North Carolina has a variety of state symbols that exemplify the region’s unique resources and economic history. Many of our symbols represent organisms that originated here and found long-lasting value to the rest of the world, such as the Fraser fir tree and the Southern Appalachian brook trout.
There is a state symbol that stands apart from these as being a recently introduced species, however. The state insect of North Carolina, the honey bee, is unfortunately not a Carolina native but rather was brought into this country by European explorers in the 1600s. Even though honey bees possess unique powers of cooperation when compared to other insects, and play important roles in worldwide agriculture, North Carolina is home to hundreds of pollinator species native to the area. Many of these creatures have their own set of tricks up their sleeves, and are able to perform pollination services that exceed those of honey bees, especially on North American native plants and in inclement weather. While it is important to remember the important roles honey bees play in feeding humans today, perhaps it is time to change our state insect to something that truly grew up here. Luckily, there are a large number of locally native pollinators with skills we can easily be proud of.
Beekeeping is one of mankind’s oldest forms of agriculture. Early cultures in Asia, Europe, and the Mediterranean quickly discovered that the honey and wax found in honey bee hives were valuable commodities. It didn’t take long until an industrious bee keeper discovered that they could entice honey bees to live in man made enclosures, and for thousands of years most honey bees were kept in upside-down baskets called skeps. Hives were allowed to grow to a healthy size during the summer, and were then evicted from their homes, the wax and honey inside scraped clean by the beekeeper. These products were incredibly valuable in the ancient world. Honey was used as a medicinal aid, and even to preserve the dead until their eventual burial. It was also used to make mead, the earliest form of fermented drink, which served as a safe beverage when travelers couldn’t be certain of the water quality while on the road. Beeswax was the main component of candles for thousands of years, and the honey bee industry played a large role in illuminating the ancient world. There is no doubt that honey bees drastically helped humans conquer the globe. Reliance on honey and beeswax is a main reason that European explorers brought honey bees with them when they came to America.
Honey and beeswax are still highly sought after, however the true value of honey bees lie in their pollination services. One in three bites of food we take rely on animal pollination, and honey bees are carted into agricultural fields by the millions in order to try and pollinate our crops, contributing billions of dollars of pollination services. North Carolina has hundreds of butterflies, beetles, wasps, flies, and other indigenous creatures that efficiently pollinate the plants around them. In agriculture, bees are the true pollination juggernauts, and we have a number of bee species native to our area including bumble, mason, and sweat bees. Research has found that in many cases our native bees actually outperform honey bees when they pollinate crops like apples, tomatoes, blueberries, and cherries. North American bees, especially bumble, carpenter, and mason bees, are able to fly in cold and inclement weather that honey bees normally deem too risky. This allows them to pick up the slack in pollination in the early spring, when trees like apple, maple, and cherry are normally desperate for visitors. Some of our native bees also grab onto flowers and shake themselves at specific frequencies as they visit. Known as buzz pollination, this helps dislodge pollen, especially in plants with inverted blooms like tomatoes and blueberries. Studies have found that native bee pollination increases production in tomato plants, for example, mostly due to this method. If we are proud of our state pollination power, our native bees have certainly earned the spotlight of being the state insect. Leave honey bees to the 16 other states who also claim them as their own.
Why Do We Need Honey Bees in Agriculture?
If native bees tend to outperform honey bees when it comes to pollination, then why do we use honey bees in agriculture? First off, honey bees are the only bee species that humans have had overwhelming success in wrangling. The modern method of housing honey bees in hives consisting of boxes stacked onto themselves makes them relatively easy to move from location to location. Unlike honey bees, most of our native pollinators prefer to live in wild, untamed areas, and are highly resistant to living in man-made constructions. Most North American bees can only forage a few hundred yards from their nest, and require forage, water, and nesting sites all in the same general area. This becomes a problem in large crop fields, which are too spacious for many of our native pollinators to travel through, much less settle down in. Unfortunately, the trend in modern agriculture is to simply cart honey bees into large monoculture crop fields rather than incorporate flower strips or other methods designed to attract and foster populations of native pollinators. As future agricultural plots are designed to minimize large, unlivable spaces, native pollinators can better work to give farmers all the pollination they need.