Tag Archives: Bees

‘Alarming’ Decline in U.S. Bumblebees

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ABC News reports today that researchers have documented a 96 percent decline in the numbers of four previously abundant species of bumblebee in the United States in a study confirming that the agriculturally important bees are being affected worldwide.
Several reports have documented the disappearance of bumblebees in Europe and Asia, but no one had done a large national study in the Americas.
“These are one of the most important pollinators of native plants,” Sydney Cameron of the University of Illinois, Urbana, who led the study, said in a telephone interview to ABC. The report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences called the findings “alarming.”

In recent years, experts have documented a disappearance of bees in what is widely called colony collapse disorder, blamed on many factors including parasites, fungi, stress, pesticides and viruses. But most studies have focused on honeybees.

Bumblebees are also important pollinators, Cameron said, but are far less studied. Bumblebees pollinate tomatoes, blueberries and cranberries, she noted.

As with honeybees, a pathogen is partly involved, but the researchers also found evidence of inbreeding caused by habitat loss.

To read more on colony collapse disorder and for guidelines on how farmers across the U.S. are making their land more bee-friendly, see our Summer 2010 World Ark article “Beauty and the Bees” by Sarah Schmidt.

Photo by Eric Mader, Xerces Society

Finally, Playing with Your Food is Rewarded!

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As Christmas day draws closer, the Foodspotting Holiday Spotathon challenge draws to an end. With only one item left to find, Foodspotting will be donating a heifer, garden basket, pig, flock of chickens, hive of honeybees and (hopefully) a sheep this year.

The Foodspotting team challenged you with the first ever Holiday Spotathon. Find the food items mentioned in each Spotathon category and the team would gift a Heifer gift. The three initial challenges included: milk products, vegetables and a pig (suggested for the ‘meatitarians’). The response was so quick and overwhelming the challenges were completed in a matter of days.
The Foodspotting team created three additional Spotathons, and each of these were more difficult to find than the previous. Egg dishes, fruits and cheeses have proved to be challenge for those playing along.
“The Foodspotting community is pulling together and giving back to a great cause – one that especially hits home to all of us who are all super lucky to eat as well as we do daily. We’re absolutely blown away by how receptive our community has been to this campaign. It’s entirely relying on what our users do best – going out and taking photos of foods, and this collaborative scavenger hunt is such a great interactive experience that we’re getting some really positive feedback from everyone about it,” said Fiona Tang, Community Lead at Foodspotting.

We are extremely grateful that Foodspotting selected us as their non-profit of choice for this year’s challenge and would like to thank everyone who participated in finding all of the items on the various lists.

Honey, They’re on to Something

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Army scientists and bee experts who teamed up to figure out why so many bees are mysteriously dying announced a big breakthrough this week. They believe a fungus and virus working together may be responsible for colony collapse disorder, which is a major threat to both bees and the crops that rely on them for pollination.

According to a New York Times story, the breakthrough came when the Army used a software system designed to help identify threatening biological agents to try to figure out what’s killing so many bees. The team of Army and academic researchers were able to show that the virus-fungus combo was found in every collapsed colony they studied.

Their results aren’t the final word, though. The scientists are still trying to figure out if the fungus or the virus gets there first and what can be done to prevent infections in the future. But it’s a big step for farmers and eaters around the world who need bees to keep our fruits and vegetables growing.

Learn more about colony collapse disorder in Heifer’s World Ark magazine.

A Savior for Bees

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The list of 2010 MacArthur Award winners is out, and it includes Marla Spivak, an entomologist who first fell in love with bees as a teen. She plans to use the $500,000 prize to help protect her beloved bees from pesticides, parasites and disease. Her work is especially important as scientists all over the world scramble to save these hugely important pollinators from the mysterious colony collapse disorder that’s threatening crops everywhere.

A Thankful Community

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Bolvina and German at their kitchen table with the bounty of the earth produced with Heifer’s help. Honey, pollen, bees wax products, potatoes, and corn – all natural and delicious.


by Steve Stirling

Peru Day 5 – Pomacanchi district San Juan Community Project

This project is located in a very remote area about 4.5 hours drive from Cusco City. The drive to the project was very scenic but very bumpy as we traveled up a steep mountain on a narrow dirt road. San Juan is nestled in a valley surrounded by huge rock cliffs and mountains, and this community just received electricity in April of this year.

We visited with a number of families in the community. I had the privilege of being invited into the home of German Supple and his wife Balvina, who have one 7-year-old girl: Ruth Aracely Supple. Heifer International identified Balvina as a leader and invited her to a two-day leader’s training at Heifer Cusco City. She was first hesitant in becoming a leader — she thought leaders were lazy since they didn’t do as much physical work as the workers.

Balvina has been transformed into an effective and warm leader. She invites people into her home to show them the healthy wood stove built from bricks they make from clay and straw. These stoves are much healthier — smoke is carried outside the kitchen through a smoke stack — and burn wood more efficiently. I had a very satisfying lunch of seven different varieties of potatoes and dried corn nuggets. Heifer also introduced Balvina to agroecology; she now raises bees to produce honey and pollen for health and grows many vegetables such as carrots, beets, cauliflower and numerous varieties of potatoes.

