The Truth About the Bee Movie
The Bee Movie contributed to the popularity of the “Save the Bees” movement, but was somewhat inaccurate in its portrayal of the real environmental issue. The release of this movie has led to common misconceptions about the nature of beekeeping and the types of bees that exist. In reality, beekeeping is beneficial to honeybees, if done correctly and responsibly.
The “Save the Bees” movement has grown in popularity over the past few years, especially following the release of the Bee Movie in 2007, which spread awareness about the importance of bees in our environment. However, that movie has led the public to believe some common misconceptions about bees, specifically about honeybees.
Common Misconceptions
“Beekeeping is Detrimental to Bees”
For one, it portrays beekeeping as some form of bee slavery, where the beekeepers hold honeybees hostage to steal their only food source while giving them nothing in return. This is not entirely true. Beekeeping actually benefits honeybees, and the bees know this. It provides them with a safe hive and protection that they would not receive in the wild. The notion that beekeepers rob honeybees dry is untrue, since most honeybees typically make 2–3 times more honey than they need, so as long as the beekeepers leave enough for the honeybees to eat, the bees won’t get upset and leave. Honeybees follow their queen bee, and if the queen bee doesn’t like the conditions of their hive, then she leaves, and the rest of the colony follows.
The Bee Movie also portrayed “pollen jocks,” the bees that travel outside the hive, as male. In reality, the so-called “pollen jocks” are female, while the males stay inside the hive to tend to the queen and her pupa. Honeybees operate in a matriarchy, with the queen bee as their leader and the females as worker bees who gather pollen to make honey. Male bees, or drones, will even be kicked out of the hive during wintertime if there’s a food shortage, or if the hive gets too crowded. Girl power!
“Bees are Endangered”
Another common misconception about bees is that they are endangered, and if they become extinct, then our ecosystem will collapse and we will all die. Well, this isn’t technically a misconception, since it is partially true. However, when most people think of bees, they only consider honeybees, even though there are nearly 4,000 native bee species in America, many of which are actually endangered. While honeybees were once at risk of being endangered in the past, they are far from endangered now. In fact, there are more honeybees on planet Earth today than ever before, with about 1 million colonies and 4 million bees.
While honeybees may not be endangered, many species of native bees are at risk of endangerment. Out of the 20,000 different bee species, 156 are labeled as vulnerable, 20 as endangered, and 11 as critically endangered.
Honeybees vs Native Bees
Honeybees are not actually native to America. They were brought to America in the year 1620. However, it wasn’t until the 20th century that people started using honeybees as agricultural animals. Farmers use them to collect beeswax for candles, and for the honey we love and consume. They were not used because America needed pollinators.
Native bees, as well as other pollinators such as butterflies, moths, ants, and even some beetles, have been pollinating America’s plants since before honeybees were even brought across the ocean. However, honeybees have ingrained themselves in our ecosystem, pollinating flowers and $15 million worth of our crops. They have been threatened in the past due to pesticides, parasites, and climate change in 2006, which led to a major loss of colonies, but it has never come to the point of endangerment.
However, this decline had people panicking, and although parasites, the overuse of toxic pesticides, and habitat loss due to climate change were and still are major issues that affect native bees, the effort to “save the bees” was mainly focused on the European honeybees, even though there was an entire industry protecting these insects. Native, wild bees don’t have the protection of beekeepers and handcrafted, wooden boxes, leaving them incredibly vulnerable.
Not only that, but the introduction of honeybees to the American ecosystem has actually been shown to be detrimental to native honeybees.
Other Bee Species
Most people have a very limited view of what bees are, picturing a yellow-and-black-striped fat insect similar to honeybees or bumblebees. However, the bee family actually has a wide variety of insects of different sizes and colors. Most of them don’t even eat honey! Bees in the Halictidae family drink mammal sweat, and instead of having yellow and black stripes, they have an iridescent body to mimic flies.
