Good News: We Saved the Bees. Bad News: We Saved the Wrong Ones.

Source: Slashdot

Background

Despite urgent pleas to Americans to save the honeybees, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank writes that “it was all based on a fallacy.” Honeybees were never in existential trouble, and well‑meaning efforts to boost their numbers have accelerated the decline of native bees that actually are.

Expert Opinions

Misguided Conservation

British bee scientist Dave Goulson compares the logic to saying, “I’m really worried about bird decline, so I’ve decided to take up keeping chickens.” He argues that beekeeping is “exactly the same with one key difference, which is that honeybee‑keeping can be actively harmful to wild‑bee conservation.” Even from healthy hives, diseases can flow “out into wild pollinator populations.”

Milbank notes that honeybees can outcompete native bees for pollen and nectar and promote non‑native plants “at the expense of the native plants on which native bees thrive.”

Voices from the Field

• T’ai Roulston, bee specialist at the University of Virginia’s Blandy Experimental Farm, warned that keeping honeybees “just contributes to the difficulties that native bees are having in the world.”
• Bert Harris, restoration‑ecology consultant at the Clifton Institute, put it bluntly: “If you want to save the bees, don’t keep honeybees…”

Implications for the Save‑the‑Pollinator Movement

The save‑the‑pollinator movement has been enormously beneficial over the past two decades. It has:

• Engaged millions of people in pollinator gardens, wildflower meadows, and native‑plant planting.
• Turned many against insecticides.
• Encouraged honeybee advocacy groups to promote native bees as well.

However, if the goal is to help pollinators, the solution is simple: don’t keep honeybees.

What Native Bees Need

Bumblebees, sweat bees, mason bees, miner bees, leafcutter bees, and other native species—most of them solitary, ground‑nesting, and docile—need our help. Honeybees do not.

Conclusion

The situation serves as “a cautionary tale about the unintended consequences that emerge when we intervene in nature, even with the best of intentions.”

Source: Washington Post article by Dana Milbank and Dave Goulson’s video.