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Text: Do bees still need our help? Around the world, bee populations are declining. Conservation efforts have increased to protect one of our more popular pollinators: the honey bee. Image: Illustration of a honey bee feeding on a mānuka flower.

Text: Over three-quarters of the world’s food crops are dependent on pollinators, and bees are some of the most efficient. The honey bee was introduced to Aotearoa to produce honey and pollinate plants. Image: Illustration of a sailing ship travelling from England to New Zealand.

Text: But bee populations are shrinking because of the loss of flowering habitat, increased pesticide use, new diseases, and the climate crisis. In New Zealand, wild honey bee colonies are rare. Since honey bee colony records began in 2015, loss rates have increased each year. In the year 2000, Varroa mite arrived in Aotearoa and decimated many bee colonies. Image: Two varroa mites. Graph: More than one in ten of New Zealand’s honey bee colonies didn’t make it through the 2020 winter. Bar graph displays increasing Colony Loss Rate from 8% in 2015 to 11% in 2020.

Text: Around the world, conservation efforts have increased to protect specific bee species and avoid future food security problems. Honey bee populations in New Zealand are therefore increasing. High prices for mānuka honey have caused a growth in Aotearoa managed beehives. Image: Three mānuka flowers. Graph: Despite increasing proportions of colony losses each winter, the number of registered bee hives increased 50% between 2015 and 2020. The bar graph displays the number of registered bee hives from 2015 to 2020. In 2015, there were 575,000 registered bee hives. This increased to 918,000 in 2019 before dropping slightly to 869,000 in 2020.

Text: But honey bees are not the only pollinators, and in focusing conservation efforts on them, we may have created another problem: Honey bees may be threatening New Zealand’s native bees. Image: Illustration of a native bee hovering near a harakeke flax flower.

Text: As a species, honey bees are effectively livestock, and the world’s least threatened bee. Although honey bees are important for agriculture, they can also destabilize ecosystems by competing with native bees—many of which are at risk. Native bees don’t live in hives or produce honey but have evolved and adapted over millions of years to pollinate New Zealand's unique plants. Aotearoa has 28 species of native bees. Many of these look like small black flies. New Zealand’s native bee species range in size from 4 to 12 mm long. They can be very hairy or completely hairless. Images: Native bee sitting in the middle of a daisy. Two more native bees showing different sizes and amounts of hair.

Text: All bees feed on the nectar and pollen of flowering plants but food availability can vary year-on-year, depending on climate. Millions of honey bees added to an area in years where food is limited could impact native bees. A study found tāwari and kāmahi plants produced double the number of flowers (and sugar per flower) during the summer of 2016, compared to the warmer summer of 2017. Image: Illustrations of Tāwari and Kāmahi flowers.

Text: We need to better understand the limitations of our native flowering plants and the consequence of interactions between honey bees and native bees. Image: Illustration of a flying honey bee and native bee by pohutukawa flowers.

Text: Honey bees are vital to improve crop yield but they are not a replacement for native pollinators. As the long-term effects of honey bees in native forest are not well understood, flower availability should be considered when making decisions about honey bee hives on conservation land. Native bees are some of the most effective pollinators of Aotearoa native plants, including mānuka, kānuka and pohutukawa. What we really need is a hive management system as dynamic as the flowers it relies on.” - Rachel Nepia, University of Waikato. Bees do need our help - but not just honey bees. Image: Illustration of honey bee feeding on mānuka flowers surrounded by two flying native bees.

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