Others nest in the ground, or live without queens and hives. Bees also vary in size, and can be as small as a gnat or plump and round like bumblebees. A lot of bee species don’t even have stingers, and if they do, they won’t die immediately after losing their stinger like honeybees do. However, similar to honeybees, they are all incredibly important pollinators. Honeybees pollinate a lot of plants and crops that we humans eat. Native bees also pollinate plants and crops, and they even pollinate crops such as tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers, which are crops that honeybees are unable to pollinate. These crops require a certain type of pollination called “buzz pollination,” which is when the pollinator shakes its body to allow pollen to fall off and land on the crop.
So, no, honeybees aren’t nature’s golden pollinators, and they do not need our protection as much as other bees do. Bees like the Hawaiian yellow-faced bee and the rusty patched bumblebee are much more in need of our help, and may become critically endangered without it.
Endangerment of Native Bees
Native bees suffer from the same issues that honeybees suffer from — habitat loss, climate change, parasites — all of the things honeybee enthusiasts preach about. However, the biggest cause of the dwindling numbers of native bees is honeybees.
As stated previously, honeybees were imported from Europe, so they are an invasive species. Usually, when an invasive species is introduced to a new ecosystem, it hurts native animals, which is precisely what happened with the native bees of America. Honeybees carry diseases that harm the native bees, and when the honeybees pollinate flowers that other native bees go to, those diseases are passed along.
In addition, honeybees are very good at their jobs. This may sound like a good thing, but it poses a problem when they hoard pollen and nectar, leaving little for native bees. Honeybees are also good at collecting pollen, and a single colony is able to collect up to 22 pounds of pollen pellets, or pollen mixed with bits of nectar, over three summer months. It clumps up on their legs so well that not a lot of pollen can fall off to be given to other plants, so while they may be sub-par pollinators, their efficient methods of collecting pollen allow them to make a surplus of honey for beekeepers to harvest.
However, this leaves less pollen for the native bees, so they have to travel farther from their homes to collect pollen to feed themselves and their offspring. This in turn leads to them having fewer offspring. It doesn’t help that a lot of native bees can only collect pollen from certain flowers, while honeybees have access to a wide variety of plants, allowing them to thrive while the native bees struggle to find food.
How YOU Can Help
If honeybees are such an issue, wouldn’t getting rid of all of them solve this issue? Well, no.
Ignoring the fact that getting rid of 2 million honeybee colonies and 4 million honeybees would be incredibly tedious, we would lose our supply of honey and wax, and the method would be ethically questionable, it would also be detrimental to our environment.
Honeybees are now part of our ecosystem. If we were to exterminate them entirely, we would lose the world’s largest pollinators which would make it difficult for many flower and plant species to survive. Because honeybees have taken over native bee territories, leading the native bees' numbers to slowly decrease, the removal of honeybees would leave a gap in the ecosystem that couldn’t be filled by native bees.
So if killing all the honeybees won’t save the native bees, then what will?
Something beekeepers can do to keep honeybees under control is to have their bees forage in a contained environment instead of in the wild. Wild honeybees still exist, but many honeybees are under the care of beekeepers.
Honeybees, while part of the reason that native bees are being threatened, aren’t the only reason. Battling climate change, stopping deforestation, and protesting to ban harmful pesticides will also help save the bees. The easiest and most fun way to help the bees is to plant flowers.
Not only does this bring a pop of color to your outdoor area, but it will also attract bees and provide them with pollen. If you have a garden, then attracting some pollinators to your plants definitely wouldn’t hurt. Purchase a couple more flower pots this year to do your part in helping America’s native bee populations flourish and thrive once more!
Recap
The Bee Movie contributed to the popularity of the “Save the Bees” movement, but was somewhat inaccurate in its portrayal of the real environmental issue. The release of this movie has led to common misconceptions about the nature of beekeeping and the types of bees that exist. In reality, beekeeping is beneficial to honeybees, if done correctly and responsibly. As for other types of bees, honeybees are not actually native to America and are not endangered. In fact, honeybees even endanger other bees, as they are an invasive species. Still, they have been part of American ecosystems for so long that hurting them would not be beneficial for the environment overall. Instead, battling climate change, habitat loss, and harmful pesticides can help both native bees and honeybees.