The Big Buzz about Pollinators

Hanna Tran

8 March 2017

Independent Research

Dr. Melissa Kiehl

Abstract
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The publications of the declining pollinator populations in the media sheds light upon this

epidemic, yet not enough to capture the real epidemic. Pollinators play an extremely important

role in human society, as they are responsible for a large amount of the food supply of humans.

The purpose of this research was to investigate this importance as well as how it can and has

negatively affected human society. To do this, four research journals were analyzed and their

data regarding pollinator decline and its effect on the economy was compared. The data collected

has shown how a negative decline in pollinator population does correlate with negative effect in

the surrounding economy, but due to the many factors that also play a role, it is impossible if this

applies to real life, or to definitively state this. Either way, pollinator decline is a pressing issue

and through an informative fundraiser the researcher hopes to raise money to fund more research

towards pollinators and raise awareness about this situation. The results from this research is still

very general due to only general information being out there, but with more research and studies

conducted on pollinators, a more definitive answer to how these animals contribute to society

and how we can slow down their decreasing populations can be found.

Introduction

Almost everyone ignores the real plight of pollinators in favor of the honeybee colony

collapse disorder, or CCD epidemic. However, people are not the only ones who often ignore

this crisis, countries tend to overbrush this fact as well. Animal pollinators are any animal

species that aid plants in producing seeds or fruit through pollination. Arguably the most

common pollinators are species of bees, followed by hummingbirds, bats, and other insects such
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as wasps and butterflies. Pollinators contribute a lot to the worlds economy, however countries

have not taken the appropriate measures to protect and preserve the populations of pollinators,

which will cause them to suffer from an economic recession. This seems to stem from a lack of

understanding of the problem, and general ignorance of what needs to be done to conserve this

important natural system. More effective, researched and informed policies need to be made in

order to prevent and slow down the population declines and those policies need to be enforced on

those involved in the agriculture business. This paper will analyze the effects of pollinators on

the American economy, compare current policies, determine the factors affecting pollinators and

prove a significant decline in pollinator populations that would be detrimental to the U.S.

economy. The current policies on preserving and protecting pollinators has proven to be

ineffective and in the future could cause a decrease in the American economy. Media has not

been persistent enough, policies and awareness has not been spread, and all of this will, all in all,

be detrimental to the economy.

Review of Literature

In society today the media plays a very important role in informing the public and

swaying the opinions of people in order to get them to back a certain cause or issue. Today, the

media has shown to not be doing enough to inform the public about pollinators, causing the

publics focus to shift to the wrong things when it comes to protecting these populations. A lot of

It has been found that native and other wild bee species are often ignored, which means

uninformed businesses are focusing their efforts in the wrong place. For example, a lot of
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solutions to the pollinator plight has been research on how to help the honeybees. However,

research and solutions that apply to honeybees often do not apply to these different species, and

may even be harmful to other species. Pesticides designed to not harm honey bees may harm

wild bees. And because not a lot of research is done on these wild species, it is largely unknown

what is killing them in comparison to the honeybees (Pearson, 2015). This lack of research can

be seen giving a negative effect as 16.5 of vertebrate pollinators and over 40% of invertebrate

pollinators are threatened with extinction (Lumpur, 2016). However, artificial and human

pollinators cannot replace or pick up the slack of these declining wild bee species. Research done

into robotic pollinators have found them to be extremely costly (Hellerstein, 2017). And human

pollination has been found to be unsustainable (Devkota, 2016). According to a study in Nepal,

farmers and their crops were unable to be properly sustained financially with human pollination

when compared to the use of natural, wild or commercial pollination (Devkota, 2016). This is

could be an evident problem as it is shown that pollinators account for $235-577 billion dollars

of global crop values (Lumpur, 2016).

When comparing the different policies in effect in different states around the United

States, there are many similarities as well as significant differences in these places. In Maryland,

there is a lot of detailed information available for beekeepers, landscapers, as well as landowners

on their webpage (Pollinator, 2016). This database also cites what the government agency, the

EPA or Environmental Protection Agency is doing, showing Marylands role in protection as

well as the national strategy that all states should be taking. Compared to Delaware, Maryland

has very extensive information about what is being done and what should be done. The inclusion
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of the EPA goals also affirms the fact that the Maryland State Department of agriculture has a

very organized system and close relationship with the EPA, an organization with close relations

with the National state of agriculture (Pollinator, 2016). In Delaware, a lot of information

regarding native plants and locations are provided to spread awareness to the public about what

sort of plants are in the area and which are more beneficial to preserving pollinator populations

(Delaware). Maryland also has this information, but it is not as detailed as the one for Delaware.

