Whilst the domesticated, managed Apis Mellifera honey bees we are familiar with are important for pollinating crops and producing honey, their role is just a part of a far greater contribution played by the 20,000 species of wild, free-living bees, which include Apis Mellifera honey bee species and sub-species. Honey bees, both domesticated and ‘wild’ free-living species, pollinate more than 80% of flowering plants, increasing the quantity and quality of our food supply and helping to create and maintain habitats and ecosystems that we humans and many other animals rely on for food and shelter.
Humans have intentionally and intensely domesticated and managed honey bees for nearly 11,000 years. Initially, they were mainly used for honey, beeswax, and pollen, and more recently for pollinating food crops. However, the other wild, free-living honey bee species and sub-species are just as crucial for pollination, if not more important.
Today, honey bees exist at the frontier of wild and domesticated, but for millions of years, all honey bee species lived freely, independently from humans, and evolved in their natural circumstances to excel at surviving and reproducing wherever they lived, in Europe, Asia, or Africa. However, that delicate synergy between honey bees and their environments was eroded in the last two centuries. Wild, free-flying honey bee colonies declined dramatically due to the stresses they had to face when forests were destroyed to create farming land, depriving them of the habitats they relied on for food and shelter and for remaining healthy. Another explanation is that intensified beekeeping methodology didn’t help either. For example, the native northwestern European black honey bee (Apis Mellifera Mellifera) sub-species in eight regions lost its identity by gene flow when non-native sub-species of honey bees were introduced and propagated by beekeepers and (during swarming) transferred their pathogens to wild colonies.
Modern beekeeping interventions remain questionable. They include frequent medications for pest and disease control, the use of plastic ‘hives’, winter feeding, moving colonies to geographical locations to which they are not well adapted and breeding queen bees to create a species less vulnerable to disease, and the gradual transfer by swarming of not-so-healthy managed honey bees’ less resilient genes into the more resilient gene pool of free-living wild honey bee species.
Studying free-flying honey bee behaviour is fundamental to conserving wild honey bee species. In the last decades, Professor Tom Seeley’s study of the lives of wild free-living (Apis Mellifera L.)honey bees in the Ithaca Forest (New York) has been critical to our understanding of their ecology and behaviour. But, although the Apis Mellifera honey bee species is an essential member of northern Europe´s native insect species with several subspecies, the biology and ecology of wild colonies of honey bees in Europe have rarely been systematically studied, and information is limited on the range of options available for research which could lead to conservation.
Wild, free-flying honey bee colonies have declined dramatically in the last two centuries, raising alarm about threats to crop pollination and food security, but here’s the beginning of hopeful news. Recent investigations into the genetic composition of eight northwest European populations of the original native black honeybee reveal that A. M. Mellifera populations still exist in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, England, Scotland and Ireland but are threatened by gene flow from commercially managed honey bees.
The Journal of Insect Conservation reports that most beekeepers in Sweden (96%) confirm the past presence of free-living colonies of wild Apis Mellifera Mellifera (A.M. Mellifera) honey bees in the 19th and early 20th century. In the early-mid 1800s, southern Sweden still had vast areas of forest and woodland with high densities of hollow oaks, making ideal nesting places for free-living honey bees. Then, in the late 1800s, the intensification of the forest industry introduced timber and pulpwood production and old-growth forests with hollow trees – in which free-living bee colonies nested – were destroyed as commercial agriculture intensified. The beekeeper interviews provide evidence and scientific underpinning for restoring native forests, which could facilitate populations “of free-living’ honey bees.
What can we do to bring back free-flying wild honey bees? In Denmark, the last remaining native Danish population is A. M. Mellifera, the only one of the eight investigated populations protected by law. In Germany, Torben Schiffer’s ‘The Beekeeping Revolution’ citizen science project has identified 89 naturally occupied nests. The project collects reports from citizens who have discovered and are observing free-living honey bee colonies – what is most interesting about these free-living bee colonies is that they do not share the symptomatic diseases of modern beekeeping (e.g. Varroa, Nosema). This long-term monitoring project aims to have the honey bee legally recognised and protected as a wild animal in Germany.
Given the presence of tree hollows suitable for nesting in terms of volume, height above ground and thermal properties, the A. M. Mellifera subspecies is adapted to northwestern Europe’s short summers and cold winters as it co-evolved with local flora and fauna. Further adaptations, such as winter hardiness, good flight strength in cold and windy conditions, high levels of pollen collection, and low honey consumption in winter, suggest why A. M. Mellifera is ecologically important in the northwestern European climate. There is a convincing argument for exposure to natural selection as it could lead to the return of A.M.Mellifera as a fully wild sub-species, allowing for a natural lifestyle that could increase resilience and reinstate characteristics otherwise lost in Apis Mellifera.
Free-living honey bee colonies should be protected by law. The evidence of populations of free-living colonies of A. M. Mellifera in northwestern Europe clearly calls for a fresh look at their conservation status and management.
What can you do? If you see a wild honey bee nest in a tree hollow, please contact the Natural Beekeeping Trust.
