No. of Recommendations: 7
Thank you for sharing this. Improving honey bee health has Macroeconomic impact due to the need for pollination of much of our food supply.
In addition to the economic impact, I'm very glad that honey bees may receive improved nutrition. It's deplorable how honey bees are exploited by driving hives hundreds of miles to pollinate crops while the owners "harvest" - i.e. steal -- their honey and feed them low-nutrition cheap substitutes like corn syrup.
Honeybees have personalities, an ability to learn from each other and from experience, and a democratic society when allowed to be free. (cf. the wonderful book, "Honeybee Democracy.")
On the other hand, honeybees (Apis mellifera) are European-derived domestic animals. Honeybee hives can have 30,000 individuals which compete with and crowd out native bees that do not form large hives. The article does mention this.
I have been a citizen-scientist volunteer with the Pacific Northwest Bumblebee Atlas for 8 years. The Atlas tracks native bumblebee species. I once surveyed a commercial lavender farm which had (I estimated) 100 honeybees for every 10 yellow-headed bumblebee (Bombus vosnesenskii) and only ONE western bumble bee (B. occidentalis) individual.
I sincerely hope that the honey bee supplement will be commercialized. If so, I might buy some myself and put a feeding station into my garden for my bumblebees.
Wendy
