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Science

Killer Bees Making Super Coffee 43

Posted by michael from the nobody-tell-thinkgeek dept.
inblosam writes "An article at cnn.com describes how a insect-pollinated coffee bean plant actually has an increased yield, by 50 percent or more, when a killer bee does the pollination. The gene mixing allows for better gene selection, making better and bigger beans. Way to go killer bees. If the bees don't kill you, the gallons of coffee may." I guess I don't understand why it matters that it's a killer bee versus a regular bee. Maybe the killer bees travel farther, mixing up the pollen better?
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Killer Bees Making Super Coffee More

Killer Bees Making Super Coffee

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  • "Killer" bees were being bred for stuff like this (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 14, 2002 @12:03PM (#3702254)
    They mixed the African and European honey bees were mixed to create more healthy, productive bees... unfortunately they were also much more agressive (hence the "killer" part). If they hadn't escaped early, they would've tried to breed the agressiveness out. Over time, as killer bees and regular bees mix, they hope we'll end up with the desired productive/non-agressive bees.

    In the meantime, I guess something good can come from the killer bees anyway.

  • Not necessarily Killer Bees... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Thornae ( 53316 ) on Friday June 14, 2002 @12:06PM (#3702272)
    The slightly older and briefer BBC article [bbc.co.uk] makes no reference to killer bees, merely honeybees. Possibly CNN needed a spin for their article. I guess the only way to know for sure is to read (and understand!) the Nature article in question. Any entomologists out there want to enlighten us?

    • CNN (Score:4, Insightful)

      by DustMagnet ( 453493 ) on Friday June 14, 2002 @01:01PM (#3702749) Journal
      I was quite angry after reading this article on CNN. What's so wrong with journalism that they have to put a fake spin on articles. Some of this comes from the editors who titled the article "Killer Bees Make Killer Coffee". WTF?

      The article is about how natural environment make better coffee than monoculture farming. Among many interesting things, they said that killer bees are better than no bees.

      I sadly suspect that Slashdot would not have covered this without the killer bee hoopla.

    • From the BBC article:
      The discovery was made by a US scientist studying the effects of non-native African honeybees on coffee plantations in Panama.

      Africanized Honeybees are what Americans call "Killer Bees."

    • The real point is that large-scale sexual reproduction (such as that provided by insect pollination)is better for the plants than localized, wind-borne pollination and self-pollination. It doesn't matter what the pollinating insect is, but obviously you're better off with something local that you don't have to spend a lot of time tending.

      Self-pollination (such as is prevalent in coffee plants drenched with insecticides) is very nearly cloning. You'll remember that massive cloning of potatoes led to the Irish potato famine? It seems that a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy ad infinitum leads to weak, disease-riddled plants.

      Theories abound, including ones that feature interesting catch-phrases like "accumulated viral load", but what everyone agrees is that sexual reproduction has distinct evolutionary advantages, and organisms that use those advantages will often be more robust and "survivable" than those that don't.

      Most bees in coffee-growing areas of the world have been "Africanized" - that is, the local wimpy bees have been hybridized with more robust strains of bees originally found only in Africa. So, yes, the so-called "Killer Bees" (any bee can kill you if you are allergic to them, but it's highly unlikely otherwise) are pollinating the coffee.

      In short, the type of insects involved are unimportant to the thrust of the article, which is that better coffee comes from sustainable farming practices - and all you have to do is taste a fresh cup of shade-grown fair-trade coffee to learn the truth of that. It's the best by far.
      • "You'll remember that massive cloning of potatoes led to the Irish potato famine?"

        There was more to it than that.

        "It seems that a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy ad infinitum leads to weak, disease-riddled plants."

        No. It just leads to identical plants with identical vulnerabilities.

        "...sustainable farming...fair-trade...learn the truth of that."

        There is no truth in politics.
        • "You'll remember that massive cloning of potatoes led to the Irish potato famine?"

          There was more to it than that.

          Sure, but not that is relevant to the discussion. The relevant point is the bland generalization "biodiversity good, monoculture bad" that you as a farmer already know. I don't think it would have added anything to include an overview of the socio-political system that led to a single-crop dependency, or the wind-borne mechanism of PB fungii, or the genetic makeup of the lumper potato.
          "It seems that a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy ad infinitum leads to weak, disease-riddled plants."

          No. It just leads to identical plants with identical vulnerabilities.

