\n<\/p>\n
O<\/span>ff the coast of Tuscany is a tiny island in the shape of a crescent moon. An hour from mainland Italy, Giannutri has just two beaches for boats to dock. In summer, hundreds of tourists flock there, hiking to the red and white lighthouse on its southern tip before diving into the clear waters. In winter, its population dwindles to 10. The island\u2019s rocky ridges are coated with thickets of rosemary and juniper, and in warmer months the air is sweetened by flowers and the gentle hum of bees.<\/p>\n \u201cResidents are people who like fishing, or being alone, or who have retired. Everyone has their story,\u201d says Leonardo Dapporto, associate professor at the University of Florence.<\/p>\n It was Giannutri\u2019s isolation that drew scientists here. They were seeking a unique open-air laboratory to answer a question that has long intrigued ecologists: could honeybees be causing their wild bee cousins to decline?<\/p>\n To answer this, they carried out a radical experiment. While Giannutri is too far from the mainland for honeybees to fly to it, 18 hives were set up on the island in 2018: a relatively contained, recently established population. Researchers got permission to shut the hives down, effectively removing most honeybees from the island.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When the study began, the island\u2019s human population temporarily doubled in size, as teams of scientists fanned out across the scrubland tracking bees. Then came the ban: they closed hives on selected days during the peak foraging period, keeping the honeybees in their hives for 11 hours a day. Local people were sceptical. \u201cFor them, we were doing silly and useless things,\u201d says Dapporto. But the results were compelling.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018Wow,\u2019 was my first response,\u201d says the lead researcher, Lorenzo Pasquali, from the University of Florence. When the data came together, \u201call the results were pointing in the same direction\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The findings, published in Current Biology earlier this year, found that over the four years after the honeybees were introduced, populations of two vital wild pollinators \u2013 bumblebees and anthophora \u2013 fell by \u201can alarming\u201d 80%. When the honeybees were locked up, there was 30% more pollen for other pollinators, and the wild bee species were sighted more frequently. Scientists observed that the wild species appeared to take their time pollinating flowers during the lockups, displaying different foraging behaviour. \u201cThe effect is visible,\u201d says Dapporto.<\/p>\n In terms of sheer abundance, the western honeybee (Apis mellifera<\/em>) is the world\u2019s most important single species of pollinator in wild ecosystems.<\/p>\n Originally native to Africa, the Middle East and southern Europe, honeybees have been shipped around the planet by humans to every continent except Antarctica. The battles playing out on this small Italian island are likely to be echoed in ecosystems everywhere.<\/p>\n While the number of honeybees is increasing (driven by commercial beekeeping) native pollinators are declining globally due to habitat loss, climate breakdown and use of chemicals in farming. But we are only beginning to understand how the great honeybee boom could also take a toll on wild pollinators.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In southern Spain, where honeybee numbers have more than tripled since the 1960s, research shows managed honeybees spilling into flower-rich woodlands after the orange crop has bloomed. The result: increased competition with wild pollinators.<\/p>\n During California\u2019s annual almond bloom, about 90% of the US\u2019s managed honeybees are recruited in to pollinate, with beekeepers trucking hives across the country to meet demand. \u201cFor this approximately month-long period, the impact of honeybees on native pollinators is likely huge,\u201d says Dillon Travis from the University of California San Diego. During the off season \u2013 when honeybees are less in demand \u2013 beekeepers often keep them in wild ecosystems. \u201cNative pollinators need to compete with millions of honeybees for limited food sources.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n If conditions are right, honeybees go feral and set up colonies in the wild. A 2018 study looking at the presence of honeybees in natural ecosystems found them in 89% of sites.<\/p>\n In California, feral honeybees are increasingly turning up in vast numbers in natural ecosystems hundreds of miles away from the almond fields.<\/p>\n Each spring, after the winter rains, San Diego\u2019s coastal scrub landscape bursts into life. Sagebrush, white sage and buckwheat unfurl their leaves, throwing sweet aromas into the hot air. These sights and smells greeted graduate student Keng-Lou James Hung when he started studying this area of southern California in 2011, aged 22, after a well-regarded biologist told him it was one of the richest bee habitats on Earth.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The landscape has all the hallmarks of a pristine ecosystem: no tractor has tilled the land, no cattle grazed it; few humans tread here. \u201cYou can equate it to primary growth Amazonian rainforest in terms of how intact and undisturbed the ecosystem is,\u201d says Hung.<\/p>\n It\u2019s like a local grocery store trying to compete against Walmart. Once they\u2019ve escaped there\u2019s little we can do to stop honeybeesKeng-Lou James Hung<\/p>\n When Hung began his research, however, what he discovered flummoxed him. \u201cI got to my field sites and all I was seeing were honeybees,\u201d he remembers. \u201cImagine as an avid birder: you get to a pristine forest and all you are seeing are feral pigeons. That\u2019s what was going on with me when I set foot in this habitat. It came as a shock.\u201d Honeybees were everywhere \u2013 nesting in utility boxes, ground squirrel burrows and rock crevices.