To advocate for bees, UCI students use Valentine’s Day staples of flowers and chocolate

Shawn Archbold handed out chocolate, flowers and coffee to strangers on Thursday, Valentine’s Day.

No, he wasn’t looking for a date, although he was trying to spark a connection between the importance of honey bees to the U.S. food supply and pesticide use.

“Bees pollinate everything from chocolate, to flowers to coffee. Without bees, we’d have no Valentine’s Day,” he said to fellow students walking on Ring Road just outside Engineering Hall on the campus of UC Irvine.

Archbold, 20, an environmental science and policy major, is chapter chair of CalPIRG, a student advocacy group that pushes for clean energy use and other green issues, cheaper textbooks and an end to student homelessness.

On this day, about 10 CalPIRG volunteers stopped students in the rain, offering them goodies as well as a short lecture on how dying bees can thwart our food supply.

That connection had never dawned on Karina Khadarian, 23, a chemical engineering student with a minor in sustainability, until she put two and two together from a class lecture and from Archbold’s display, which included booths, a table with information and a person dressed as a bumble bee.

“You don’t necessarily think about it. But it is opportunities like this when you hear about it,” she said. “It was a moment of realization.”

Busy bees

Bees pollinate 150 crops in the United States. When they suck nectar from flower to flower, they also transfer pollen, which fertilizes plants so the world can enjoy blueberries, almonds and yes, even coffee and chocolate.

The National Agricultural Statistics Service reports about a 40 percent loss of honey bee colonies in the United States every year from a syndrome called colony collapse disorder, meaning the worker bees are abandoning the hives, often leaving the queen alone.

The NASS reported 2.4 million honey-bee hives in 2008, down from 4.5 million in 1980.

From 2007-2013, the agency reported 10 million colony deaths. Scientists point to viruses, fungi, pests, habitat destruction and other causes.

One that has gained prominence in the scientific world in the last few years is neonicotinoids, or “neonics,” a class of pesticides used on ornamental and cash crops. In the last five years, studies point to a correlation between “neonics” and bee deaths.

That’s why CalPIRG and Archbold are asking that UCI stop using all synthetic pesticides, including neonicotinoids.

“We think it is important to move away from using pesticide like neonicotinoids,” Archbold said.

Irvine goes organic

Three years ago, the city of Irvine agreed to use organic treatments in landscaping and hold back on synthetic pesticide use “only if necessary” after pressure from Non Toxic Irvine, a grass-roots group concerned about pesticide use and its ties to cancer and public health.

“The reality is none of these pesticides are absolutely selective for a certain insect,” said Bruce Blumberg, a UCI professor of development and cell biology and scientific advisor to the group. “It would be wonderful if they only kill fire ants or mosquitoes but it doesn’t work that way.”

He agrees many factors may be causing colony collapse, but he wants to see all cities and universities remove neonicotinoids from the environment in order to better determine if they are a cause.

Kim Konte, one of the founders of Non Toxic Irvine, said her group is talking to UCI to get the university to use less or no synthetic pesticides.

“We feel the bees are the canary in the coal mine: Indicators of a bigger problem,” she said. “It doesn’t help that UCI isn’t organically maintained yet.”

CalPIRG wants to see Irvine and UCI become “Bee Friendly Cities” that commit to using organic pesticides and providing more habitat for plants that attract bees.

So far these cities in California have gained that designation: Fort Bragg, Orland, Redding, San Francisco, Woodland,  Santa Barbara and Thousand Oaks.

Archbold says even if not many passing by share his concerns yet — he thinks one guy who picked up flowers forgot to buy some for his girlfriend — he hopes he’s been successful in making a few more people aware of neonicotinoids.

It’s “the best step to make sure bees have a sustainable future,” he said.