          Although the plants within a single generation will be nearly identical, it is not possible in reality to produce multiple generations of perfect clones outside the laboratory. Viruses, fungi and airborne teratogens are constantly altering the genetic material of adult organisms in the wild, and the alterations are passed on to offspring when vegetative propagation is solely used (as in pre-famine Ireland). Self-pollination is better - as I said, it's "nearly" cloning, not actual cloning like planting the eyes of your lumpers. There is some error-correction implemented through sexual propagation even when it is hermaphroditic in the same individual organism. In any case, sexually propagated plants can respond to genetic damage by evolving, and the broader the population of interbreeding plants the better they can keep up with the co-evolution of their disease organisms. Plants may have evolved perfumes and markings to attract pollinators through exactly these mechanisms.
          "...sustainable farming...fair-trade...learn the truth of that."

          There is no truth in politics.

          I have no desire to argue that, but I will point out that the value of sustainable agriculture is not political. The value of non-sustainable farming is definitely political, I grant you, but maintaining the productive capacity of land is just common sense. I assume you rotate your crops and pay your labor enough to keep them from stealing regardless of your political beliefs.

          And speaking as a person who is currently drinking a cup of fair-trade, shade-grown "benevolent blend" branded coffee, I can subjectively say that it's some of the best I've ever had. Well worth the extra two or three pennies a cup it costs me. Don't knock it 'till you've tried it!

      • So, yes, the so-called "Killer Bees" (any bee can kill you if you are allergic to them, but it's highly unlikely otherwise) are pollinating the coffee.

        Just a comment: "killer bees" aren't named so for the strength of their sting, but the frequency. Common bees sting relatively rarely; killer bees will go all-out to defend their hives, and will go into a stinging frenzy at some odd provocations.

        Allergic or not, if you get 300 stings you're dead. But then odds are VERY high that you are allergic, even if you aren't aware of it. Most people are, but the allergy is dormant.

        -Billy
        • Your comment isn't unwarranted; you are correct that the difference between africanized bees and others is the distance they will pursue an enemy and the ferocity of the swarming attack.

          However, there have been remarkably few deaths from "killer bees" and I have seen film footage of native Africans receiving easily 300 or more strings. They not only didn't die, they got used to it and the older fellows didn't even bother to brush the bees away from any area except directly around the eyes.

          The "killer bee" hysteria is simply that, hysteria. I suspect more people are killed by lighting every year than by bee swarms.
    • Here is not the full Nature article, but the "News and Views" summary. As Nature is read by all sorts of scientists from physicists to molecular biologists, each major scientific article is accompanied by a summary by someone in the field explaining what the hell the article is about

      Tropical agriculture: The value of bees to the coffee harvest

      The self-pollinating African shrub Coffea arabica, a pillar of tropical agriculture, was considered to gain nothing from insect pollinators1, 2. But I show here that naturalized, non-native honeybees can augment pollination and boost crop yields by over 50%. These findings, together with world coffee-harvest statistics and results from field studies of organically shade-grown coffee, indicate that coffee plants would benefit from being grown in habitats that are suitable for sustaining valuable pollinators.

      African honeybees colonized western Panama in 1985, where they naturalized. By 1997 they had become major pollinators of coffee growing near forests at 1,500 m above sea level2. Yields of C. arabica may therefore be higher near forest, which provides a good pollinator habitat2. In a study of 50 2-year-old plants in Panama in 2001, I observed that flowers were visited not only by native pollinators, but also by the naturalized honeybees.

      Ripe berries resulting from open pollination of coffee flowers were heavier than those on control branches that had been bagged with fine-mesh material (from which pollinators were excluded), and were more abundant per flower (49% increase; P 0.01, paired t-test). The open-pollinated fruit was, on average, 7% heavier, whereas a 25% increase in mass was recorded when African honeybees had exclusively dominated the flowers2. This suggests that the contributions to final berry weight and total yield1, 2 may differ for non-native honeybees and other, natural pollinators; however, bees consistently controlled over 36% of the total production.

      Do bees control coffee harvests on a larger scale? Long-term data indicate that they do, although the results require detailed analysis. Almost 11 million hectares of coffee were harvested in 2001 (ref. 3). Cultivated areas of coffee in Ivory Coast, Ghana, Kenya, Cameroon and Indonesia have increased two- to fivefold in the past 41 years, although yields have decreased by 20-50%. El Salvador and Haiti, like other countries with intensive land usage and little natural habitat, show similar trends (Table 1)3. Pollinator loss is implicated in this decline, as sustained and aggressive cultivation may harm pollinators by removing their habitat.

      A substantial increase in Latin American coffee yield partly coincided with the establishment of African honeybees in those countries2, 4, although there was no such change in the Old World, where honeybees originated (Table 1). This comparison underlines a possible cause-and-effect relationship between the presence of social bees and coffee yield.

