There is a lot to learn from bees, their health and their behavior. Beekeepers consider them canaries in the coal mine for climate change.
Durango’s bees are sending one message in particular: It’s too hot.
In her 18 years of beekeeping, Carol Tyrell, vice president of the Four Corners Beekeepers Association, said she has seen noticeable shifts in local climate conditions over the past three to four years.
She has watched the warmer winters and reduced snowpack cause bees to fly during months when they would normally remain clustered inside their hives.
This year has been the most drastic shift, she said. And after one of the warmest winters on record and a stretch of extreme heat, bees in Southwest Colorado are showing the effects of rapid weather swings.
“It’s definitely created a challenge for the poor bees,” said Chelsea Farley, treasurer of the Four Corners Beekeeper Association. “I’ve even seen some dead bumblebees on the trails near my house.”
Melissa Schreiner, an entomologist with the CSU Extension office, said a mild winter likely made survival easier for honey bees. Overall, bees had a “really easy break.”
But that easy break came with consequences.
Across Colorado, bee activity is running weeks ahead of schedule. Swarming and colony growth are happening “a month early, maybe,” she said, noting similar reports from Extension agents along the Front Range. Her office has also received an unusually high number of early-season calls from beekeepers.
That might sound extra productive of bees – but the early start has collided with unstable spring weather.
Under typical conditions, nectar-producing plants bloom in stages. This year, early warmth triggered widespread, simultaneous blooming – followed by hard freezes that damaged blossoms and killed buds, abruptly cutting off nectar flow, beekeepers said.
Without enough resources, honey bee colonies can starve – either over winter or in early spring drought conditions, said Adrian Carper, pollinator conservation program manager for Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
The warm winter forces bees to burn through stored honey more quickly, leaving them vulnerable when spring forage is unreliable. It results in a mismatch as bees are active and reproducing while food sources are scarce.
Beekeepers are closely monitoring hives for signs of starvation.
Since they are out and flying, honey bees are still collecting pollen, which signals colonies to start making babies. That means more mouths to feed at a time when nectar is limited, Tyrell said.
Many beekeepers have stepped in to prevent their hives from starving.
Tyrell feeds her colonies honey they produced in previous seasons, avoiding outside honey that can introduce disease. Others, like Farley, supplement with sugar water, which supports wax production and comb building but lacks the nutritional value of natural nectar.
While honey bees offer a visible example, they are not the only species affected.
Colorado is home to hundreds of native bee species, including bumblebees that act as a “canary in the coal mine” for climate change, Carper said. Unlike honey bees, most native bees are solitary and complete their life cycles within a single year, making them harder to monitor over time.
However, long-term trends and modeling offer insight. The Western Bumblebee, the namesake bumblebee of the West, Carper said, has declined about 60% from its known historic distribution over the past 20 years.
The decline is likely because of the combination of stresses caused by a warming climate that pushes the Western Bumblebee outside its temperature tolerance, he said. The bees die when they get too hot.
“They’re under a whole bunch of different stresses right now,” Carper said. “And you know, the weather patterns that we see right now definitely have impacts.”
Current modeling predicts the species will likely go extinct by 2050.
Research from the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Crested Butte shows climate change is also disrupting the timing between plants and pollinators, “driving a wedge” between when flowers bloom and when pollinators are active.
What that means for the broader ecosystem remains unclear.
Pollinators contribute tens of millions of dollars to agricultural production in Colorado, Carper said, but their role in supporting tourism – from wildflower displays to mountain landscapes – is harder to quantify.
“It’s all an interconnected web of biodiversity,” he said. “When you take one linchpin out of the system, it’s hard to predict how the system will respond.”
Southwest Colorado beekeepers are learning to adapt with their hives.
One approach is insulating hives to mimic the conditions of natural tree cavities, sometimes called “bee trees,” Tyrell said.
Better insulation reduces the need for bees to cluster tightly and generate heat, lowering their energy use and helping conserve honey stores through winter.
For non-beekeepers, she said, helping bees can be as simple as planting a diversity of flowers.
“Not everyone can be a beekeeper,” she said. “But everyone can be a bee feeder.”
jbowman@durangoherald.com
