Preserved honey bee health in Latin America: a fragile equilibrium due to low-intensity agriculture and beekeeping?

Vandame, Remy; Palacio, María Alejandra

Preserved honey bee health in Latin America: a fragile equilibrium due to low-intensity agriculture and beekeeping? | La santé de l’abeille préservée en Amérique latine: un fragile équilibre dû à une agriculture et une apiculture peu intensives? Gesunde Honigbienen in Lateinamerika: ein fragiles Gleichgewicht basierend auf der geringen Intensität von Landwirtschaft und Imkerei

2010

Vandame, Remy | Palacio, María Alejandra

The Latin American subcontinent contains some of the world’s major honey producing and exporting countries, but the status of bee health in this part of the world has not been clearly documented. There have been no reports of massive colony losses in Latin America, at least from the symptoms of CCD (colony collapse disorder) or in the proportion and extent of the situations in the US and Europe. We examine possible reasons for the difference, and develop hypotheses that this prevailing good bee health could be due to: (1) the management of generally unselected bees with a certain natural resistance to diseases (tropical regions) or the selection of disease resistant bees (temperate regions); (2) a lower proportion of cropland over the total land area, resulting in more abundant or higher-quality pollen resources for bees; (3) the generally small-scale, low-income and little subsidized agriculture, and concomitant lower use of insecticides compared to industrialized countries. These general parameters may act synergistically, resulting in a large number of configurations across the tremendous ecological, social and economic diversity of Latin America. We suggest that the health of honey bees in Latin America may be ultimately due to the practices of low-income agriculture and beekeeping in the region, leading to more sustainable conditions for the bees. However the increasing trend of land use intensification in some parts of Latin America could lead to declines in honey bee health and population size.

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