      Further comparison of yields from the Caribbean islands with those from Mexico and Central America suggests that social bee colonies, which exploit blooming coffee intensely, have two important effects. Such colonies, whether native or introduced, are virtually absent on Caribbean islands. On the mainland, African honeybees may replace native pollinators (primarily stingless, social bees) without affecting yields (paired t-test)2-4 but they reduce the variation in yield, as indicated by the coefficient of variance (c.v., ratio of the standard deviation to the mean).

      The c.v. magnitude for the islands had been the lowest in the region by a factor of two and has been stable for 41 years (P = 0.27, paired t-test). But after African bees arrived in Central America and Mexico, it dropped for those areas (P = 0.02, paired t-test), eventually reaching a value that is 23% less than for Caribbean islands. Moreover, the coffee yield of the islands has remained only half that of Central America and Mexico3, indicating an absence of pollination and outcrossing benefits from bees2. The low c.v. in yield in Haiti, for example (Table 1), may be derived from low variance in self-pollination and scarce pollinators.

      Recent saturation of the neotropics with feral honeybees, which compete with other flower visitors4, has caused intensive exploitation of coffee and other flowering plants and has promoted pollination stability. However, although the island of New Guinea has no honeybees, its yields remain high (Table 1), partly because its native solitary bees pollinate the obligately outcrossing coffee plant Coffea canephora there1, 3. C. canephora is grown in tropical lowlands and extensively in the Old World, but it is also wind-pollinated1.

      Declining yields can be offset by expanded cultivation or by increasing planting density, but such remedies are unstable (Table 1). Although shade conditions significantly improve the flavour of commercial coffee5, 6, coffee monocultures often lead to the removal of shade trees. The trend towards cultivating 'sun coffee' at high densities to boost yield5, 6 will eliminate sites for bee nesting and mask the erosion of pollinator populations, which is shown here to affect yield by 36%. Optimization of coffee harvests and agricultural flexibility in tropical countries in the long term will depend on a consideration of pollinator sustainability and habitat.

      DAVID W. ROUBIK

      Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Unit 0948, APO AA 34002-0948, USA
      e-mail: roubikd@tivoli.si.edu
      ------------------
      • Thanks for that. Very interesting, indeed. If I read it right, it suggests that the Africanized bees are a significant factor over the less aggressive native bees, but possibly any equally social bee would have the same effect.

        A little more informative than the news sources, anyway, although I probably wouldn't have been able to wade thru' the actual article... Much appreciated.

  • I know why... (Score:2, Funny)

    by zulux ( 112259 )
    I don't understand why it matters that it's a killer bee versus a regular bee.

    Well, killer-bees are actually a cross between the docile honey-bee and an African swarming bee.

    And if you've ever seen getto pr0n, you know how exactly how those fat bees can lay down good a luvin' spoonfull on the flower.

  • The wave of the future. Quicker to kill and polinate at the same time. Get them now while supplies last.

  • Yield 50% improved by ANY insect (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Linux_ho ( 205887 ) on Friday June 14, 2002 @12:16PM (#3702351) Homepage
    I guess I don't understand why it matters that it's a killer bee versus a regular bee.

    The article sez coffee can self-pollinate, so they didn't think insects were required. Killer bees just happened to be the insects that moved in and started improving the cross-pollination between coffee plants. Any other insect would do just as well, but a headline with "Killer Bees" in the title will grab a lot more attention, as evidenced by the Slashdot link.
    • From the article:
      "When an insect, like the Africanized bee does the pollen transportation, there's a mixing of genes, a widening of the gene pool," said Roubik. "That gives every plant a greater potential to reproduce, and creates beans that are bigger and better tasting."
      You're right, the most important aspect of this story is that they have evidence that it is better to produce shade grown coffee because it increases the probability of cross pollination. The stuff about the "killer" bees is a bit bogus but the editors must think it will generate more exposure.

      On a semi-related note, here in the US more and more growers who are using green houses are turning to bumblebees as opposed to European honey bees. The North American bumble bees turn out to be much more aggressive pollinators than the honey bees.

      • From the article:

        By 1997, these bees had become major pollinators in Panama. And while they often get a bad rap for their aggressive behavior, farmers and beekeepers are beginning to realize the advantages of the insects, not only to the coffee crop, but to thousands of other species of flowering plants, said Roubik.


        Africanized (killer) are apparently more prolific as polinators than the native insects. While the better coffee can be made from any insect, in portions of South and Central America that insect is the killer bee. Hence, the focus in the article on Africanized bees.

