The Plight of the Honeybee
Mass deaths in bee colonies may mean disaster for farmers--and your favorite foods
By Bryan Walsh
Monday, Aug. 19, 2013
You can thank the Apis
mellifera, better known as the Western honeybee, for 1 in every 3 mouthfuls
you'll eat today. Honeybees — which pollinate crops like apples, blueberries
and cucumbers — are the "glue that holds our agricultural system
together," as the journalist Hannah Nordhaus put it in her 2011 book The
Beekeeper's Lament. But that glue is failing. Bee hives are dying off or
disappearing thanks to a still-unsolved malady called colony collapse disorder
(CCD), so much so that commercial beekeepers are being pushed out of the
business.
So what's killing the honeybees?
Pesticides — including a new class called neonicotinoids — seem to be harming
bees even at what should be safe levels. Biological threats like the Varroa
mite are killing off colonies directly and spreading deadly diseases. As our
farms become monocultures of commodity crops like wheat and corn — plants that
provide little pollen for foraging bees — honeybees are literally starving to
death. If we don't do something, there may not be enough honeybees to meet the
pollination demands for valuable crops. But more than that, in a world where up
to 100,000 species go extinct each year, the vanishing honeybee could be the
herald of a permanently diminished planet.
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