honeybee thing
Photo by young einstein
In the past few months, U.S. beekeepers have lost a quarter of their honeybee colonies.
In her Clear Voices podcast, May Berenbaum, professor and head of the department of entomology at the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign, told Earth & Sky, “most people don’t grasp the gravity of the situation.”
We need honeybees for far more than just honey.
Honeybees pollinate the flowers of an alphabet of crops: almonds, apples, asparagus, avocados, blueberries, broccoli, cantaloupe, celery, cherries, cranberries …
Another “A,” alfalfa, is an important food for cattle.
“About a third of the American diet can be traced back to bees,” said Berenbaum, “About ninety crops depend for pollination services on this one species.” According to a Congressional study, honeybees add about $15 billion a year in value to the U.S. food supply.
Scientists are struggling to figure out the cause of what’s been termed “colony collapse disorder.” The Los Angeles Times reported that a recent study suggests that Nosema ceranae, a single-celled parasite, may be the culprit, but these findings are “highly preliminary,” according to UCSF biochemist Joe DeRisi.
One of the weird aspects about this particular bee die-off is the missing bodies. Beekeepers open the lid of their hive, expecting to find a hiveful of bees, and instead there are only a few worker bees flying around inside. The queen, honey and eggs are still in the hive. “Bees just don’t do that,” beekeeper David Hackenberg told USA Today.
May Berenbaum suspects an agent that interferes with the bees’ memory, organization, and navigation and destroys the bees’ abililty to come home. It could be a parasite, pesticide contamination, fungal disease or some combination of factors. “At this point, it’s hard to rule out any hypthesis,” she said
Read or listen: Since 2006, unprecedented honeybee decline
