Snowflakes Not Survivors: Do We Mollycoddle Our Bees Too Much?

The first bees evolved around 60 million years ago. Since then, they have survived massively destructive events, including meteorites hitting the earth with mass extinction of species such as the dinosaurs, great geological upheavals, ice ages and more.

The secrets of the success of the honey bee are its genetic diversity, its ability to adapt to changing conditions, and natural selection, which weeded out the weakest so that only the strongest survived. The bees that ensured the continuity were the sons and daughters of the best of the best.

In the past the bees made their homes in places of their choosing, foraged for enough nectar and pollen to survive the winter, produced new queens from the larvae of their own choosing, and died if they weren’t tough enough to survive the rigours of the climate to which they became perfectly adapted.

They worked with natural selection to ensure the continuity of the species.

Then in the 19^th Century everything changed. There were major advances in equipment and knowledge allowing beekeepers to have more control over their colonies. They were greedy and wanted big colonies that produced more honey so foreign species were imported. The first was thought to be the Italian honey bee, Apis mellifera ligustica, brought in by Thomas Woodbury of Devon in 1859. Others followed, with bees being brought in from many other countries with very different climates and forage.

The result now is that the native British bee, which is superbly adapted to the grey skies and rainy climate of Britain has now been so diluted by imports as to have almost completely disappeared in most areas. Many of the descendants of these imperts are not able to survive all year round without intervention by the beekeeper.

They can’t stand the cold so we insulate their hives.

They eat too many stores, so we have to give them junk food in the form of 100% sucrose.

They haven’t developed resistance to Varroa so we treat them with chemicals.

Now we are working against natural selection. Instead of survivors we are producing snowflakes.