A national event will take place in Lawrence at the end of June.
Several venues throughout the United States will celebrate Pollinator Week the week of June 24, and the Pendleton Farm in East Lawrence will be one of the hosts.
Kat McGuire, development and communication coordinator of the Coevolution Institute, which sponsors Pollinator Week, said the goal of the week is to educate Americans about the importance of pollinators and to prevent the creatures from going extinct.
“We want it to be a resource for people to go and gather information,” McGuire said.
McGuire said Pollinator Week allows different locations throughout the country to host their own events to promote pollinator awareness in their area. The week will also feature the release of four new postal stamps. The stamps feature four different designs, which are viewed individually or together in two different interlocking designs. According to the U.S. Postal Service’s Web site, the fact that the stamps interlock to create different designs demonstrates the ecological relationship between pollinators and plants and the biodiversity needed to sustain the relationship.
Stan Herd, a crop artist and Lawrence resident, is creating crop art on the Pendleton Farm that will be a replica of one of the stamps. The image will be of a dogface butterfly. Herd said the art is best seen from an aerial view and uses entirely natural resources.
“I’m going to do the piece out of 5,000 flowers,” Herd said.
McGuire said pollinators, which include birds, bats, beetles and bees, are responsible for pollinating 80 percent of flowering plants. She also said $10 billion - $20 billion a year in the nation’s revenue comes from agriculture that relies on pollinators.
“A huge percent of the national income comes from pollinated food,” McGuire said.
Orley “Chip” Taylor, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Kansas, helped organize the event happening in Lawrence. He said the goal is to raise money and awareness for local pollinators and beekeepers.
Last September, the U.S. Senate and Department of Agriculture designated June 24 through 30 Pollinator Week. The event will occur on the wake of recent news that the pollinator population is down.
The New York Times recently published a story reporting that more than a quarter of the country’s 2.4 million bee colonies have been lost. The problem is called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), and several theories have emerged to explain why it the problem is happening. Possible theories range from a viral illness being passed through the bees to the notion that human cell phone use is causing the bees to be disoriented and therefore unable to return to their hives. Experts have been unable to reach a consensus about any theory.
Kansas, whose state insect is the honeybee, is one of two states in the country to have not reported CCD. The other is Nebraska.
Taylor, who has worked with bees since the age of 14, said that one reason Kansas might not be having problems with CCD is because the state does not support commercial beekeeping. Commercial beekeepers generally maintain at least 50,000 colonies and provide their bees to large produce corporations to pollinate their plants. Kansas’ beekeepers are generally small business owners or only participate in beekeeping as a hobby. Taylor said these groups of beekeepers are less inclined to report a problem than commercial beekeepers.
Taylor also said that commercial beekeepers frequently move their colonies and sometimes do not provide adequate nutrition for the bees, and this is generally not the case with non-commercial beekeepers. He said there are several factors that could contribute to the current colony collapse of the bee population.
“A lot could be contributed to weather and management,” Taylor said. He also said he felt that the overuse of chemicals to kill mites in beehives is playing some role in the current problem.
“[Beekeepers] throw a lot of chemicals into their bee colonies,” Taylor said. “It’s got to be on of the issues.”
Taylor said that beekeepers who use chemicals to kill mites in beehives sometimes reverse the effects they want because the mites have built a resistance to chemicals, and the chemicals harm the bees instead of the mites.
Taylor said he doesn’t feel cell phone use is playing a part in the current problem with CCD.
“It’s totally irresponsible reporting that led to this,” Taylor said. “Research which was done about this was not done very well. It should not be given credibility.”
Taylor said that he has a bee colony at a central point on the KU campus, a place of high cell phone activity. He has not seen any decrease in the number of bees in that colony.
Steve Tipton, president of the Northeastern Kansas Beekeepers Association, said he thinks the current outbreak of CCD is part of a cycle of the bee population. He also referred to previous instances of CCD in which the population recovered from loss.
“I truly think that it will pass,” Tipton said.
Tipton, a resident of Meridan, Kan., said that among his approximately 100 bee colonies, he has not seen a decline in the number of bees.
McGuire also acknowledged that the CCD could be cyclical.
“I’ve talked to people who said this happens,” McGuire said. “Still, human activity contributes to the problem.”
According to Taylor, Kansas has about 150 species of plants that are dependent on bees for their continued existence. He said that this is significant, but not as large of a dependency as other states.
“It’s hard to maintain plant diversity without bees,” Taylor said.
The nation relies on bees for food items such as almonds, pumpkins and, of course, honey.
“About 90 percent of fruit, nut and vegetable crops are pollinated,” Taylor said. “We just wouldn’t have those things without bees.”
Taylor also said that the loss of those crops would also decrease animals that feed on those plants, such as squirrels.
He said he hopes that Pollinator Week informs Lawrence residents and people throughout the country of the importance of pollinators.
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