When it comes to relations between the United States and Georgia,
outsiders usually focus on what the US has done for its tiny South
Caucasus ally. But, now, it looks like Georgia might have a valuable
item for the US – a super bee that could provide some much-needed
variety to dwindling American bee colonies.
In 2012, commercial
beekeepers in the United States lost between 40 to 50 percent of their
hives, the worst year for bee-colony collapse since 2005, according to a
March article in The New York Times. A lower bee count reduces the
supply of fruit, vegetables, nuts, and beans dependent on pollination,
which, consequently, increases prices, the article noted.
While
there is no evidence that Caucasus bees are more resilient either to the
mites or the pesticides that could be causing the deaths of American
bees, scientists like Washington State University entomologist Walter S.
Sheppard have started taking bee semen from Georgia to create more
variety in American bee populations.
The gray Caucasus mountain
honeybee, one of the world’s three types of honeybees, has a legendary
ability to produce large amounts of honey despite cold weather and bad
conditions. Georgia is the “central homeland” for the species, although
the bees also can be found in eastern Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
“The
Caucasus honeybee has a long, strong history of importance to
beekeeping worldwide,” said Sheppard, who has traveled to Georgia three
times from Pullman, Washington to purchase bee semen for the artificial
insemination of bees. “The Caucasus honeybee is good at eating less and
producing more.”
Information was not immediately available about
the quantity of Caucasus bee exports from Georgia. The bees were first
sent to the United States for commercial production in the late 19th
century, along with Carniolan bees from the Austrian Alps and Italian
bees. (North America itself has no native honeybees.)
But
American beekeepers’ access to the Caucasus bees was cut short by a 1922
law that blocked the import of live honey bees from any country the US
Secretary of Agriculture had not deemed clear of diseases or parasites
harmful to bees, among other conditions.
That meant that, for
decades, while American beekeepers selectively bred other types of bees
for honey production, Georgia’s Caucasus bee, also known as apis
mellifera caucasica, was studied and cultivated primarily by Soviet
entomologists. The scientists were amazed by its ability to out-produce
other bee types, even in non-native habitats, and by its long tongue, or
proboscis.
A Soviet-era report found that honey production by
Georgia’s Caucasus bees exceeded that of the Russian Krasnopoliansk bee
by 30 to 40 percent, rendering a sweet total of 25 to 30 kilograms of
honey per season.
Its proboscis played a role there. At an
average length of 7.1 millimeters, over half a millimeter longer than
that of other honeybees, the Caucasus bee’s proboscis can reach
nectar that its competitors cannot.
Ever mindful of
production quotas, Soviet officials were so concerned about preserving
the purity of this Stakhanovite species that they outlawed any transport
of Caucasus bee colonies without special permission.
Those
rules, however, fell by the wayside in the chaotic years following the
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Until recently, Georgian
entomologists feared that the years of unrestricted movement and
breeding might have wiped out the four Georgian varieties (Abkhazian,
Cartaline, Gurian and Megrelian) of the Caucasus bee.
“After the
Soviet Union collapsed, the state did not have time for bees and
beekeepers continued as best they could," commented entomologist Marina
Barvenashvili. Some Georgian beekeepers mixed species in an effort to
increase productivity, but the result meant the potential loss of some
of the bee’s traits, she added.
In 2012, Barvenashvli, together
with four colleagues, won a 19,000-lari ($11,508) grant from the
Agriculture University of Georgia to travel to the western region of
Samegrelo, where the scientists hoped the region’s high mountains might
have preserved the Megrelian bees, the most distinct of Georgia’s
Caucasus bees.
While foreign scientists are more interested in
the bees’ productivity and ability to withstand the cold, the Georgian
entomologists were keen to determine if the species’ legendary gray
coloring and long tongue had survived.
After months of research
and testing in three different villages in Samegrelo, they determined
that they had. Now, the group is hoping for an additional grant to let
them try selective breeding of Caucasus bees.
Yet local concern
about the bees lives on. While “the mountains are protecting them," said
research project manager Maia Peikrishvili, “people definitely need to
pay attention” to making sure that Georgia’s Caucasus bee, with its
unusually robust production levels, remains a pure species.
With
no easy rebound in sight for the US bee populations the Caucasus bee is
meant to help, American food consumers most likely can only agree.
http://www.eurasianet.org/node/66821
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