Beewashing: How 'Saving' Honeybees is Hurting Wild Bees

 

Lots of people talk about 'saving the bees', and we can all agree it's an admirable idea. However, do you know which bees actually need saving?

In early 2021, over 90,000 UK residents signed a petition to parliament requesting that the government uphold the ban on harmful pesticides for the sake of pollinators and other wildlife. This petition, alongside dozens of others, shows that awareness for the plight of pollinators amongst ordinary people is greater than ever before.

As a bumblebee scientist, I think it is wonderful that citizens around the world are speaking up about the ecological violence facing bees and other pollinators. However, despite our best intentions, our efforts to 'save the bees' might actually be doing more harm than good — and it's not our fault!

First, a confession. I used to keep honeybees professionally, having been taught by my grandparents when I was 14 years old. However, whilst researching wild bees for my Master’s degree at Royal Holloway a couple of years ago, I learned that honeybees may actually be harmful to wild bee populations. I hung up my bee suit at the age of 23, and I’m now committed to raising awareness for the plight of wild bees.

However, before that, I (like so many people) was under the impression that beekeeping was helpful! This is all down to a phenomenon called 'beewashing'. So what is beewashing?

In short, beewashing is a form of greenwashing in which bee-related marketing is used to promote products or services, or generally improve a company’s public image. Usually, beewashing over-inflates the importance of honeybees whilst overlooking the importance of native wild bees. A recent example of ‘bee-washing’ in the UK is Marks and Spencer’s commitment to introduce 30 million honeybees to their farms in order to ‘help protect the future of these all-important pollinators and the planet'. It may seem like a good idea, but ‘saving the bees’ isn’t quite that simple.

In fact, there are around 270 species of bee in the UK, and the honeybee is just one of them! The rest are wild bees, including around 24 species of bumblebee and over 250 species of solitary bee. Wild bees are much more vulnerable to our changing world than honeybees, but they are essential for upholding our ecosystems. For example, bumblebees are the only bees capable of performing buzz pollination - the only way that tomatoes, blueberries, potatoes, and many more plants can be pollinated!

Research shows that honeybees may actually harm wild bee populations by outcompeting them for resources, and spreading parasites and disease. In spite of this, in recent years, there has been a push for more beekeeping in the name of ‘saving the bees’. This is due not only to shrewd marketing efforts by businesses, but also to a general lack of knowledge about pollinators.

For example, Angelina Jolie is a spokesperson for Women for Bees, an entrepreneurship programme which aims to empower women through beekeeping. In isolation, this is an excellent programme with very positive outcomes for women. If anybody should be beekeeping, it's these people!

However, although the programme includes education about biodiversity, the imagery and discussion surrounding the programme is heavily focussed on honeybees. Naturally, this leads the average person to associate biodiversity with honeybees and beekeeping. However, in reality, the introduction of hundreds of thousands of honeybees to a restricted location actually promotes the opposite of biodiversity.

Looking after our planet is about maintaining the delicate balance between all organisms. When we, as humans, interfere with that balance, it can have detrimental consequence for entire ecosystems. In isolation, beekeeping is not a bad thing. After all, honeybees were once a wild pollinators that played their part in maintaining our ecosystems. However, when beekeeping becomes an industry as it has in so many developed countries, that's when the problems begin.

Lots of well-meaning people take up beekeeping in the hopes of helping the bees, without realising that they may actually be making things worse. Before studying wild bees at a postgraduate level, I was one of those people, too! To me, this demonstrates the urgent need for more education about pollinators from school age.

However, don't feel too bad. To quote Angelina Jolie on the Women for Bees programme:

 

'I don’t think a lot of people know what damage they’re doing. A lot of people are just trying to get through their day. They want to do good. They don’t want to be destructive. They don’t know which thing to buy. They don’t know which thing to use. So I think part of this is wanting to help it be simple for everybody.'

Angelina Jolie, National Geographic, May 2021 

As long as we're all trying our best, keeping an ear to the ground, and adjusting our behaviours when presented with new information, we can still save the bees.

Had you ever heard of beewashing before reading this post?