The Conundrum of Feral Honey Bees
Tracy Farone
Dr. Tracy Farone
I live out in the middle of the woods, in what most people would think of as the “boonies.” I love the gift of nature so much I became a biologist, a veterinarian and a self-proclaimed tree herder. I tend to enjoy “natural” remedies and prefer to use medications very judiciously for myself, my family and my patients. My husband and I built much of the home we live in. I like to forage through the woods, and he hunts. It is all very romantic hunter-gatherer stuff and I love it. Especially when I can come back to a house with running warm water, electricity and sometimes decent internet. Above all, I am a realist. Truth be told, Mother Nature can be a real bitch. Fortunately, we have been given gifts of knowledge to manage the throws of this lovely lady.
Feral is a word we may use in veterinary medicine to describe various animals, like cats, hogs and dogs. Even horses have gone wild from time to time. Merriam-Webster definitions for “feral” include references to “wild beasts” or “not domesticated”, and/or “having escaped from domestication…” something that became wild. These definitions imply that we are referring to an animal that was intended to be domesticated. True wild animals have never been domesticated or are not described as feral. Origin of the word, “feral” use dates to the early 1600’s, which I find interesting since (domesticated) honey bees were being first introduced into the American colonies at that time (1). Agriculture and the domestication of animals dates back at least 10,000 years, so we have been here a long time. Honey bee domestication is thought to not be far behind canines and ruminants at about 9,000 years ago (2,3).
“Sylvatic” (meaning woods) is another term we use often in biology and veterinary medicine to describe things (often diseases) that occur, affect or are transmitted by wild animals (4). One of our many goals in veterinary medicine is to keep as much of the “wilds of the woods” (i.e., disease) away from our domestic animals and human populations as possible.
One benefit domestic animals have enjoyed by teaming up with humans is a great increase in population and diversity. What was once a small population of the African/Middle Eastern wildcat, Felis sylvestris, which means “cat of the woods” (and the inspiration for Tweety Bird’s Looney Tune friend) became our domestic cat, Felis catus or domesticus, one of the most populous animals on Earth (5).
Felis domesticus or Josiah, King of the Jungle in my house.
Along with cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, horses, donkeys and dogs, honey bees have also followed this trend. Tens of millions of hives are managed all over the globe with the U.S.’s 2.7 million colonies barely making the top ten of countries reporting colony numbers. India boasts about 12.2 million hives. China and Turkey rank second and third with 9.2 and 8.1 million hives, respectively (6, 7).
Why do our domestic animals do so well compared to feral or actual wild animals? Because we care for them. We feed them. We shelter them. We prevent and treat them for diseases. Admittedly, there have been and are poor management practices that can be a detriment to our animals. I believe evaluating and reevaluating methods from multiple management perspectives to combine best practices is well worth pursuing.
Domestic honey bees naturally swarm; this is when colonies could become feral. It is like my house cat running out the door. If I do not catch them, they will be gone. Unfortunately, in this situation my bees and cat will be subject to a higher risk of disease, injury, shelter and nutritional issues outside of my care.
As a veterinarian, I have recovered many feral animals, mostly cats. They are often infested with parasites, fleas, ticks and intestinal worms. Some have bacterial and viral diseases. Many have injuries, stunted growth and weight, and skin conditions. Cats (and some other feral species) are particularly good at “surviving” in the wild, but I can tell you they do it with suffering. A few targeted treatments, healthy food and a safe place can turn these very sick patients around in a week.
Feral animal populations create threats for both domestic and wild animals and sometimes human populations by acting as “reservoirs” for various diseases. Wild dogs and wild hogs pose a threat as a reservoir of diseases and also a safety threat to other animals and humans. For these reasons in public health, we try to create physical and/or medical boundaries to separate wild and domestic animals. Feral animals often walk this line and may vector diseases from one realm to another. Feral and wild animal reservoirs are one reason we may never be able to eliminate a particular disease from an area. Rabies is a good example of this. Rabies has the highest mortality rate of any virus, nearly 100%. Luckily, rabies is not contagious through airborne means and many wild or feral animals that do contract it die quickly before further transmission is possible. In many states, rabies remains endemic in our wild and feral animal populations but limited in domestic animal and human populations due to education, avoidance and highly effective vaccines.
Pathological relationship outcomes between various disease agents and animal populations are not at all equal. Outcomes often depend on the type of disease agent, ex. virus vs. parasite, the virulence and mortality rate of a disease, and the overall health of the host. Terms like resistance, adaptation, tolerance, immunity, parasitic relationships, symbiotic relationships, subclinical infections/infestations are all thrown around in the literature. They all have different meanings and applications; they are not the same (perhaps fodder for another article).
For example, domestic grazing animals are still exposed to an environment contaminated with intestinal parasites, (yes, the dirt is loaded with a wide variety of parasite eggs and larvae that animals and humans can ingest). Parasites do not typically want to kill their host. Since eliminating them in the environment is an impossibility, we satisfy this threat by strategic deworming programs in cattle, horses, sheep, etc. We know that all these animals will have some parasites, but we control parasitic levels with periodic medications to a level that does not cause clinical disease in our animals. The same is true for flea treatments we use on dogs and cats. We know that our animals will be exposed, so we treat and hopefully prevent these parasites from infesting our pets. In neither of these scenarios, have we considered breeding flea or intestinal parasite resistant animals.
