If you like a fat, red, juicy tomato fresh from the garden in the summer, then you’d better like the bumblebee, because the former might not exist without the latter.
Yes, tomatoes can self-pollinate, but a visit by a bumblebee makes pollination 45% more likely and produces tomatoes twice the weight they’d otherwise achieve. This is science, straight from the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation.
Or, as some might say, the Big Bee lobby.
The General Assembly has many important, and even controversial, pieces of legislation to consider this session, but the one creating the most buzz is a humble bill by Sen. Mark Peake, R-Lynchburg, that would designate the brown-belted bumblebee as the state’s official native pollinator.
We know there’s a buzz because Lt. Gov. Ghazala Hashmi said so: “Your bill has created quite a buzz,” she told Peake during a routine procedural vote on the bill.
The puns about Peake’s bill are too hard to resist, but the science behind it is quite real. We think of honeybees as our main pollinators, and they do carry pollen from plant to plant quite a bit, but there are some plants they don’t pollinate. Tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, melons, raspberries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, potatoes. Shall we go on? Basically, life as we know it would not exist without the bumblebee — specifically, the brown-belted bumblebee.
OK, that might be a little hyperbolic, but what’s a Virginia summer without a fresh tomato and what’s life in general without French fries? Plus, some of those other things are good for you.
Virginia does have an official pollinator already, but it’s an interloper — the European honeybee. Those honeybees arrived in 1622, shipped here by the Virginia Company of London. Virginia’s early colonists didn’t trust local bees to do the job, which may summarize a lot of history about colonization in general, but let’s not get distracted.
Those honeybees have now colonized the continent almost as thoroughly as the people who brought them have. However, those early Virginians were wrong about how well honeybees could work, because they didn’t know about tomatoes or potatoes or lots of other things. Honeybees don’t pollinate those plants because they’re lazy and aren’t motivated. OK, maybe that’s unfair. They’re not lazy, but they are unmotivated. “Honeybees do not pollinate tomatoes because they cannot get the pollen and the flowers do not produce nectar,” the Xerces Society says in a fact sheet on our heroic bumblebee. “With no reward, honeybees will not visit the flower. Many native bees, however, know the trick to extracting tomato pollen and are, therefore, valuable pollinators.”
Peake became the point man for the bumblebee lobby through a Lynchburg member of the Garden Club of Virginia, which has pushed to recognize the brown-belted bumblebee as part of its conservation efforts. Diane Thomas, who heads the conservation and beautification programs for the Garden Club, says it’s great that the state recognizes the European honeybee, “but we want to make sure we tell an accurate story.” Or, she colorfully puts it, “If you walk through that door, you have to go all the way.”
In the close and usually collegial confines of the General Assembly, anyone who carries a bill about bumblebees is going to come in for some good-natured verbal stings, and Peake got his share when he presented the bill last week to the Senate General Laws Committee.
“Can the patron say brown-belted bumblebee three times fast?” asked Sen. Emily Jordan, R-Isle of Wight County.
Peake complied, without messing up.
A parade of representatives from environmental groups lined up to support the measure, prompting Democrat Jeremy McPike of Prince William County to quip: “The fine senator of this amazing bill is, I note, just a few weeks weaned off becoming Republican Party chair and has quickly amended and had the League of Conservation Voters, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and others come to his aid today on this fine bill.”
The buzz continued Tuesday when the bill was up for a full vote on the Senate floor. Peake called it a “momentous” bill, and Hashmi thanked him “for his honeyed speech.”
Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County, noted that Peake’s district includes both Liberty University and Thomas Road Baptist Church and asked if Peake was now in favor of teaching “the birds and native bees.”
When voting commenced, many senators voted “no” or “abstain” as a joke, but then quickly changed their votes to yes. The bill passed 36-2 and now goes to the House. Only Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, and Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, stayed as a “no” vote, although it’s unclear why.
As Peake said in committee last week: “Who among us wants to go down as being against the brown-belted bumblebee?”
Random facts about bumblebees
Unlike other bees, bumblebees are not considered to be in decline.
Bumblebees are mentioned in Shakespeare, although in “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” he calls them “humble-bees.”
One of the most popular music videos of the 1990s was “No Rain” by Blind Melon, which featured a young actress remembered as “the Bee Girl.”
