Do Honeybees Harm Native Bees?

Early in my beekeeping adventure, I saw a lot of alarming articles and opinions that honeybees are harmful to native bees; that they were dangerous competitors and love for honeybees was shifting focus away from actual bee conservation efforts. As someone with a deep passion for the natural world, I had great concerns about this; I didn’t want to be adding to an environtmental problem by hosting honeybees.

(Dr. Marla Spivak in the teaching yard at the UMN Bee Lab)

I was very lucky to have access to the University of Minnesota’s bee lab and its incredible staff of researchers. While taking beekeeping classes there, I had the opportunity to ask distinguished entomologist and bee expert Marla Spivak directly about this issue. Her answer was, paraphrased, that there is room for ALL bees if we are willing to dig into the issues they mutually face. There are ways to promote healthy honeybees as well as protecting native bees, together.  Anything we do to help honeybees can also benefit native pollinators, the focus should be on habitat restoration and health, offering all bees ample food and places to live. Recent research shows that farmers who increase the diversity of foraging areas available to pollinators near their farms successfully increased both honey and native bee populations.  (See reference list #1)

Fighting over the concept of which species of bee is ‘more important’ ignores the major issues that threaten them both and is, in my mind, counterproductive. Honeybees, which most people are much more familiar with than most other species, can be a great figurehead for gaining public interest. Interest that supports helping with ecological issues that affect all pollinators. Putting out a message to the general public that ‘honeybees are harmful’ is adding unnecessary negativity and confusing people who are unlikely to spend time learning the nuances of the larger situation.

The truth of the situation is that it’s complicated! 

(A native species and a honeybee share the same flower)

Critics of honeybees say that they directly compete with native bees for resources and that conservation efforts should be 100% focused on native bees, excluding honeybees as foreign pests. I think that is a shortsighted and potentially damaging message to share, given all the factors at play, including the way our landscapes have been changed to make way for human agriculture.  Let’s examine this issue in more depth: 

Honeybees are not native to the United States. The bees we manage today came along with early settlers from Europe in the 1600s. They have been kept by humans for thousands of years, a history that is directly tied with the rise of agriculture. Most early homesteads had a place for at least a hive or two of bees that can still be seen today, as a nook or ledge on the side of old barns. These bees provided crucial pollination services to farm crops – though native bees can be better overall pollinators, many cover extremely small ranges and are very seasonal, some only foraging for a few weeks each year. In many ways, the success of these early multi-crop farms depended largely on their resident honeybees.

Honeybees are considered domesticated (they are one of only two domesticated insect species – the other is the silkworm). They aren’t ‘tame’, can live ferally, and establish new colonies without the aid of people, but they have been selectively bred and altered through thousands of years of human management. Honeybees in North America could well be considered part of agriculture instead of as wild animals. 

Does this mean honeybees are hurting native bees?

When resources are scarce, native bees and honeybees can become competitors for the same food sources. There is also the chance of disease and parasite transfer, which makes keeping honeybees healthy and well-managed of great concern. There are a lot of questions about honeybees vs. native bees we don’t yet have the answers to, but research is clear that efforts made to help honeybees also help native bee populations.  

I understand the devout care of people who spread a native-only bee message, but doing so ignores the fact that humans have shaped, and will continue to shape our landscapes. Agriculture exists and will continue to exist as long as people keep needing to be fed. Honeybees are an important part of that reality. Arguing that honeybees should be exterminated in North America is like asking to get rid of every cow, chicken, pig, etc; it’s not a realistic answer. I believe a better synergy can be found by focusing on more sustainable farming methods, fostering plentiful and healthy wild spaces, preservation and expansion of good bee habitat, creating better pollination corridors, and attention to many other environmental and agricultural issues. 

The main takeaway I would like people to have is that in conservation, it is very important to foster passion, care, love, and interest in the hearts of the people you hope to move. A positive message about loving bees and how to help protect them will help all bees and is much better than a negative message which could actively discourage someone’s burgeoning interest. 

I will discuss more about the differences between honeybees and native bees in another article, as well as how you can host them yourself, but for now, here’s a quick few tidbits:

How can you help native bees?

-Undisturbed ground and landscaping areas are crucial to native bees! Many nest in the ground, or in dead flower and reed stems. Leaving areas of leaves, flower stems, and plant detritus in your yard alone gives bees a place to live and work. Most people obsessively clean out or remove these areas, which gives the bees nowhere to flourish.

-Stop spraying your yard and garden with pesticides and herbicides. These build up in the plants and soil and weaken or kill pollinators who feed from the flowers. Explore alternative turf or plantings and lawn care methods.

-Purchase organically grown garden plants. You may laugh if you see an organic label on a violet or geranium, why would that matter if you aren’t going to eat them? Many decorative and garden plants sold in greenhouses are shockingly full of pesticides! Chemical use on these plants isn’t regulated the way it is for food crops, so they often have much higher levels of nasty stuff on them than the giant fields of corn and soybeans do. Most people are unaware of this and unknowingly plant toxic pollinator gardens. Spreading the word helps! Educate yourself - chat with your plant supplier about how their plants are grown and what is used to treat them. Order organically grown greenhouse plants or seeds (even the seeds can be chemical-dipped to prevent pests from getting at them!) and encourage others you know to do so.

-Plant a variety of nectar-producing plants that flower at different times of the year. Having continually producing flowers helps create corridors that allow pollinators to still find food sources when on the move. If you need help finding plants that will work in your area, contact your local Master Gardener society, University agricultural department, or pollinator specialty greenhouses in your state. https://www.xerces.org/ is a good online resource for garden planning, as well.

-Learn about the species of native bees inhabit your area. If you really want to get involved, contact your local Master Naturalists’ program, nature centers, or DNR to find out about insect count volunteer work. This helpful citizen science, where you go out and collect data about what numbers and types of bees you see, can be a lot of fun. You get out in nature and learn more about what is going on in your own stomping grounds. The rich variety of what is there may surprise you! 

-Directly create and maintain native bee habitat and housing (I will discuss this more in a future article)

-If you keep honeybees, keep your colonies as healthy and disease-free as possible, and plant abundant flowers around your apiary to provide forage for all pollinators.

Reference list: 

Reference #1:  Wild, native bees and managed honey bees benefit from similar agricultural land uses https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167880918303955)

UMN Bee Lab: https://www.beelab.umn.edu 

Books on alternative species beekeeping for purchase or free download: https://www.beelab.umn.edu/wild-bees/reading

https://www.sare.org/product_search/results/(limit)/10/(sort)/relevance/(commodities)/Bees?q=Bees