Where Delaware has a lot of information about the individual native plants, Maryland has

information about general plant species (Pollinator, 2016). The EPA, which is the federal agency

that oversees and implements policies on protecting the environment looks at the protection of

pollinators as a whole compared to Maryland and Delaware. Whereas Maryland and Delaware

are able to provide information about native plant species that would be beneficial to native

pollinators, the EPA has to look at the big picture. Because of this, they have goals such as

assessing how effective pollinator services have been, completing the pollinator research action

plan, and restoring colony levels nationwide. This seems to suggest that the EPA is mainly

focused on the restoration of honeybees, and less focused on native bees, which is implied to

have been left to the state governments (Environmental n.d.). However, because of the major

importance of native pollinators, the EPA and federal government in general should also play a

role in helping the states focus on these native pollinators.

Pollinators have a very important role in the economy, especially in agriculture. Crops

that are heavily dependent on animal pollination, such as almonds, would be affected negatively

if the loss of pollinators became too significant (Hellerstein, n. d.). Twenty three percent of other
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crops are actually directed by pollinators while the indirect effect of pollinators is very

significant. The various areas that are indirectly affected by pollinators include areas such as the

clothing industry, meat industry, alcohol industry and more. This means that while agriculture

has a 5.7 percent share in the U.S. gross domestic product, these other areas that were mentioned

mean that agriculture has a larger share than just that 5.7 percent, due to the other areas. The

overall contribution of the agriculture sector to GDP is larger than this because sectors related to

agricultureforestry, fishing, and related activities; food, beverages, and tobacco products;

textiles, apparel, and leather products; food and beverage stores; and foodservice and drinking

placesrely on agricultural inputs in order to contribute added value to the economy (Ag,

2016). This means that the indirect contributions of pollinators is more significant than what it

seems like at first glance. In fact, the total annual value of crops affected directly by pollinators

ranges from $235 billion to $577 billion US dollars. And there is even more to those numbers,

those numbers do not include or truly represent the impact this has on labor as well. Agriculture

and its related industries, which are again, at least some part reliant on pollinators, provide for

about 10 percent of United States Employment (Ag, 2016). If the populations of pollinators

continues to decline, then not only will the US agriculture be negatively affected, so will the

labor force. 17.3 million jobs would be affected by the loss of these precious pollinators (Ag,

2016). This issue with pollinator population decline could be what incentive businesses have to

work with the farmer to raise taxes and selling people corn.

The decline and problems of these pollinators are both addressed and not. In the media

especially, native bees are often ignored, with most of the news being solely being about
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honeybees rather than states individual native species. This is a problem especially because

native bees are actually better pollinators than domesticated honeybees, and their populations are

in more danger than honeybees (Pearson, 2015). Because of this, native bees and other

pollinators are often ignored over the honeybees, despite the honeybees situation being handled

a lot more effectively than native bees (Hellerstein, 2017) (Appendix A). The pollinator policies

in Maryland are also not as effective as they should be, as they focus only on types of bees rather

than other pollinator species like birds, bats, wasps and other insect pollinators (Pollinator,

2016). In Nepal, there have also been studies that go to prove that human pollinators are not as

effective as other pollinators (Devkota, 2016). In this country, studies have shown that the

increase of pollinator populations is not only healthy for the environment, it helps assure crop

yields which in turn can be used to improve the lives of workers through commercialization of

these pollinators, and this ultimately leads to an increase in economic revenue (Devkota, 2016).

