Bees
The Importance of Bee’s To Our Crops
Something very peculiar has been happening to honeybees: they are disappearing without a trace in alarmingly large numbers. For the last couple of years, beekeepers across the nation have been opening up their boxes to find much of their bee populations missing – sometimes more than half of their original colonies – for no apparent reason. This has led to the naming of this strange phenomenon, Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), and a desperate albeit under-funded search to find a direct cause and cure.
Bees leave their hives in search of pollen and nectar, but many are simply never returning to their colonies. Most states (35 and counting) have reported mysterious and unprecedented losses anywhere from 30%-70% in their returning bee populations (a loss of up to 20% is considered normal.) Researchers believe the bees are becoming disoriented in flight, succumbing to exhaustion and cold, but are perplexed as to the actual cause of their widespread perishing.
And the theories range widely. Recently, the American Beekeeping Federation has fingered the Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV) as a possible culprit, a virus apparently imported from Australia. However, researchers caution that they cannot prove this to be a direct cause of CCD. Others believe the varroa mite could allow for the onset of CCD, as it severely stressed colonies. Other pathogens could be responsible for triggering CCD, as could environmental chemicals (to include pesticides, fungicides and herbicides), but none of these factors has been determined to be a direct cause.
To a public that is loathe to have sympathy for bees, this may seem like a blessing, but in all actuality, it could mean catastrophe. That is because as nature’s most effective and efficient pollinators, honeybees are responsible for the fertilization of our crop-bearing plants. According to a Cornell University study, honeybees pollinate more than $14 billion in seeds and crops annually in the United States. One in three foods we consume has been pollinated by a honeybee, meaning losses of honeybees will mean enormous losses in numerous fruit, vegetable and nut crops, meaning ramifications for our farmers, our economy – our food supply.
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