For each production level, researchers then measured average bee populations, fat levels, and weight of honey collected. The latter category often included land covered by grass, trees, or development. The fields were either highly cultivated (meaning that 73 percent or more of their surrounding area was covered by crop land) or mildly cultivated (meaning 53 percent or less of was). To do so, they placed ten bee apiaries containing four colonies each next to soybean farms at least one mile away from each other. Over the course of two years, researchers from Iowa State University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign monitored the health of honey bees near soy farms with varying levels of production intensity. The study was partially funded by the Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the United Soybean Board, though neither was involved with designing the experiment or writing the paper. That, in turn, has depleted both the quantity and variety of food sources available to honey bees, according to the new research, which is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The industry’s rise, however, has come at the cost of traditional habitat: In Iowa, the second-largest soy producing state, the expansion of farmland has driven a steep decline in native tallgrass prairie. In 2018, farmers harvested 4.54 billion bushels of the crop (for reference, a bushel of soy weighs 60 pounds), with the Midwest contributing to the vast majority of this output. Soy is one of the U.S.’s most highly produced and exported foods. Now, by examining the health of honey bees in Iowa soy fields, scientists have showed precisely how damaging that lack of variation can be. Since not all pollen is nutritionally equal, bees need many different kinds to stay healthy. In recent years, scientists have increasingly focused on the ways that monoculture farming-large tracts of land that specialize in a single crop-can deprive honeybees of much-needed dietary diversity, making them more susceptible to disease. It’s not just that commonly used pesticides can weaken and confuse bees, jeopardizing their ability to return to the hive after forage. It’s no secret that the recent decline of bee populations is strongly linked with modern agriculture. A significant, multi-year study published Monday provides new evidence that commodity crop production can be detrimental to honey bees, putting colonies at risk by depleting their access to food.
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