions may be the key.

00:49:45.000 --> 00:49:49.999
So in this case we’re… we’re
manipulating one pesticide

00:49:50.000 --> 00:49:54.999
in one pathogen and we clearly
see the interactions.

00:49:55.000 --> 00:49:59.999
The conclusions of Pettis and Van Engelsdorp were confirmed
in a lab study by French researchers by Yves le Conte

00:50:00.000 --> 00:50:04.999
and Luc Belzunces, published
in December 2009.

00:50:05.000 --> 00:50:09.999
Even at undetectable levels,
neonicotinoid pesticides,

00:50:10.000 --> 00:50:14.999
we can be immunity.

00:50:15.000 --> 00:50:19.999
If this is the final answer
to worldwide bee deaths,

00:50:20.000 --> 00:50:24.999
than the elimination or reduction of
neonicotinoids might save the bees.

00:50:25.000 --> 00:50:29.999
[music]

00:50:30.000 --> 00:50:34.999
Or is it too late? How can pesticides
had poison at undetectable levels

00:50:35.000 --> 00:50:39.999
be quantified or controlled? How can
their elimination be confirmed?

00:50:40.000 --> 00:50:44.999
Industrial agriculture
requires billions of bees

00:50:45.000 --> 00:50:49.999
but bees can’t live in the environments
that industrial agriculture produces.

00:50:50.000 --> 00:50:54.999
What choices there and who
will make the choice?

00:50:55.000 --> 00:50:59.999
For the moment the answer is simple,

00:51:00.000 --> 00:51:04.999
disposable bees. But science and industry
are already working on the future

00:51:05.000 --> 00:51:09.999
looking ahead to a world without bees.

00:51:10.000 --> 00:51:14.999
It’s possible to identify forms of genes

00:51:15.000 --> 00:51:19.999
that would confers uh…specific
sorts of advantages and then

00:51:20.000 --> 00:51:24.999
umm… use genetic engineering
to put those forms of genes

00:51:25.000 --> 00:51:29.999
umm… into bees. Now of course this
is a very young science, number one.

00:51:30.000 --> 00:51:34.999
And number two, uh… we have to be
very careful with this approach

00:51:35.000 --> 00:51:39.999
because we know that any
gene has multiple functions.

00:51:40.000 --> 00:51:44.999
There is no gene that just does one thing.

00:51:45.000 --> 00:51:49.999
The tools are there to produce bees that will be
more productive in our agricultural situations

00:51:50.000 --> 00:51:54.999
but we need to proceed very carefully.

00:51:55.000 --> 00:51:59.999
[sil.]

00:52:00.000 --> 00:52:04.999
There are possibilities for
technological solutions

00:52:05.000 --> 00:52:09.999
for some mechanical means of
providing pollination services.

00:52:10.000 --> 00:52:14.999
There may be umm… even robotic bees design
if you go far enough in the future.

00:52:15.000 --> 00:52:19.999
So I think we have not really exploited the technological
possibilities. We really have neglected pollination services

00:52:20.000 --> 00:52:24.999
and I think both biologically and technology,
many… many options are open to us

00:52:25.000 --> 00:52:29.999
and they just require development.

00:52:30.000 --> 00:52:38.000
[music]

00:53:00.000 --> 00:53:04.999
One of the biggest problems
we face in the world

00:53:05.000 --> 00:53:09.999
is that in my view and that of a lot of other scientists, we’ve
gone down some wrong roads in our agricultural technology,

00:53:10.000 --> 00:53:14.999
particularly in over intensification

00:53:15.000 --> 00:53:19.999
and spreading very uniform, genetically
uniform crops over too much of the planet

00:53:20.000 --> 00:53:24.999
and not looking at the genetic diversity of crops and
over-using artificial fertilizers and pesticides

00:53:25.000 --> 00:53:29.999
in ways that have just
made our problems worse.

00:53:30.000 --> 00:53:34.999
The biggest ecological damage done by
humanity overall is through agriculture.

00:53:35.000 --> 00:53:39.999
Miners once carried occasion Canary

00:53:40.000 --> 00:53:44.999
when they descended into the earth. The
death of the bird warned the miners

00:53:45.000 --> 00:53:49.999
that the atmosphere was dangerous.

00:53:50.000 --> 00:53:54.999
Bees are much more sensitive to environmental poisons
and humans they to act is environmental sentinels.

00:53:55.000 --> 00:53:59.999
[music]

00:54:00.000 --> 00:54:04.999
In the mines, when the canary died

00:54:05.000 --> 00:54:09.999
the miners evacuated. Today,
beekeepers and their bees

00:54:10.000 --> 00:54:14.999
are fleeing into cities to
escape famine and disease.

00:54:15.000 --> 00:54:20.000
[music]

00:54:45.000 --> 00:54:49.999
[sil.]

00:54:50.000 --> 00:54:54.999
On (inaudible) La Grave, “As bees
flee hame wi’ lades o’ treasure,

00:54:55.000 --> 00:54:59.999
The minutes wing’d their way wi’ pleasure.”
These were words of Robert Burns.

00:55:00.000 --> 00:55:04.999
”As bees flee hame wi’ lades o’ treasure,

00:55:05.000 --> 00:55:09.999
The minutes wing’d their way wi’
pleasure.” That was a reference to

00:55:10.000 --> 00:55:14.999
uh… bees being used for, as a therapeutic

00:55:15.000 --> 00:55:19.999
uh… medicine for old people and people who are
recuperating and they sat and watched the bees

00:55:20.000 --> 00:55:24.999
and the bees worked all day and that
people are happy to sit and watching them

00:55:25.000 --> 00:55:29.999
and the bees sting them because of a cottage hives, they were in
the gardens, you know, so they were used to people, you know.

00:55:30.000 --> 00:55:34.999
I mean, the country and
most beautiful countryside,

00:55:35.000 --> 00:55:39.999
not only am I looking after bees but I’m
interacting with people in the countryside.

00:55:40.000 --> 00:55:44.999
So it’s… it’s all about community
really and the countryside community

00:55:45.000 --> 00:55:49.999
and meeting people like shepherds and
farmers and landowners and that…

00:55:50.000 --> 00:55:54.999
As I see, we apply for, I’m the beekeeper

00:55:55.000 --> 00:55:59.999
and they have all their jobs has too. And it
would be a great pity if all those things

00:56:00.000 --> 00:56:04.999
eventually collapsed and went away.

00:56:05.000 --> 00:56:13.000
[sil.]

00:56:20.000 --> 00:56:24.999
There’s the queen look, isn’t that wonderful?
They fight, doesn’t like the exposure you know.

00:56:25.000 --> 00:56:29.999
Public arena.

00:56:30.000 --> 00:56:38.000
[sil.]

00:56:45.000 --> 00:56:53.000
[music]