Phil Lester (2) (1969–)

New Zealand has too many bees.
This seems a strange thing to say, with protestors worldwide demanding we "Save the Bees". After all, if all the bees died, wouldn't humanity shortly follow? (No, we wouldn't, but tomatoes and almonds would be a lot more expensive. Honeybees and bumblebees are needed for some crops, but in New Zealand about half our pollination is done by moths, flies, and native bees.)
There was no honey in Aotearoa until the first hives arrived in 1839. Since then the honeybee show more (/Apis mellifera/), like other European imports, has multiplied enormously. Bees are by far our most numerous livestock. There are now nearly a million hives in New Zealand, each holds around 40,000 bees in summer, and those 40 billion bees outnumber all the cows, sheep, pigs, people, dogs, cats, and every other introduced mammal put together. Plus the chickens. Forty billion honeybees is a lot: there are only 100 billion in the entire USA. Our national bee herd has grown 200% since 2008.
Why do we have so many bees? We got by just fine for years with far fewer, and the two main things that bees make – honey and wax – are these days almost useless. Sometimes it seems as if jars of honey exist only to be gifted, like the giant stone coins of Yap. Honey does have some medicinal properties, especially if made from mānuka nectar, but honey is very much like Savlon: it only works when smeared on skin bacteria and not – this, really, is the critical point – if you eat it.
[Full review forthcoming in Reading Room] show less