Photographer: David Eisenberg
OUR PURPOSE
Project Eleven Hundred is organized to ensure that native plants and the pollen and nectar they produce are available to sustain the full diversity of native bee species on national public lands; to provide scientific and management information to public land managers on native bees and the biological communities they depend upon; and publicly advocate for native bees.
The honey bee (Apis mellifera) is an import from Europe. The placement of honey bee hives on public lands can bring millions of these non-native bees into the territories of native bees. The honey bees outcompete the native bees for pollen and nectar, and transmit diseases to the native bees. Rare or uncommon plants may have difficulty reproducing if they are pollinated by a specialized native bee that has been reduced or eliminated by the presence of honey bees. Honey bee apiaries (groups of hives) should not be permitted on public lands.
.jpg)
Photographer: Eric Bowes
OUR BEGINNING
The work of Project Eleven Hundred began in 2018 when a retired bee biologist (Vince Tepedino) contacted Mary O’Brien, then Utah Forests Program Director for Grand Canyon Trust. He was alarmed that the nation’s largest honey bee company (Adee Honey Farms, headquartered in South Dakota) had requested a US Forest Service permit to park 4,900 honey bee hives for several months on the Manti-La Sal National Forest in central Utah. Mary’s masters and doctorate are in pollination biology. She understood how devastating the Adee Honey apiaries would be to native bees, and began working with the Center for Biological Diversity to prevent the issuance of that permit.
​
In 2020, Project Eleven Hundred was established as a nonprofit organization to focus on ending the permitting of apiaries on national public lands; and to ensure that native flowers, pollen, nectar, and habitats are available on these lands to support the lands’ full diversity of native bees.
NEWS + NOTES ON NATIVE BEES
.jpg)
“Sola”: Alfalfa leafcutter bee (Megachile rotundata) at an alfalfa flower. Photo: Wikipedia.
Gregaria and Sola: Two Ways to Collect Pollen
The essence of a critically important study
by Vince Tepedino
One particular field-based study of honey bee apiary impacts on native bees stands out for its stark message: honey bee colonies remove vast amounts of pollen needed by native bees to provide for new bees. Pollen is a limited resource. Here’s an analogy and summary of the study by Vince Tepedino, one of the study’s co-authors:
Picture this: the local SpendMuch SuperMarket is having a sale on meat (protein). Into the market sails Gregaria and Sola, two ladies in search of food. Gregaria just happened to discover the Market, which is outside of her normal neighborhood, on one of her frequent forays for bargains; Sola is simply shopping locally as she usually does. They each find the meat counter and make purchases. Gregaria is exactly that, a gregarious lady with many business, church and club friends and acquaintances. She is desirous to communicate this great sale to her many friends and rushes home to do so. As soon as she arrives, she immediately contacts as many friends as possible, tells them where the Market is located, and encourages them to take advantage of this great buying opportunity. Sola, in contrast, is not a social woman, and is far more independent. She has few, if any, friends and, by herself, tends only to her close family. Result: Gregaria’s friends, tipped to this great sale, flock to the market and buy up much, if not all, of the meat on sale. Sola, when she returns to the market, is hard put to find any meat remaining and must look elsewhere for sustenance for her prospective children.
This scenario is analogous to that which occurs when social honey bees and native solitary bees (and over 90% of native bees are solitary) compete for pollen and nectar from flowers on our national forests and rangelands. Now substitute honey bees for Gregaria, solitary bees for Sola, and our publicly held lands for the SuperMarket. As did Gregaria, as soon as foragers from a honeybee colony discover a flower patch with a rich supply of the pollen and nectar that they require for themselves and their hive matés, they rush back to the hive as bearers of the good news to “inform” other hive mates. Returning foragers also hand off their booty, the pollen and nectar they have collected, to other workers confined to the hive, which use it to feed young developing bees. In contrast, solitary female bees, like Sola, have no hive mates to inform, nor do they find other nestmate workers awaiting them at nest-door to accept the pollen and nectar they have collected: solitary females must rear brood and tend to nest construction and upkeep by themselves and so have less time available to forage and take advantage of rich pollen and nectar availability. Advantage, and it’s a large one, honeybees.
Bee biologists have actually calculated the amount of pollen, the primary protein source for bees of all kinds, and nectar, that are removed from the environment by a typical honeybee colony (or hive). This estimate can then be converted into solitary bee equivalents to arrive at the effect of honeybee apiaries (collections of hives) on native bees. On each trip each honeybee will carry an average of 30 mg pollen and nectar. The amount of pollen and nectar needed to rear an average size solitary bee is 90 mg, or the equivalent of 3 honey bee foraging trips.
​
The numerous foragers of a typical honey bee hive will complete about 108,000 pollen and nectar collecting trips/month. A straightforward calculation then shows that each honey bee hive removes sufficient floral resources each month to rear over 36,000 native solitary bees. But a honey bee apiary on public lands typically contains between 40 and 96 hives. Thus a single honey bee apiary on public lands is removing the resources that might be used to rear between one and a half and three and a half million native solitary bees. Each month. And a permit may be for several apiaries! At best, this result is one that is most concerning, at worst it is likely devastating to native bees and the native plants they service.
​
Cane, J.H. and Tepedino, V.J. (2017) Gauging the Effect of Honey Bee Pollen Collection on Native Bee Communities. Conservation Letters, 10, 205-210 https://tinyurl.com/4pwmtuv8