THE staggering decline of honey bee colonies has alarmed experts across the United States, but an unconventional apiculturist in California thinks he has found a way to save them. Michael Thiele has championed an approach he calls the “rewilding” of honeybees, allowing them to live as they did for millions of years in natural log hives high above the ground. “We can do this very, very simple thing return bees into their natural nest environment, into their natural biosphere,” said German-born Thiele at his home in Sebastopol, California. “If we lose them due to human-induced mass extinction, will there be a tomorrow?”

Thiele’s method consists of hollowing out logs and strapping them high on tree trunks to mimic bees’ hives before they were domesticated. He also sometimes suspends them from barn rafters or perches them high on wooden tables for a similar effect. Honey bees are critical to the planet’s ecosystem because they pollinate plants that produce about a quarter of the food consumed by Americans, according to US government reports. Last winter, US beekeepers lost almost 40pc of their colonies, according to a report this year by the Bee Informed Partnership. Habitat loss, along with heavy pesticide use, climate change and increasing urbanisation are the main causes for declining bee populations, experts say.

Thiele does not consider himself a beekeeper in the conventional sense. He created his Apis Arborea firm (Latin for bees in trees) solely to rewild honeybees and said he does not farm the honey the bees produce unless the colony leaves the hive or dies. His hives, he said, are both a conservation project and a personal mission. “It’s almost as if honey bees make the fragility of life so palpable,” he said. “And as if they are really mirroring where we are on this time on this planet.”

Published in Dawn, October 25th, 2019