This study also found that farmers whom are in a rut can rely on beekeeping methods to both

better the lives of farmers, but also helps maintain these vital populations. We identified

beekeeping as the best practices which could help many beekeepers to earn more profit due to

honeybee pollination which is much more economically important than honey production

(Devkota, 2016). This resort to beekeeping methods not only helps preserve pollinators, farmers

can further benefit from this practice through the sale of bee products such as honey and wax

(Devkota, 2016). These benefits are not the only reason to resort to preserving pollinators rather

than human pollinating, as this has been shown to be ineffective. The use of human pollination

on apples in Maoxian and other places have found that managing it through human pollinators
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has been upsetting the costbenefit ratio of apple farming (Partap, 2012). While it has been

chosen as the last resort in this place, it has been found to not be effective, and while they

currently have no other option, it has been found that it is definitely not the answer to pollinating

apples. In fact, ever since the rise and increased use of hand pollination for apples in Maoxian,

apples as a crop have dropped in popularity and price. This is due to the struggles with both

hiring people to pollinate, and how ineffective they are. As Mr. Hellerstein said people going

around with little sticks and pollinating apricots. Thats possible, but thats really expensive

right? Hiring people, to do that kind of work cant be cheap (Hellerstein, 2017). It certainly is a

possibility, but it is not as practical as having the plants pollinated naturally by animal pollinators

rather than humans. Not only is the use of artificial pollinators more expensive, with its monetary

price comes its price in time and resources. Why would there be a need for artificial pollinators

when there is a massive resource of over 20,000 species of pollinators of bees, birds and

bats that are relied upon by 75% of the world food crops. Not only that, the reliance on these

pollinators has increased 300% in the last 50 years (Lumpur, 2016). So while switching to

artificial pollinators may be an expensive alternative for compensating for the loss of pollinators,

it is definitely not worth the risk, and will not be sustainable. It only provides a temporary

solution for a risk as big as pollinator decline.

Pollinators are evidently extremely crucial to our society and current policies in action

have maintained honeybees, but native and other wild pollinators are a whole other issue to look

at while there are alternatives, it can be very expensive to replace natural pollinators. Not only

that, there are many policies in place in order to preserve these pollinators, yet the real question
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is whether or not they have been effective in carrying out their message. In order to effectively

preserve pollinator populations, information should not just be spread, but enforced as well.

Businesses should have more incentive to protect pollinators, not just to help save the

environment per se, but to also gain an economic advantage against their competitors and

increase their prestige among others and consumers. If businesses do not adhere to these

conditions, they will only continue to hurt the many native and commercial pollinators around

the world. If this happens, many native bees could already be gone or more endangered than they

are currently. If this happens then more encouragement should be pushed onto the business, so

they are not only relying on the commercial pollinators that are there when needed, but also the

free and more effective pollinators. There should overall be stricter regulations and more

incentive for businesses to preserve pollinators, and the media should begin to focus on some

other bee other than the honeybee.

Research Methods and Data Collection

To analyze and attempt to answer the researchers question and hypothesis, four scholarly

journals related to this papers research of the contributions of pollinators and how they effect

the economy were collected, analyzed and compared. These journals were used to help answer

the hypothesis that the effects of pollinators on the American economy, more specifically the

states of Maryland and Delaware, compare current policies, determine the factors affecting

pollinators and prove a significant decline in pollinator populations that would be detrimental to

the U.S. economy. Throughout the year, lots of research was conducted on the role of
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pollinators and how they effect the economy already through the use of reading reports. The

content of these reading reports varied from what impact these pollinators had on the economy

shown in such sources with a lot of statistical information. These journals helped to answer

this as each discussed the possible economic effects and already present ones that pollinator

decline will have. Previous reading reports and online resources were used to help locate these

new journals, as well as these journals to find other ones. While not all of these journals had the

exact information needed, they had enough similarities that they could be used to effectively gain

information.

To analyze these journals via meta-analysis, each one was printed out and highlighted

with different colors that corresponded to the type of information being highlighted. Yellow was

used for general important information, orange for extremely important information as well as

pertinent summary points, green for statistics including graphs and charts and blue to help

distinguish article headings and subheadings. The first study investigated the economic

valuation of the vulnerability of world agriculture confronted with pollinator decline, by Gallai,

