THE PLIGHT OF THE HUMBLE BEE

Our way of life depends upon bees, but these insects are under threat. Samantha Alger is an environmental scientist and pollinator specialist, uncovering the secret lives of bees

- AMY BARRETT

Why did you start studying bees?

Samantha Alger, I had an opportunity to study tropical ecology and conservation abroad, and I realised that you can be a biologist and study insects for a living – which was ludicrous to me, who grew up in a household where you could be a doctor or a lawyer. I didn’t know that these things existed.

I knew I was interested in conservation, but I wanted to focus my efforts on something that was important not just for conservation in a treehugger sort of way, but also important for humans. I found out that you need bees for one of every three bites of food. They provide pollination services for most of the food that we eat, so the connection there was really strong. It’s good for wild bee conservation, but also, it’s important to humans.

What kind of threats are facing bees?

The media will say, ‘Oh, it’s this chemical. It’s neonicotinoids, or it’s this one disease’. Everyone wants to point their finger to a single smoking gun, but it’s a combination of threats, including habitat loss. With land-use change we see vast areas that are getting converted to corn or parking lots, for example, which offer nothing for bees. Areas that were once really good for foragers are changing, so they are losing habitat, foraging and nesting resources.

We also know that bees are affected by disease. Of course, there’s a tonne of different pests and pathogens that both managed and wild bees are affected by, but I think that the most concerning issue is the introduction and spread of novel or exotic pathogens to native hosts.

Also, pesticides and herbicides are another threat. If you’re using herbicides to kill the wildflowers or what we think of as weeds, that’s affecting their foraging areas. Pesticides that we put on our crops to keep herbivores from eating them can also affect bees.