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In July, Hung \u2013 now an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma \u2013 published a paper finding 98% of all bee biomass (ie, the weight of all bees) in that area were feral honeybees. They removed about 80% of pollen during the first day a flower opened, according to the paper, published in the journal Insect Conservation and Diversity.<\/p>\n Such high rates of pollen extraction leave little for the more than 700 species of native bees in the region, which need pollen to raise their offspring. Some of those species have not been seen for decades.<\/p>\n Hung believes honeybees\u2019 social structure gives them the edge. Using the \u201chive mind\u201d, they communicate the locations of plants and remove most of the pollen early in the morning before native bees begin searching for food. Most other bees operate as single agents, making decisions in isolation.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like a local grocery store trying to compete against Walmart,\u201d says Hung. \u201cOnce they\u2019ve escaped and established themselves there\u2019s very little we can do to really stop honeybees. They\u2019re very powerful and resilient creatures.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In 1956, some experimental \u201cAfricanised\u201d honeybees were accidentally released from a research apiary in S\u00e3o Paulo, Brazil, spreading out across south and Central America and into California. Their expansion has been described as one of the \u201cmost spectacular biological invasions of all time\u201d.<\/p>\n Habitat fragmentation, chemical use in farming and rising temperatures are key drivers of pollinator declines, but in areas such as in San Diego it is likely honeybees are also a significant contributing factor. \u201cIt is very difficult to imagine a scenario where a single species can remove four-fifths of all the pollen \u2026 without having too much of an impact on that ecosystem,\u201d says Hung.<\/p>\n Not only is it bad for native wild bees, it can have effects throughout the ecosystem.<\/p>\n Studies have confirmed that plants in San Diego county are less healthy when pollinated by non-native honeybees. Potential impacts include fewer seeds germinating, and those that do may be smaller and produce fewer flowers. \u201cThis may create an \u2018extinction vortex\u2019,\u201d says Travis, where less-healthy plants breed over generations until they can no longer survive. \u201cI am unaware of any studies that determined that honeybees are beneficial where they are not native, excluding agricultural areas,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n In some parts of Australia and America \u2013 where honeybees are not native \u2013 they can reach densities of up to 100 colonies per square kilometre. In regions such as Europe, where they are native, the picture is different.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There are about 75,000 free-living honeybee colonies across the UK, according to research last year, which was the first to quantify the density of these colonies. Based on these estimates, more than 20% of the UK\u2019s honeybee population could be wild-living. \u201cIn Europe, the honeybee is a native species and low densities of wild-living colonies are natural components of many ecosystems,\u201d says researcher Oliver Visick from the University of Sussex.<\/p>\n Visick has found densities of up to four wild-living colonies per square kilometre in historic deer parks in Sussex and Kent. \u201cAt these densities, wild-living colonies are unlikely to have a negative impact on other wild pollinators,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n In ecosystems where honeybees are introduced, scientists say there should be more guidance on where large-scale beekeepers keep their hives after crops have bloomed to reduce their impact on native species. In other areas, such as islands, relocation or removal may be feasible.<\/p>\n On Giannutri, when researchers told national park authorities their results they banned bee-keeping on the island.<\/p>\n The island, which is part of the Tuscan Archipelago national park, has been honeybee-free for more than a year and may now serve as a cautionary tale to other protected areas planning to introduce honeybees. Since the hives were removed, at least one of the species scientists have been monitoring appears to have slightly increased.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The story unfolding on this little Italian island and the scrublands of San Diego shows that honeybees may not be the universal environmental stewards we paint them to be, and challenges the popular view that they are the best way to save nosediving pollinator numbers. Unchecked, they can cast a long shadow over fragile ecosystems that some might believe they help preserve.<\/p>\n When the scientists returned to Giannutri, <\/strong>\u201cIt was a bit weird to go back to the island this year without the honeybees around. We were used to seeing them everywhere all over the island,\u201d says Pasquali. \u201cI was happy to observe the island in this new condition.\u201d<\/p>\n Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow the biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield in the Guardian app for more nature coverage<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Off the coast of Tuscany is a tiny island in the shape of a crescent moon. An hour from mainland Italy, Giannutri has just two beaches for boats to dock. In summer, hundreds of tourists flock there, hiking to the red and white lighthouse on its southern tip before diving into the clear waters. In<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[1653,1646,2801,13589,9014,2961,4565],"class_list":{"0":"post-22148","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-banned","9":"tag-bees","10":"tag-harm","11":"tag-hives","12":"tag-honeybees","13":"tag-island","14":"tag-nature"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Global bee battle<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Honeybee takeovers<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Wider ecological effects<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The honeybee-free island<\/strong><\/h2>\n