I Kept Five Honeybee Hives. I’d Ask Different Questions Now.
Years ago, my then-husband and I kept honeybees.
Five hives.
And if you had asked me why, somewhere on my list of reasons would have been: because bees need help.
It made perfect sense to me. Bees were struggling. We had bees. More bees = helping bees.
I never really questioned that math.
I would now.
Not because I’ve joined Team Anti-Honeybee. I haven’t. Honeybees are extraordinary animals, vital agricultural pollinators and, frankly, fascinating little beings.
But “save the bees” turns out to be a much bigger conversation than adding more bees to the landscape.
And a study published this month gives us one more reason to think carefully about which bees we’re trying to help—and how.
Honeybees Can Be a Little Pushy
Researchers in the United Kingdom spent 93 hours watching pollinators visit bramble and ivy flowers near managed honeybee hives. (That’s my kind of science.)
But they recorded 300 encounters between honeybees and other flower visitors, including bumblebees, solitary bees and hoverflies.
What they saw was interesting.
Honeybees won access to flowers more often than researchers expected.
Other pollinators avoided honeybees in about 28% of encounters on bramble and 36% on ivy. And when honeybees won an interaction, at least 20% of those wins involved the honeybee physically displacing or chasing another pollinator.
So this wasn’t only about honeybees consuming nectar and pollen before somebody else could get to it.
Sometimes they were actually getting somebody else to leave.
There are scientific terms for the distinction.
Exploitative competition is basically getting to the buffet first and eating the good stuff.
Interference competition is making it harder for someone else to get to the buffet in the first place.
Researchers have been concerned about the first one for years. This study provides direct observational evidence that the second may matter more than we’ve known. Higher numbers of honeybees at the study sites were also associated with fewer non-honeybee pollinators.
That caught my attention.
Because five hives suddenly looks a little different through that lens.
Before We Put Honeybees on Trial...
We shouldn’t.
This is one study.
It looked at two flowering plants—bramble and ivy—at five sites in Cambridgeshire, England, all located close to managed honeybee colonies. Researchers watched interactions, but they did not measure whether those encounters resulted in fewer offspring, declining populations, or long-term ecological damage.
The study also cannot tell us that one hive is fine, but five are bad, or that ten hives per square mile is some magic ecological tipping point.
We don’t have that number.
And anyone waving this study around as proof that backyard beekeeping is destroying wild bees everywhere is getting way ahead of the science.
But this research isn't appearing out of nowhere, either.
Previous studies have found evidence that managed honeybees can compete with wild pollinators for floral resources, particularly when flowers are limited. One experiment on bramble found that removing honeybees and bumblebees increased nectar availability and, at one site, substantially increased visits from solitary bees. More recent work has also found changes in wild-bee foraging when managed honeybees are present.
Here in North America, there is another important piece of context: the western honeybee is not native. Honeybees were brought here from Europe centuries ago. They are enormously valuable to agriculture, but the U.S. Geological Survey also notes that they can be significant competitors with native bees and advises against introducing hives into areas being managed specifically for native bee conservation.
Both of these things can be true: Honeybees can be important. Honeybees can also create ecological pressure.
I Thought I Was Helping
When I kept honeybees, I thought keeping honeybees was an environmental good.
I wasn't knowingly choosing honeybees over native bees. I wasn't ignoring evidence I didn't like. I simply didn't know there was a reason to look at it differently.
And I'm guessing a lot of people who installed backyard hives, sponsored corporate apiaries or supported “save the bees” campaigns came from exactly the same place.
Good intentions.
That matters. But good intentions aren't the end of the conversation.
One of the things I love—and occasionally find deeply annoying—about conservation is that we are never finished learning how ecosystems work.
We make decisions with the best information we have. Then someone spends 93 hours staring at insects on blackberry bushes, and suddenly we know a little more.
So we adjust.
Or at least we should.
Changing your mind when better information comes along isn't hypocrisy. It's what learning is supposed to look like.
So...Should We Stop Keeping Honeybees?
I'm not willing to make that leap based on the evidence we have.
Honeybees are important agricultural animals. Beekeeping has cultural and economic value. Beekeepers are also frequently some of the loudest advocates for pesticide reduction, flowering habitat, and pollinator protection.
The issue isn't honeybees good / honeybees bad.
It's whether putting large numbers of managed honeybees into a landscape is always an act of wildlife conservation.
Increasingly, the answer seems to be: not necessarily.
And that's an important distinction because North America has roughly 3,600 native bee species, many of which live nothing like honeybees. They don't have a beekeeper checking on them. Most don't live in giant colonies. Some need bare soil. Some need hollow stems. Some depend on particular plants. All of them need enough food to live.
If our goal is helping pollinators, the safest place to put our energy is still habitat.
Plant lots of flowers—and not just a gorgeous three-week burst in May. Aim for overlapping blooms from spring through fall. Grow native plants. Leave some stems standing. Allow some bare ground. Reduce pesticide use. Protect the places where wild bees already live.
And if you're thinking about keeping honeybees, keep asking questions.
How many other hives are nearby? Is there enough forage? Are you next to a natural area being managed for native species? What blooms during the lean parts of the year?
“Save the Bees” Is Still a Really Good Idea
We just need to get better at what we mean by it.
I don't regret caring enough about bees to keep five hives. That curiosity eventually led me much deeper into the strange, wonderful world of pollinators.
But knowing what I know now, I would ask different questions before bringing tens of thousands of managed honeybees into a landscape.
And five years from now?
I hope I know things that make me reconsider some of the choices I'm making today.
That's not failure.
That's the deal.
We don't help the natural world by deciding once what “good” looks like and defending it forever.
We help by staying curious enough to notice when the story changes.
And humble enough to change with it.
