Busy Bee courtesy of Natalie Dee

While the causes of the disappearance of North American honey bees, known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), are still unclear, the personal care company Burt’s Bees is not waiting around to find out what happens. Despite their close to a billion dollar acquisition by Clorox recently, Burt’s has not forgotten their roots. Rather than staying busy counting their dollars, they are putting their money where their money source is and partnering with the Pollinator Partnership to raise awareness about CCD.

The North American Pollinator Protection Campaign (NAPPC), which includes PSAs featuring Burt, looks to raise consumer awareness about the importance of bees as pollinators of 30% of the food supply. They also encourage consumers to plant bee friendly flowers, with seeds that they provide for free, and to buy local, organic produce since it is considered highly possible that herbicides and pesticides are contributors to CCD. According to Mariah Kult, one of the people at Burt’s Bees that first brought the CCD issue to Burt’s attention, they call this “creating bee friendly environments.” Burt, a former bee keeper immediately became interested in the issue and realized that people needed to become more educated about the important role that bees play in our agriculture and food supply.

 

According to Laurie Adams, Executive Director of the Pollinator Partnership, the focal point of the campaign is promoting honey bee health in general. Universities are investing resources in finding out the causes and remedy for CCD. In the meantime, there are easy actions consumers, corporations, governments and farmers can take to improve honey bee health and create bee friendly habitats.

• Nutrition – planting flowers that are bee friendly
• Foraging Opportunities – providing good, clean fields and wild flowers for bees, areas which have been on the decline in recent years
• Following best management practices
• Help with monitoring honey bee health - Look more closely at pollination data rather than state by state honey production
• Make sure that the breeding stock is healthy and diverse

The campaign brings together a loose collaboration of scientists, federal agencies, private industry and NGOs, all coming to the table to talk about land and management issues and all with a role to play in honey bee health. For example, Waste Management has committed recently to creating pollinator friendly landfills after meeting with Ms. Adams in Baltimore.

Burt’s Bees is also giving money to research through the Honey Bee Health Improvement Project to help determine the cause of CCD. Recent research is looking closely at Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus, named for the Israeli scientist that discovered it, as a possible causal factor, while ruling out other possibilities such as cell phone tower radiation which they say is inconsistent with the isolated nature of CCD. The Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus has been found in most of the dead adult honey bees, but it is still unclear if it is the cause or effect of CCD. Burt’s Bees is taking the position that a lot more research needs to happen to get to understanding the cause and developing solutions. What is clear is that this is yet another ecological system that is breaking down and one that plays an important role in the ecosystem and in agriculture. They hope that the research that they are funding, which is focusing on how bees are taking care of hives and breeding, will lead to a preventative approach.

According to the Pollinator Partnership, there were at least 3 major instances of bee die-off prior to the one that began last fall. And they point out that bee keepers have been struggling with the Varroa Destructor Mite for the last 20 years. However bee keepers started discussing an unusually high level of bee die off on line about a year ago. While it is very normal for bee keepers to lose 10 – 30% of a hive each year, CCD is beyond normal with a pronounced increase in the die off and some seeing as much as an 80% die off. In addition, the abandoned hives are not being invaded by wax moths and other invasive species that would normally come into the empty hives, giving another indication that something is terribly wrong. While scientists are still trying to figure it out, the sense is that it may be a complex series of causes with additional links to climate change. And, not only are the honey bees affected, but also bumble bees. For example, the Franklin bumble bee, which was quite common on the west coast, has not been seen for 3 years.

Burt’s Bees has bought ad time through Cinemedia to run their PSAs in coordination with Bee Movie, an animated film featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Renée Zellweger about what happens when humans and bees stop working together, perhaps a metaphor for CCD. While the campaign will run beyond Bee Movie, they are hoping that the cause can be isolated and the problem solved quickly. If not, the cost to bee keepers will become too high and we may lose this important pollination source. Burt’s Bees hopes to contribute by funding scientists that are focused on CCD and making sure that public awareness leads to government involvement in resolving it.

While the researchers do their work, the campaign hopes to inspire healthy changes in consumer behavior. Planting seeds is a small start, but as Mariah told me, the hope is that it leads to next step and the next phase of helping to take care of the environment. As with so much about environmental stewardship these days, it’s not just about preserving nature. With a third of our food supply at risk, and a whole lot more, it is really about saving ourselves.