Nicola, and looked at a bioeconomic approach to production dependence on pollinators. The

results it yielded were noted to not be accurate for that study or other studies as the market

response is a big factor that was not taken into account nor could be predicted. It looked at the

dependence ratios towards pollinators and found the rate of vulnerability to be around 9.5% but

did not show the range between different crops (Gallai, 2007). Another article looked at A

century of advances in bumblebee domestication and the economic and environmental aspects of

its commercialization for pollination, by Velthuis, Hayo but its information about how they
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have been commercialized for pollination was what was analyzed. The crop tomatoes was looked

at extensively in this journal as bumblebees are a major pollinator of it. It had an important note

that the economically preferred pollinators depended on the region (Velthuis, 2006). The two

other studies, Economic Consequences of Pollinator Decline: A Synthesis, by Bauer, Dana and

The Economic Impacts of Pollinator Declines: An Approach to Assessing the Consequences,

by Kevan, Peter, focused on the economic effects of pollinator decline and how those

consequences should be or were analyzed. In the data analyzed it was evident that pollinator

decline and the economy have a negative correlation, but there are many other unaccounted for

factors that may affect this correlation.

Figure 1: Contributions of Pollinators

Kevan Velthuis Bauer Gallai

Study How vulnerable world agriculture Economic & Economic consequences The economic valuation of
Purpose is to pollinator decline environmental effects of pollinator decline world agriculture
of bumblebee Impacts on the vulnerability due to
domestication economy of changes in pollinator decline
the supply of the
services provided by
natural ecosystems

Key Always been a shortage of Use of Challenge=mul Bioeconomic

Points pollinators bumblebees as tifaceted nature approach:
inadequacy /lack pollinators for of ecosystem production
of sustainably crops services dependence
managed, (especially Decline affects (production loss in
indigenous, tomatoes) over pollinator complete pollinator
imported the years species, loss)
pollinators Comm economic Study not
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Good to look at various ercial stability, completely

crops & cropping systems pollina biodiversity accurate: does not
tor use loss, plants take into account
Bumbles = pollinated strategic response
lower Animal of the markets
productions pollination
costs, increased increases quality
yields, and quantity
improved fruit production
quality
Bumblebees
better than
honeybees
Economically
preferred
pollinator
depends on
local costs,
climatic
conditions
Someti
mes to
use
numbe
r of
individ
uals
rather
than
colony

Statistics: N/A Tomatoes: 12000 2009: ~$200 billion 2005-8: ~$153 billion
Estimated million pounds
crop value

Data (what needs to be collected) Graphs, countries and Empirical Analysis Dependence ratios towards
Collection Pollination requirements when they introduced pollinators
Method On-farm economics, bumblebee pollinators, Various Graphs: Bioeconomic approach
financial planning sales of bumblebee Crop production
colonies, crops Crop pollinator
pollinated dependency
Colony numbers
Colonies per
dependent crop
(total, indirect,
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regional) Effects
of pollinator
loss

Results: Adversely affects crop (Refrained from minor *figs 8-11 Rate of
How production, commodity crop values) vulnerability: 9.5%
decline/po markets (deficit) Does not
llinators Commodity show large
affects consumers range
economy affected between
(commodity costs different
= cost more, less crops
available) Each region = vul.
Ratio 22-94%

Economic When trade occurs, Advantages of (incomplete 2005 Production &

Correlatio declines = diff. Economic bumbles understanding Consumption =
n with impacts on overshadowed of pollinator positive for
Pollinator producers/consumers in by new role in crop pollinator
Decline importing & exporting technology\ production w/ dependency
countries When diff. Degrees of Total
Pollinator deficit = tech dependency) pollinator
increased production cost not Degree loss =
(adverse effects depends develo artificial production
on individual) ped, pollinat drop:
Reduction in production = nature ors can deficit in 3
supply shift seizes replace crop
Increase supply, market wild categories,
price drop 2
Consumers worse No big pollinator-
off b/c consume disasters from dependent
less at higher bumble use categories
price w/ high
Producers: less econ.
sold for more Value, low
Inelastic demand yearly
curve storage
Producers ability
: benefit,
amount
sold
same,
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price
increase
Elastic demand
curve
Producers
harmed

Results and Data Analysis

The data collected applies to the research question because all of them relate to and help

to further understand the question of what pollinators contribute to the economy and what

possible negative effects there will be if they were to decline even further. Based on the

information collected, it can be inferred that there will be negative economic consequences if

pollinator populations continue to decline, but by how much and how significant depends on the

region as well as the market response. The effects based on region can more easily be researched,

but the market response is unpredictable but can play a significant role in how much pollinator

decline affects a region.

