How Are the Bees?
Chelsea Cook grew to love the low hum of the honeybees she studied as a graduate student in Boulder, Colorado. Their characteristic buzz, she learned, was audible cooperation, the result of worker bees fanning their wings at the colony’s entrance to circulate the air and cool the hive. Cook often watched as the insects responded quickly to minute adjustments in temperature: When a cloud drifted over the sun, the fanners disappeared, and when it emerged again, they promptly took up their places.
Fascinated by how strictly the insects were managing their environment, Cook conducted an experiment. “I found an old hot plate and a pickle jar, created mesh cages, put a bee inside, and heated them up,” she says. Previous research had established that honeybees regularly fan to control temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide. But over and over, the bee on Cook’s hot plate sat still. Confused, she put two bees together. “Sure enough,” with a companion, “they fanned.” Honeybees, she found, use social information—paying attention to each other—to respond to environmental changes.1
As global temperatures rise, understanding how bees will respond is becoming increasingly important. Back in 2006, beekeepers in Pennsylvania were mystified when their previously healthy hives suddenly emptied, a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder. Beekeepers across the country soon saw similar disappearances: There were no dead bodies inside the barren hives to suggest starvation, and neighboring bees, who often rob hives, seemed to avoid the unprotected honey.
It’s a mystery that’s never been fully solved. But while reports of colony collapse disorder have waned over the last decade, the fate of bees of the United States’ honeybees have died every year. While intensive management has been able to keep honeybee populations roughly stable, that’s much “higher than what beekeepers consider acceptable.” Nor are the 4,000 native bee species in North America doing any better: Nearly of them is at increasing risk of extinction.