The Supple family was blessed this day because they were chosen by lottery to receive a young heifer as part of the Pass On the Gift (POG) ceremony. Their dream is for their daughter Ruth to go to college to become a professional ag person to help the community become even healthier. When I asked Ruth what her dream is, she said she wants to become a nurse — a nice nurse so she can help children when they get sick.

We participated in an exciting POG – the third one for this community. There were about a dozen sheep, five heifers and hundreds of guinea pigs. While it may sound strange to westerners for anybody to dine on guinea pigs, these cute animals provide a good source of income. A 2-kilogram guinea pig sells for about $7, which represents a significant income when the monthly income for a family of five is $150.

This community is thankful to Heifer and the donors who make our work possible. “Heifer was the first [NGO] to help our community, and Heifer taught us passing on the gift of livestock and learning,” Balvina told me with pride. “We now share what we have to help everyone in the community.”

For my first trip to Peru I experienced hope and strong relationships fostered by Alfredo, his amazing staff, our partners and project participants who work very hard in a most difficult living environment to not only survive but to create a better future for their children. I thank God for our generous donors who invest in the lives of others to end hunger, poverty and care for the earth.

Steve Stirling, Heifer’s executive VP of Marketing and Resource Development, is part of a contingent of Heifer staff who recently visited Peru. You can read this group’s previous posts here.

Balvina and daughter Ruth next to a healthy clay stove built with Heifer’s help and training
Jim DeVries, Heifer’s executive VP of International Programs, at a Pass On the Gift ceremony in San Juan Peru.

Crazy About Bees

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by Christian DeVries

Santiago Morales-Mata is crazy about bees. Twenty-six years ago he received his first hive but he knew nothing bees, but after years of trial and error he got better.

In 2002 he joined a Heifer bee project. He still had very limited knowledge, so the trainings (along with the 10 hives) he received were important for him to take his beekeeping to the next level. Santiago learned everything he could, from how to start a new hive all the way through to harvesting honey more efficiently. “I received training which has been very important,” he said.

All of this training helped him increase his income from roughly $81 per month to $271. Santiago was able to add more cows to his herd and, in addition to beekeeper, he is a dairy farmer. When we visited his farm, it was buzzing with activity. He has 42 hives, 20 chickens and more than 40 cows. “Everything that we have, in terms of our land, animals, cows, is coming from bees,” he said.

Santiago is happy that this project has been so successful, and he believes that by passing on the gift, Heifer’s projects will reach many additional families. As I have seen firsthand on this trip there are many poor families in Honduras anxious for Heifer’s assistance.

Christian DeVries interviewed project participants in Honduras on behalf of Heifer International. This is the final installment in a series of posts he sends from the field. You can read his earlier posts here.

The Buzz on Bees

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Where have all the bees gone? It’s been a hot news topic for the last few years–our honeybees and other natural pollinators are disappearing en masse. While scientists struggle to understand the phenomenon, some small farmers are trying to alleviate the problem by planting natural buffer areas and strips of wildflowers to attract pollinators. According to a feature in World Ark magazine, by Sarah Schimdt:
“The flowers host several species of bumblebee, orchard mason bees, and sweat bees, as well as monarch and swallowtail butterflies, all of which are, well, busy as bees, as they fly from blossom to blossom doing what they’re uniquely qualified for—pollinating food crops.

“Four years after scientists first noticed that a mysterious insect plague known as colony collapse disorder was wiping out honeybees around the globe, the exact cause has yet to be determined. In the meantime, many small and midsize farms aren’t waiting to hear the solution to the whodunit. Instead they’re enlisting more bees to pollinate their crops by luring them in with food, water and custom-made habitat, thanks in part to incentives in the latest U.S. farm bill. Though just a handful of farms have begun to put such methods to the test, their success could be an important component to averting a pollination crisis—and increasing food security worldwide.”

Read the rest at World Ark online.

A Shout Out to Senegal

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David Campbell sets up shop in Senegal.


My little sister works in D.C. for Wangari Maathai’s Green Belt Movement, and she and I share a lot of info on new developments in development work. When I told her I’m shipping out for Senegal in a couple of weeks to collect stories for World Ark about Heifer’s new projects there, she sent me a link to Staying Grounded on the Run. It’s a fantastic blog by her friend David Campell, a Peace Corps volunteer entering his second year in Senegal’s hot and dusty Kedougou region.

His blog is a fun mix of the work he’s doing with communities there and the adventures he’s having along the way. Campbell stays crazy busy with projects that include a nut shelling operation and organizing against a mining company that’s endangering the health of local children.

In his free time, Campbell has so far survived an ultra-marathon bike trek through the thorny brush and a terrifying ambush by killer bees. In his latest posts, he shares stories and pictures about building his own thatched hut.

Campbell invites readers into his blog with this line: “I love to laugh, so come laugh with me in my hut!” How can you resist?

Check this site in a couple weeks to read about my trip to Senegal.