A Better Beehive; or, Just Say No To the Plastic Pall

“the dashing waves were around, the cloudy sky above, the fiend was not here: a sense of security, a feeling that a truce was established between the present hour and the irresistible, disastrous future imparted to me a kind of calm forgetfulness, of which the human mind is by its structure peculiarly susceptible.” - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein ”Sad!” - President of the United States, Donald John Trump

Beekeepers are awfully concerned about our bees. This is appropriate. Bees under the care of man ain’t well. If we are concerned about our bees it follows that we are concerned about the hives that house them. The hive is a big part of colony health. Beekeepers endlessly discuss, read, ponder and invent new ways to house bees. And yet we miss so dreadfully. Like a lot of human interaction with the natural world, beekeepers seem to have lost our way…

Bees don’t do well in a world where humans choose plastic.

A lot of problems begin with our reflexive patterns of thought. We look at problems narrowly. We elevate strange ideas over basic biology. We don’t admit what we don’t know. Maurice Maeterlinck, a Belgian playwright and beekeeper, commented that beekeepers are a “strange god.” among our bees. We are not a wise god. Our outcomes are as you’d expect.

Some beekeepers keep bees in polystyrene hives. Polystyrene is a plastic. Polystyrene provides good insulation. A honey bee hive is a communal womb. Like a human womb, it must be kept at a precise temperature during gestation. Polystyrene makes this easier in heat and cold.

The downside to polystyrene is that it is polystyrene. It is subtly, cunningly toxic to life. Polystyrene reaches the brain of the honey bee where it impairs cognition and bees ability to learn.^[1] Honey bees have an innate ability to learn many of the behaviors that make a hive such a formidable biological marvel. The ability to learn is innate; the behavior is not. The most famous honey bee behavior–the waggle communication dance–is learned.^[2] Bees deprived of that critical learning do not reliably convey information on floral resources, which is the whole point of the behavior.

If you compromise the ability of a bee to learn, you compromise the ability of a bee to live. The first cited article, Microplastics reach the brain and interfere with honey bee cognition, explored field relevant doses–doses found in the natural environment due to pollution. It also tested a high dose, which was above that found in the natural environment. If you keep your bees in a substance known to accumulate in the brains of bees and impair learning, you may also be testing the high dose. Don’t be surprised by collapse.

The standard practice in American beekeeping is to provide bees with plastic foundation for them to build their beeswax comb. The most common material is high density polyethylene plastic (HDPE). HDPE hasn’t been tested for bee safety. We’ll learn in time.

HDPE is an unnatural foundation for the honey bee. Scientists tested whether it interrupts hive communication and information processing by limiting the information relayed in the waggle dance. Combs with plastic foundations were significantly less effective at transmitting the 250 Hz vibrations associated with the waggle dance. Despite this, there was no reduction in the effectiveness of waggle dance communication on plastic frames.^[3] Dancing bees were still able to successfully recruit nestmates to food sources. This fearsome possibility appears to not be a risk. It says a lot about beekeepers' patterns of thought that we made plastic foundation standard before we knew.

Bees prefer beeswax. If given a choice, bees will work with beeswax before they will accept plastic as part of their hive. This should not be surprising. Leave it to people mesmerized by industrial agribusiness to take an elegant solution and introduce a bunch of new problems.

Beeswax still works just fine, as it has for 8+ million years. Beekeepers deem it less efficient. Plastic binds bees to build small honeycomb cells. Bees raise female worker bees in small cells. Beekeepers commonly provide a plastic foundation that is 100% small cells. This does not allow bees to construct larger cells where bees raise male bees. Beekeepers, in our eminent wisdom, don’t care much for male bees. They don’t forage, store nectar, construct the hive, raise young, regulate temperature or defend the hive. But they are necessary for reproduction. Healthy hives invest disproportionately in reproduction to populate the next generation with their genes. Healthy hives do this along with every other living thing. This is natural selection. We are trying to thwart the means by which healthy hives populate subsequent generations with their genes. There is remarkable wisdom, solution, and balance in nature. It says a lot about our lack of wisdom and balance that we cavalierly veto nature’s solutions.

And bees do funny things when they are not bound by plastic. They make little irregularities, like tunnels. Why bees do this I don’t know. Suffice to say they had a reason. I just assume that the bees sent a memo and I wasn’t important enough to be included.

Bees also generate perfection from the collaboration of innumerable small minds. No one is in control, and yet honey bees arrive at mathematical perfection.

Plastic is also indestructible.* You can juggle a plastic frame. You can’t juggle a beeswax frame. Good news! you don’t need to juggle beeswax frames!

*Until it destructs, breaks into particles and accumulates in living things, bees and you included.

Another entry into the debate over a better hive is the Flow Hive. It is an alluring pitch, you just tap the back of your hive and pour out honey. What’s not to like? Too often, debates over a better beehive put bee biology aside and focus on human convenience. Flow Hives are made of polypropylene plastic. Science has shown that polypropylene is responsible for a cascade of bodily and cognitive harms across the tree of life.

Flow Hive markets their frames as “food safe.” “Food safe” is an industry term. It is constructed of whole cloth. It means everything and nothing. “Food safe” is designed to lull you with a kind of calm forgetfulness, of which the human mind is by its structure peculiarly susceptible. If you are calmly forgetful we don’t have to innovate. We don’t have to do the hard work of creating better. So remember. And be riotously unsettled. Let us know that the subtle poisons we choose for you are not okay on account of their subtlety.

Bees don’t do well in a world where beekeepers choose plastic. A world where beekeepers reflexively choose plastic is a world where beekeepers reflexively make choices that are unhealthy for themselves and nature. We and the bee lose in that world. Things get worse.

Beekeepers once stood for something. There is a reason why the public has a benevolent yet curmudgeonly stick-in-the-mud idea about beekeepers. We were the one redoubt within agriculture against industrial agribusiness and all the pesticides, cruelty, and destruction that prop it up. We stood for natural systems, ecosystem integrity and humility in our approach to complex biological systems and treatment of our fellow man. We looked skeptically upon the inexorable march of agribusiness and noted our dissent. We are no longer that. We seem lost. To quote our president, “sad!” This world could use a few good, curmudgeonly beekeepers.

A good beehive starts with the natural history of the honey bee, not human convenience and newfangled contrivances. This should not surprise. Read A Better Beehive According to Science; or, Dirty Gals, for a better beehive according to, ya know, bees.

[1] Pasquini, E., Ferrante, F., Passaponti, L., Pavone, F. S., Costantini, I., & Baracchi, D. (2024). Microplastics reach the brain and interfere with honey bee cognition. Science of The Total Environment, 891, 169362. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.169362

[2] Dong, S., Ruan, Q., & Nieh, J. C. (2023). Social signal learning of the waggle dance in honey bees. Science, 379(6631), 123–126. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ade1702

[3] Seeley, T. D., Reich, A. M., & Tautz, J. (2005). Does plastic comb foundation hinder waggle dance communication? Apidologie, 36(4), 449–459. https://hal.science/hal-00892160/document