    • Re:Yield 50% improved by ANY insect (Score:5, Funny)

      by realgone ( 147744 ) on Friday June 14, 2002 @12:38PM (#3702550)
      Any other insect would do just as well, but a headline with "Killer Bees" in the title will grab a lot more attention

      I'll admit that, for a minute, I thought you were pulling my leg. But I went ahead and dropped "killer bees" into the last five Slashdot headlines and damned if they didn't seem more exciting all of a sudden.

      • Visual Studio .Net: Now with more Killer Bees
      • Science: Killer Bees Making Super Coffee (well, that one was fine as was...)
      • Java Meets Killer Bees: Two Reviews (nice bit of serendipity there)
      • Walmart Ships PCs With Killer Bees
      • McAfee Manufactures Killer Bee Threat
      I swear, there's some definite potential here...
  • Talk about a coffee that will give you a buzz!

  • Thanks for the mental image (Score:3, Funny)

    by JUSTONEMORELATTE ( 584508 ) on Friday June 14, 2002 @01:22PM (#3702920) Homepage
    Screw the actual article (or the CNN spin, or the /. re-spin) -- now I've got the mental image of John Belushi from the 1970's SNL set, dressed in his killer bee costume and working the espresso bar.

    Thanks! It's good to smile on Fridays!
  • I found an article a long time ago explaining why it is cheaper and more economical to grow organically. I can't find that article, however I found this "http://www.eat2k.org/research/yield_comparisons.h tml"
    • I really screwed up... I accidentally hit the submit button instead of the preview button. Oops... anyway, that link is almost valid.

      What my point was... if you consider that the reduction in yield is only a couple of percent for ogranic growing and you then subtract the costs of pesticides and herbicides then you probably get back to the same profitability. And, eventually as the supply of produce reduces by 2%, then the market will improve for farmers and they will see their profit margin rise again.

      It is really a win/win situation, but too many people have their lives invested and don't want to "bet the farm" on a gamble like organic. (Pun intended)
  • "Killer Coffee" be a better title for this one?
  • which is why people are deliberately moving them around.

    Fun with entomology

  • Africanized Beez making better java ? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 14, 2002 @05:41PM (#3704509)
    Speaking as a bee keeper I doubt that these are africanized bees. The original intent of the test program in the early 1950's to cross selected bee strains with african strains was to improve the general bee productivity in tropical climates.

    Bees do not do well in areas like the tropics and as commercial agriculture has grown the need for pollination services has grown with it. [Today about one quarter of our agriculture in the continental United States requires pollination by honey bees.]

    The first observations of africanized bees were that they were not as productive in either pollination or honey production. They are very sensitive to disturbance (as evidenced by the loss of livestock and human injury over the years in south america). They cannot be managed safely and without specific tests they cannot be identified by eye from non africanized strains.

    The common european honey bee (bees are an old world insect and all bees in the western hemisphere are immigrants) is female, lives about six weeks and travels up to 2 miles from their hive. A typical bee hive has anywhere from 10 to 50 thousand bees.

    The 'Mason Bee' is a solitary bee that while quite popular with some household gardeners has too short a life span and therefore cannot be effective in areas that have long growing seasons.

    In north america the threats to bee hives are tracheal and varroa mites (pests imported from asia in the early 1980's), foul brood (a bacterial infection) and agricultural/residential pesticides and herbicides.

    During the Reagan administration the approach was taken to let the movement of africanized bees proceed unchecked in the belief that constant exposure to feral bee populations would dampen their genome. What they had not counted on was that when a queen mates with an africanized male the africanization expresses itself by the africanized queen hatching one day earlier than the other non africanized queens. Once hatched the africanized queen expresses the normal instinct to kill the other queens in their egg chambers thereby insuring the continuance of the africanized genome.


    • Nice post. I have hundreds of solitary mining bees in my gardens; they are good pollinators while they last, but they do leave favored boring areas looking like swiss cheese, and they don't get going in time for the earliest spring-flowering plants.

      Never been stung once, and I regularly pass through clouds of them on my way to the garbage cans.

  • this is truly astounding (Score:3, Funny)

    by blablablastuff ( 577458 ) on Friday June 14, 2002 @09:54PM (#3705817)
    Scientists just discovered that pollination with another plant is more effective than self-pollination.

    This literally means that it has taken this long for them to realize that sex is better than masturbation.

    we need smarter scientists.
  • Covered in beeeeesss.... - Eddie Izzard :)
  • I just returned from a trip to Honduras where they grow a lot of our coffee. I can tell you that currently there is so much coffee in the world market that we don't need more! The people can't make a living off of coffee as a cash crop because there is too much supply in the world market and that drives the prices down. More coffee in the market means less money goes to the poor that need it. Check out fair trade coffee: http://www.globalexchange.org/economy/coffee/index . tml

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