When I moved to my house in 1998, I started a vegetable garden and planted two plum trees. As the years went by, I added blueberries, honeyberries, raspberries, blackberries, apple trees and peach trees. The peach trees and blueberry plants have always done exceptionally well, and I don’t know if that’s attributable to the soil – mostly glacial clay that has been reworked – or to the east slope of my backyard, where the fruit trees and blueberries get that hot, focused morning sun. The backyard also gets more water than the front - slope again – compounded by underground springs, so that even during droughts, the peach trees do not require watering. The blueberry plants’ roots are shallow, and during the recent drought, I watered my five blueberry plants daily.

I never thought much about pollinators. I had too much else on my mind. Luckily pollinators – which are mostly bees – do their work without any help from me.

Apis mellifera, AKA The European Honeybee on Giant Goldenrod, Solidago gigantea, within spitting distance of my raspberries, beebalm, black-eyed Susan, echinacea, and a peach tree that produces 100s of peaches.

I don’t remember pollinators being a science topic in middle school, or high school. I took plenty of science courses in college, but not one biology course. I wasn’t interested in biology. I do remember Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, published in 1962, but I did not read her book until much later, not until after the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970. I had just turned 14. My good high school friend, Terry, and I walked 20 miles on a designated route in Buffalo for Mother Earth. We found sponsors (family) who paid us five or ten cents per mile walked. The money went to an environmental fund.

I read recently read that Ralph Nadar spoke the first Earth Day at the University of Buffalo. He addressed mostly young people who were concerned about DDT, the disappearance of bald eagles, burning rivers, polluted air, and fish kills that overwhelmed beaches. On that day 20 million people, again young people - 10 percent of the US population - participated in marches and talks. We were just starting to understand that Earth was not invincible, that there might be human actions whose consequences were damaging and irreversible. Back then we did not recognize that those on the socio-economic bottom rung bore the brunt of environmental degradation and had poorer health because of it.

Pollinator decline wasn’t a call to action back in 1970. Thirty years later, however, researchers began expressing alarm. In 2003 the Xerces Society published the Pollinator Conservation Handbook. Even though I read The New York Time’s Tuesday Science Times and taught science, I was only vaguely aware of the pollinator plight. In 2010, my interest in pollinators expanded when I left teaching and found a job where I was literally surrounded by plants.

View from the porch outside my closet-sized office. Cayuga Lake sits behind the treeline.

My job responsibilities included visiting properties of clients and educating myself about the plants we sold. I read books and websites. I constantly bugged the horticulturist about plants, “Dry, no sun, what should I plant?” I listened intently to speakers at seminars. I started to question the value of native plants versus non-natives and hybrids; native plants, because they evolved with the environment were better equipped to feed the pollinators that also evolved with the environment.

The US Beekeeping Survey this year estimated that

nearly 56 percent of managed honeybee colonies died off in the past year, the highest rate recorded since annual reporting began in 2011.

The biggest threat right now to the honeybees is varroa destructor, a mite from Southeast Asia. The mite has been in the US since the late 1980s. Scientists continue to study the mite and its threat to honeybees using research money provided by the federal government and honeybee nonprofits.

Some question if the mite research will continue to be funded, and if so, at what level.

The honeybees, mostly Apis mellifera, pollinate more than 130 types of nuts, fruits and vegetables. About some $15 billion worth every year.

Human bee researchers gather data (bee counts, species, death/disease rates) from beekeepers, prairies, other wild lands to evaluate bee success. Their conclusions guide elected officials as they develop policies that guard ecosystems and protect Mother Earth. It goes without saying that scientists need to be paid, labs need to be equipped, field research needs funding, and theories/best practices need to be debated, defended and dispersed.

Cornell Bee Study

In 2011, Cornell published a study, using bee data, that demonstrated that spring arrived 10 days earlier now than it did about 100 years ago, clear evidence of climate change. The study found the following:

The bees and flowering plants have kept pace by arriving earlier in lock-step. The study also found that most of this shift has occurred since 1970, when the change in mean annual temperature has increased most rapidly.

Rapid climate change has the potential to disrupt such carefully timed ecological functions as plant pollination by insects, . . . Bees are key pollinators for some 80 percent of flowering plants and 70 percent of food crops that require insects for pollination.

… Although the triggers for bee spring emergence are unknown, bees may simply be cued to emerge when temperatures rise above a threshold over a number of days. . . [but] if climate change accelerates the way it is expected to, we don't know if bees will continue to keep up.

This study was funded by the National Science Foundation, which gets its funding from the federal government. It’s unclear if the NSF will continue to be funded.

The EPA

Trump has been messing around with EPA, the federal institution designed to protect people, animals, insects, plants and Earth from the most destructive species known. The human species. The administration’s disconnect from reality is especially egregious when it comes to climate change. Can bees and plants evolve quickly enough to keep up with rapidly changing habitats? What about humans?

There is an upper limit of heat that the body can tolerate. At 95⁰ Fahrenheit and 100 percent humidity, the human body can’t sweat, so the core can’t cool down. If your core isn’t able to cool down, you will likely get heatstroke, organ damage and brain damage. Some areas in India have recorded temperatures close to 122⁰ Fahrenheit. The coolest nighttime temperatures during an Indian Summer? In the 80s.

The Trump administration wants to

roll back virtually every federal policy aimed at curbing greenhouse gases from the burning of oil, gas and coal. His administration has encouraged more production and use of fossil fuels while stifling the growth of clean energy and electric vehicles.

A former senior advisor to the EPA said,

This is not just an attack on science but on common sense. The National Climate Assessment provides over 2,000 pages of detailed evidence that climate change harms our health and welfare, but you can also ask the millions of Americans who have lost their homes and livelihoods to extreme fires and floods, that storms are only getting worse.

Earth Day was 55 years ago. The marches and speeches brought people together. It generated goodwill and made possible big changes in public policy. Most government administrators back then were well-educated and experienced.

They believed in science.

Notes

April 22, 1970: First Earth Day - Zinn Education Project

Pollinator decline - Wikipedia

Reflections on Two Decades of Pollinator Conservation | Xerces Society

E.P.A. Is Said to Draft a Plan to End Its Ability to Fight Climate Change - The New York Times

Bees Are Under Threat from Climate Change, the Trade War and Doge - The New York Times

NY Bee Diversity | CALS

Keystone Plants - Homegrown National Park - Native Plants

Declining Pollinator Populations? Here's How You Can Help : EnviroScience

Planting Guides | Pollinator.org (you can input your zip code and get a list of pollinator plants and when they provide food)

As Earth warms, plants and bees keep pace, study reports | Cornell Chronicle

EPA moves to end climate regulations under Clean Air Act - The Washington Post

How the Hottest Place in India Survives - The New York Times