Climate change is killing off India’s bees

|
A huge wild bee hive in Indian forest. Photo: Karunakar Rayker via Flickr (CC BY).
A huge wild bee hive in Indian forest. Photo: Karunakar Rayker via Flickr (CC BY).
A warming climate and the loss of natural areas are driving Indian bee colonies to the brink, writes Premila Krishnan. Losing this cousin of our European honeybee could be disastrous, as rural communities depend on their honey for food and income, and the bees perform vital pollination services.
During my teens, our men would stick with one huge tree and draw honey for an entire week. Now our sons have to climb 10 trees to get a few litres of honey. We find only very few tall trees in the forests, and several varieties of flowers have disappeared

A lethal combination of climate change and human interference is helping to wipe out colonies of the giant honeybees on which many plants and trees in India depend for their survival.

The Giant rock bee (Apis dorsata) is in sharp decline in one of its strongholds in the Nilgiris mountain range in southern India.

The Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, the first in India, has always been known for its giant bees, which form honeycombs on cliff tops and in tree canopies.

The bees, which grow up to 2cm in length, are migratory and frequently move to a new site to take advantage of better foraging. In places where flowering plants were abundant, there were often more than a dozen large bees' nests, almost touching each other, in some of the larger trees.

Rainfall patterns are removing the food source

Separate colonies of thousands of bees lived in harmony, producing large quantities of honey from the vast array of plants. But a change in rainfall patterns is now causing droughts that are wiping out some tree and flower species.

This, combined with the tourism that is prompting development in once natural areas, has led to a collapse in the numbers of bees, which scientists say help to pollinate 18% of 86 tree species and 22% of the shrubs in Nilgiris.

Local tribesmen depend on the bees for much of their nourishment, and 60-year-old Madhan Bomman, of the Kattunaicken tribe, is one of those campaigning to save the bees from the effects of CCD.

He says: "My community is completely dependent on honey bees. Teenage boys in our community will be trained in climbing trees and fetching honey from as young as 15 years. Fetching honey has been our occupation for several decades. Honey is also an important food in our menu for our family festivals."

Bomman recalls how numerous the bees once were. "During my teens, our men would stick with one huge tree and draw honey for an entire week. Honey from one tree would be enough for 50 families. Now our sons have to climb 10 trees to get a few litres of honey. We find only very few tall trees in the forests, and several varieties of flowers have disappeared."

He says tourism is also causing forest land to be lost and become covered in concrete. Nilgiris is a major tourist hub, receiving 2.5 million tourists every year. To cater for them, hundreds of legal and illegal structures have been built there, affecting land use patterns in the mountains.

Water shortages

Dr S Manivanan, a senior scientist at the Central Soil and Water Conservation Research & Training Institute, a government body, says the government should stop approving construction on steep slopes.

During my teens, our men would stick with one huge tree and draw honey for an entire week. Now our sons have to climb 10 trees to get a few litres of honey. We find only very few tall trees in the forests, and several varieties of flowers have disappeared

"It is visible that climate change has affected agriculture and the food chain in Nilgiris", he says. "The yield of vegetables and fruits is very low because of inadequate moisture content in the soil. Changes such as heavy rainfall in unseasonable months and severe water shortages at regular intervals indicate climate change."

To add to the other problems, huge numbers of bees are also falling victim to the temptations of plastic cups. A recent research paper says dregs left behind in the disposable cups attract honey bees on a large scale.

"Instead of visiting the natural flowers, the bees are attracted more by the sugary rich residue in the cups and use it as an alternative food resource", says the author of the paper, Sambandam Sandilyan, assistant professor in the Department of Zoology and Wildlife Biology at AVC College, Mayiladuthurai, Tamil Nadu.

He says the cups are death traps for the bees, which are trapped in the sticky liquid and cannot fly out to safety. During his research, he recorded the death of nearly 170 bees a day at a single beverage shop.

 


 

Pramila Krishnan is special correspondent for the News 7 Tamil TV channel in Chennai, India, and a writer for Climate News Network.

This article was originally published by Climate News Network.

More from this author