Figure 2: (Gallai, 2007)

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Figure 2 shows information about the rate of vulnerability of various countries, and it can be

seen to vary yet still remain in about the same range. Figure 3 below shows the relationship

between pollinator dependency and crop production. Figure 3 shows that the production of crops

not pollinator dependent are significantly more than those that are, but it is still a significant

amount. What must also be taken into account is the popularity of the crops produced. The

combined production of lesser bought and consumed produce would logically outweigh the

popular crops that are.

Figure 3: World Crop Pollinator Dependency (Bauer, n.d.)

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Discussion and Conclusion

The findings in this paper contribute to the greater research audience for this topic

because it addresses many usual untouched topics in this issue, such as the fact there are so many

other factors that go into determining the health of the economy. The findings in this uncertainty

seem to imply that there is not enough research on this topic for there to be a definitive answer,

or that there is too much information and too many factors to be completely sure. This causes

some limitations to the research, as the number of factors is too great to account for each and

everything that affects the economy along with pollination. If all these other factors are taken

into account especially the market response the research may as well correlate with many
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other declining factors. Despite this extreme and debilitating limitation, it is evident that

honeybee colonies are doing pretty fine, and it is the other and wild pollinators that need to be

further researched. More funding should go into researching these lesser known species that

pollinate very well known crops. More information about the actual pollinators doing all of this

would allow governments adequate information to help preserve and protect them. Even if there

are several other factors that are also contributing to economic decline, in the scope of

agriculture and the world supply, conducting more research may open up more solutions to the

problem that is pollinator decline.

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Appendix A:

References
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Ag and food sectors and the economy. (2016, October 14). Retrieved December 22, 2016,

from United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research and Services website:

https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/ag-

and-food-sectors-and-the-economy.aspx.

Bauer, D. M., & Wing, I. S. (n.d.). Economic consequences of pollinator declines: A

synthesis. Semantic, 368-383.

https://doi.org/pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6795/9ff916bd5cb74ff5dbec3faf0dc2f85d9c98.p

df

Delaware native plants for native bees. (n.d.). Retrieved November 9, 2016, from

delaware.gov

website:http://dda.delaware.gov/plantind/forms/Delaware_Native_Plants_for_Native_Be

es.pdf

Devkota, K., Dhakal, S. C., & Thapa, R. B. (2016). Economics of beekeeping as

pollination management practices adopted by farmers in Chitwan district of Nepal.

Agriculture & Food Security. http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40066-016-0053-9

Environmental Protection Agency. (n.d.). Federal pollinator health task force: EPAs

role. Retrieved from US Environmental Protection Agency database.

Gallai, N., Salles, J.M., Settele, J., & Vaissire, B. E. (2007). Economic valuation of the

vulnerability of world agriculture confronted with pollinator decline. Ecologic

Economics, 810-821. Retrieved from ScienceDirect database.

Hellerstein, D. (2017, January 17). Phone interview.

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Kevan, P. G., & Phillips, T. P. (2001). The economic impacts of pollinator declines: An

approach to assessing the consequences. Ecology and Society, 5(1). Retrieved from

Ecology and Society database.

Lumpur, K. (2016, February 26). Press release: Pollinators vital to our food supply under

threat. Retrieved September 21, 2016, from http://www.ipbes.net/article/press-release-

pollinators-vital-our-food-supply-under-threat

Partap, U., & Ya, T. (2012). The human pollinators of fruit crops in Maoxian county,

Sichuan, China. Mountain Research and Development, 36(1).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1659/MRD-JOURNAL-D-11-00108.1

Pearson, G. (2015, April 29). Youre worrying about the wrong bees. WIRED. Retrieved from

WIRED database. https://www.wired.com/2015/04/youre-worrying-wrong-bees/

Pollinator protection plan. (2016, June 16). Retrieved November 9, 2016, from

Maryland.gov website: http://mda.maryland.gov/plants-

pests/pages/pollinator_protection_plan.aspx.

Velthuis, H. H.W., & Doorn, A. V. (2006). A century of advances in bumblebee

domestication and the economic and environmental aspects of its commercialization for

pollination. Apidologie, 37(4), 421-451. Retrieved from HAL database.