Breeding for certain traits (color, size, speed, strength, temperature adaptation, etc.) are possible in animals over several generations. But parasitic relationships can be some of the most complicated processes in nature. Some parasite lifecycles involve multiple hosts’ interactions and years to complete their lifecycle! Evolutionary time needed for resistance or tolerance to develop in a host-parasite relationship takes hundreds of thousands to millions of years.
Why is Varroa destructor so bad in Apis mellifera? Because in this bee species, Varroa destructor is like fleas combined with rabies. A pervasive parasite with a nearly 100% mortality rate (without prevention and treatment). Incredible!
At the 2019 Apimondia in Montreal, I went to see a lecture by Tom Seely. Perhaps you have heard of him. He is a beloved man that about every beekeeper wishes would be their grandpa. He writes and tells of wonderful stories and experiments involving honey bees in a Winnie the Pooh like woods in upstate New York. He advocates for Darwinian beekeeping, with a plethora of insightful management techniques but one caveat involves killing any colony with high Varroa mite counts with no treatment for Varroa. The idea is that beekeepers would select for colonies that are resistant to Varroa mites without treatments and therefore self-control mites in their area. What Seely also says at the beginning of his talk (I was there) is that this method would not be practical or effective for commercial beekeepers or urban/suburban beekeepers.
So, let us do the math. To use some recent (2021) USDA estimates, there are about 2.7 million honey bee colonies in the U.S., of which 2.2 million are owned by commercial beekeepers (6). That leaves only 0.5 million, a small 18.5% of the total. How many of these colonies do not encounter other bees? Hmmm… Well that is hard-to-find exact data on, but we know all urban and suburban beekeepers would be out, and any “rural” beekeepers that live within a two to three mile radius of other beekeepers or any possible known or unknown feral hives should also be out. Who would be left in this ideal scenario?
As a biologist, I have a lot of respect for Darwin and his theories. (He is really an interesting guy and not really what many have made him out to be… also a topic for another time.) But going “full Darwin” without the benefit of modern medicine and technologies, I would not be writing this article because I would be dead. I would have died of pneumonia in early childhood, and if not then, from a dozen other ailments since. Most of you would not be reading this for similar reasons. Life expectancy in the U.S. in just 1900 was 48 years for women and 46 years for men (8). Again, if I were living back in the “good ole days”… on average, my time would be up. Look at Africa for another example. Human life expectancies in many “developing” African countries have been in the 40’s well into the 2000’s but recent increases to life expectancies in the 60’s are largely due to increased access to medical health services (9).
A bee tree
Australia is now targeting, baiting and poisoning feral bees due to Varroa mite infestation in their efforts to eliminate the disease from the island continent (10). Whether you agree or disagree with this approach, their reasoning is because feral colonies can act as a reservoir to spread the disease with no practical way to test, control, treat or eliminate the parasite from these colonies.
Yes, we did this, we created a huge agricultural landscape on Earth to support eight billion and counting human souls. Domesticated, managed honey bees are not going anywhere. They are vital to the preservation of public health as honey bees are needed in the creation of much of the food we and our animals require to survive. This has been a great accomplishment but not without negative sequelae. Loss of habitat for wild animals and plants and globalization of trade leading to a globalization of diseases exposing naïve populations to originally isolated diseases are our main challenges. We work hard to prevent and remedy as many of these negative sequelae as possible.
Swarm catching
Questions we should all ask ourselves is: Have we increased the quality and quantity of life for us and our animals and how can we improve our current stewardship? But going back 10,000 years to hunter gatherer days and actual wild honey bees is not a realistic possibility or a solution to any modern challenge.
Honey bees attempting to go feral
References
1.“Feral.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/feral. Accessed 22 Nov. 2022.
2.“Human Relationships with Honey Bee date back 9,000 years.” https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/humans-relationship-honeybees-goes-back-neolithic-era Accessed 22 November 2022.
3.Roffet-Salque, M., Regert, M., Evershed, R. et al. Widespread exploitation of the honeybee by early Neolithic farmers. Nature 527, 226–230 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature15757. https://rdcu.be/c0dtC Accessed 22 Nov. 2022.
4.“Sylvatic.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sylvatic. Accessed 22 Nov. 2022.
5.Rax, David. “A Brief History of House Cats.” Smithsonian Magazine. June 30, 2007. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/a-brief-history-of-house-cats-158390681/ Accessed 22 Nov. 22.
6.USDA 2021 Honey report. Released March 18, 2021. https://downloads.usda.library.cornell.edu/usda-esmis/files/hd76s004z/7m01cp956/df65wc389/hony0322.pdf. Accessed 23 Nov 22.
7.“Number of Beehives in Leading Countries Worldwide in 2020.” https://www.statista.com/statistics/755243/number-of-beehives-in-leading-countries-worldwide/. Accessed 22 Nov. 22.
8.“Life Expectancy in the USA 1900-98.” https://u.demog.berkeley.edu/~andrew/1918/figure2.html. Accessed 22 Nov. 22. Also interesting but not referenced US life expectancy stats: https://www.simplyinsurance.com/average-us-life-expectancy-statistics/
9.Africa.com. United Nations Report. “Healthy Life Expectancy grows by 10 years.” https://www.africa.com/healthy-life-expectancy-in-africa-grows-by-nearly-10-years/ Accessed 22 Nov. 22.
10. Honan, Kim, “Feral Honey Bees to Be Poisoned in NSW Varroa Mite Hotspot.” Oct.5, 2022. https://fans2pets.com/feral-honey-bees-to-be-poisoned-in-nsw-varroa-mite-hotspots/ Accessed 22 Nov. 22.
