public is increasingly aware that pollinators and honey bees are in trouble and people want to help. Hobbyist or “backyarder” and sideliner beekeeping has never been more popular, and veterinarians will be called upon more and more as we educate ourselves and the beekeepers learn our worth.
It is estimated that by 2050 there may be 9.8 billion people on earth and that global agriculture may need to increase by 30–70% in some areas. How will we feed a future population of 10 billion people? How will land and water resources be shared? How will we mitigate the increasing impact of global climate change on agriculture? Veterinarians will play an essential role in solving these issues. Food safety, food security, and public health are part of our jobs as veterinarians.
The honey bee is our top managed pollinator because it is the only bee that forms large colonies that can be transported in hive boxes. North America has the second largest commercial bee industry in the world. Today, millions of hives, the majority of the North American bee herd, are transported thousands of miles by truckloads around the United States and Canada to pollinate our food crops. The commercial beekeeper's life is a hard one – very labor intensive and with the new regulations, the spread of disease, increased fuel and transportation costs, and labor shortages, we are obliged to familiarize ourselves with their trade. Pollination services are a multi‐billion‐dollar industry.
Honey bees get the most “buzz” but actually some native bees are more efficient pollinators for some plants. Yes, honey bees are now considered livestock because we consume their products, but as far as getting pollen from one flower to another, honey bees are only one of a myriad of players. Native bees do not live in hives or colonies but in underground burrows. They come in all sizes and colors, and can be fuzzy, shiny, or metallic. They aren't as tidy, they don't pack pollen in little pouches, and they are messy. Farmers and producers have noted that when native bees are co‐pollinating with the honey bees, production is even better. New management in Integrated Crop Pollination uses a combination of native bees and honey bees with farm practice tools, like no‐till and cover crops, to increase production.
One Health Issue: The Global Epidemic of Antimicrobial Resistance
There is no doubt that antibiotic use improved the health of people and animals over the last 70 years. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is nothing new, it occurs in nature. Resistant genes are carried on plasmids (pieces of DNA) that are transferred between organisms. We now know that bacteria containing resistant genes can be transferred from livestock to humans via food. However, the misuse/overuse of antibiotics has led to the spread of resistant genes in medically important antibiotics and we now have diseases that are resistant to treatment. Multi‐drug resistant bacteria are a threat to global health.
While in much of the world veterinarians have had a decades' long interaction with apiarists, veterinarians in the United States officially joined the honey bee's medical team as a result of the implementation of the 2017 US Food and Drug Administration regulations on the use of medically important antibiotics in livestock. Honey bees were officially defined as food‐producing livestock in those regulations, putting their medical care into the hands of veterinarians. Writing Veterinary Feed Directives and prescriptions, however, should not be our profession's sole offering to honey bee medicine. Our expertise in herd health management will be an asset to the honey bee industry.
Antibiotic resistance has been documented in honey bees and we now know that there can be harmful effects on the honey bee microbiome. There is an increased effort to breed honey bees for hygienic behaviors to develop and enhance natural resistance.
Our Challenge
Just as you don't have to own pigs to be a swine veterinarian, you don't have to be a beekeeper to treat bee colonies. But you do have to know the biology, physiology, and behavior of these magnificent animals in order to forge a Veterinary Client Patient Relationship (VCPR) and feel confident in your handling, diagnosis, and treatment of this species, Apis mellifera, new to our profession.
All the authors in this book recommend experience beyond “book learning” – so join a local bee club, help a beekeeper in the field, or start a few hives of your own.
Learn about the types of beekeepers you may be working with; backyard hobbyists with a few hives, sideliners (whose apiary is a secondary source of income) and commercial beekeepers with many hundreds, or thousands, of hives. Sideliners are nothing new to veterinary medicine as most of our cow‐calf and small ruminant clients have another primary source of income.
As with any other animal we work with, we need to know how to safely handle and manage bees. Will you get stung? Yes, you will. Know your response to bee venom in advance. Know the tools, equipment, and safety precautions you will be taking.
Once you have read the chapters on hive inspections and feel comfortable in a bee suit with insects flying all around you, quietly inspect the bee yard and hives. Observe the macro‐environment for food sources and the activity around the hives. When you are ready to do an internal inspection, look for the different caste members, brood, and food. Get to know normal smells, sounds, and patterns. And don't be frustrated if you can't find the queen – that takes lots of practice!
In the first few chapters, you will learn about honey bees in nature, their arboreal homes, and behavior in the wild. It has been this unique eusocial behavior, division of labor, and adaptations that have allowed them to survive for many millennia. Proceed to the chapters on anatomy, physiology, behavior, colony organization, brood rearing, queen rearing, and swarming.
Bees, just like any other animal, get sick from a variety of diseases – bacterial, viral, fungal, and idiopathic. We provide specific chapters on these varied honey bee pathogens, including Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). This disease syndrome, although not a major cause of bee mortality anymore, brought vital attention to the cause of global bee deaths, along with much needed research funding adding new knowledge on honey bee health and management.
Nutrition is a determining factor in honey bee colony health. The value and stability of an adequate food supply determine the homeostasis of the hive required for colony survival. Morphological changes within the caste members, be it queen development or forager phenotypes, depends on nutrition. We dedicated a large chapter of this text to honey bee nutrition for just these reasons.
Today, the top killer of our honey bees is an introduced pest, the Varroa mite. Many chapters will mention this pest and one is solely devoted to it. It is very difficult to kill an arachnid feeding upon an insect and that brings us to pesticide and pharmaceutical uses. This is an ever‐evolving area of research, looking at the synergistic effects of diseases combined with chemicals in the environment.
As stewards of animal health and participants in One Health, this book is for all veterinarians, veterinary students, technicians, bee research scientists, state/provincial apiarists, and beekeepers. This book is an interdisciplinary collaboration among veterinarians, entomologists, and the beekeeping community. We have forged new relationships to protect honey bees and all pollinators.
For these reasons, there has never been a better or more important time for veterinarians to be involved in honey bee and pollinator health. The honey bee, A. mellifera (and subspecies), may be the most important animal that we veterinarians care for. It would be a different and more difficult world without honey bees and other pollinators. The mutual interdependence of humans, animals, and our environment are exemplified in this One Health challenge.
We end this book with a look to the future, for bee and pollinator research and for the role of veterinarians in this expanding field. Above all, this book intends to teach and amaze you. We should all be humbled by these remarkable animals.
