Striving to achieve our mission of health and well-being for all, we can find inspiration in unexpected places. As bee colonies collapse across the country, some flourish because beekeepers manage their hives with balance in mind. There is a valuable lesson here for the way we grow food for people.

by Joe Brewer, Rockridge Institute, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.

What do bee colonies and human communities have in common? They are both collections of living creatures with the common purpose of flourishing. I don’t mean flourishing in the sense that their numbers grow as large as possible. This leads to conflict and competition over scarce resources – not exactly the positive outcome implied by the term. Instead, I take flourishing to mean that individual members of these communities have everything they need to be healthy and content – in whatever ways they each find happiness.

So what happens if bee colonies have been collapsing like wet tacos all over the countryside? There may be a lesson we humans can learn about our own well-being.

Bee Collapse as a Proxy for Human Food Security

In her article, What the Bee Said, Tracy Frisch (published in the Valley Table magazine – sorry, there is not an online version of the article) explored the mysterious phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder, which she described as follows:

Most or all adult bees desert their colony, leaving behind the young, as well as stored honey and pollen. Inexplicably, neither common pests (such as the wax moth and hive beetle) nor other bee colonies immediately rob the abandoned hive." - Valley Table

Theories abound as to the cause of this disorder, which has threatened the livelihood of flowering plants across North America and Western Europe. An overview of contenders has been compiled here on Celsias by Craig Mackintosh.

Frisch presents an interesting view bearing a frightening resemblance to our agricultural system. She interviewed a local beekeeper, Chris Harp of New Paltz, NY, who described in detail how profit-seeking has compromised the health of commercial beehives. What do bees need to flourish? And how have recent practices been detrimental? For starters, there is diversity:

Bees benefit from a rich habitat with a good variety of flowering trees and weeds within their two-mile flying range. Many plants commonly labeled as weeds possess important healing properties and are rich in nutrients. But in the interest of maximizing production—and crop pollination—mainstream agriculture long ago developed an aversion to such diversity.

Many bee handlers take too much honey out of the hive, supplementing the bees' diet with a cheap alternative:

Overzealous honey robbing has given rise to the practice of feeding bees sugar syrup or high-fructose corn syrup over the long winter and in cross-country transit for pollination services. From a bee's standpoint, these honey substitutes are inferior foodstuffs lacking the complex enzymes and minerals present in raw honey.

Harp’s description of bee handling practices suggests that the immediate cause of collapse may be a consequence of deeper imbalances that made the bees vulnerable in the first place. Other beekeepers surmise the same root cause – as noted in this Alternet article by Susan Kuchinskas. Which deep imbalances am I referring to? The list should be familiar to healthy food and farm advocates:

• The absence of diverse crops
• Insufficient nutrition in the food supply
• Excessive consumption of high-fructose corn syrup
• Inadequate sources of protein
• Forced confinement of livestock in unnatural dwellings

An artificial production system emerged when pollination "services" and honey became profitable commodities. This is similar to the industrialized agricultural system we use to feed people. We grow crops and raise livestock in unnatural dwellings (monocultures for plants and holding pens for animals). Our food supply is making people sick – obesity, diabetes, the cancer epidemic, and so on. The most common ingredient in the grocery store is high-fructose corn syrup. The health of our communities, like the bee colonies, has been deeply compromised.

Unlike insects, we have the ability to recognize patterns and plan for the future. Our colonies don’t need to collapse before we see that there is still time to change the course we’re on.

Healthy Foods: A Progressive Strategic Initiative

We are in the midst of a food crisis. Luckily, there is a lot we can do to avert disaster. In the book Thinking Points: Communicating Our American Values and Vision, George Lakoff and the Rockridge Institute present the Healthy Foods Initiative as a broad vision for progressive change. Here's how it is introduced (Ch. 7):

Let's make a compact with America's farmers, ranchers, fishermen, and all others who feed us from nature’s bounty. In exchange for growing healthy food for our communities and protecting the sanctity of our earth and our commons for future generations, we will invest in sustainable farming. This can be done on a local and regional level (as it has initially grown), on a state level, or on a national level. - Thinking Points: Communicating Our American Values and Vision

What does it look like? Some things we can do include:

• Provide tax credits for farmers who reduce their use of pesticides and herbicides (This would get rid of the cancer-causing chemicals in our food.)
• Structure our tax policy to promote family farm ownership, rather than absentee and corporate ownership
• Subsidize the creation of land trusts for farmers and ranchers who sustainably manage the land
• Invest in community gardens to provide a space for growing food in urban areas
• Shift the purpose of loans and subsidies to guarantee a price for food grown sustainably

Human communities can flourish, but only if we promote the common good. This sounds like the wisdom of the beekeeper. Chris Harp helps run an educational organization called Honeybee Lives. Its homepage captures the progressive vision beautifully:

We can learn many things, thru a love and respect for nature. Honeybees are amazing, gentle creatures. They live in colonies which function as a single organism, each Honeybee working for the good of the whole. They nurture the beauty and fecundity of the earth with their gift of pollination, and through that pollination mankind gains strength, and nature diversity. - Honeybee Lives

Healthy food is a common good for all. We can nurture the beauty of the earth and feed our children at the same time. Really, in the long run, we need to do both.

Further Reading:

• Colony Collapse Disorder - a Moment for Reflection
• Organic Bees Surviving Colony Collapse Disorder
• 2007 Farm Bill - a Chance to Change the World