Bees And Its Effect On Our Lives

Honey bees are one of the world’s most fascinating insects. Although dangerous when provoked many people underestimate there economic importance into our global system. It is a well known fact that bees are great pollinators and are responsible for most of the food we eat but unfortunately the bee population has been in decline for a few years due to Colony Collapse Disorder also known as (CCD). There are many reasons for the decline in bee population. Some of the reasons are that the human population is evidently increasing at a demanding rate. So the need for more land to create property, demand in food is growing meaning an increase of pesticides.

Another event more recently was reported in Pennsylvania where Keepers reported a 53% loss of their hives. But what made this event most serious was the loss of 1/3rd of bee hives within the United States as a whole. This event appeared to have no particular rhyme or reason for this cause and no singular circumstance could be pointed to as an exact cause of such mass destruction of one species that is crucial to food production within the United States ("Honey Bees and Colony Collapse Disorder").

The presence of a bee generally scares people. So they swat at it, which makes the bee angry and defensive, which causes the bee to sting. Once the bee stings someone, it dies. Most people might think their death is a good thing. Unfortunately, various species of bees have been added to the endangered species list (Kennedy). Bees pollinate about 70% of the crops used by 90% of the world (What Would Happen) and as of February 2017, 10 million bees have died since 2010 ( Bennett). Bees need to be saved to ensure the Earth’s survival, along with our own.

Before we started researching this project we didn’t know how important bees are to our environment. In general, we can help solve this problem in our environment by limiting the use of pesticides. Creating regulations and laws limiting and controlling the use of neonicotinoid and coumaphos pesticides would greatly help the bees population. We can also reward farmers for practices that help wild bee populations thrive, such as leaving habitat for bees in their surrounding fields, alternating crops so bees have food all year long, and not using harmful

The colony collapse disorder has been threatening the United States for many years. Reports show excessive numbers of honeybees dying off. According to the Bee Informed Partnership and USDA’s annual survey, during the winter of 2013-2014, the mortality of managed honeybee colonies was 23.2. The previous winter’s report showed a loss of 30.5 percent of the colonies and thus, the winter 2013-2014 results might show some improvement. However, beekeepers persist that the still declining honeybee colonies are becoming too low for colony collapse disorder to be considered a solved issue. Approximately two-thirds of the beekeepers reported losses greater than the acceptable 18.9 percent mortality rate, thus deeming the losses greater than what is economically sustainable. The issue

Where would we be without the honey bee? Around 2006, a decline in the honey bee population was noticed throughout the world. Beekeepers started noticing that many of their honey bee colonies were dying off, weakening, or completely leaving their hives. As the problem became more and more prevalent, it was given the name Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Scientist studying the sudden death and disappearance of the bees found problems that they were not able to explain. The honey bee decline became worldwide news as more and more beekeepers reported unexplained loss of honey bee hives. The common indicators of colony collapse disorder are the rapid loss of adult worker bees from affected colonies as evidenced by weak or dead colonies with

The article “Hivey Leaguers” discusses problems affecting the bee population in the United States ranging from chemicals and insecticides to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Colony Collapse Disorder occurs when the worker bees disappear from the hives, leaving behind the queen and the nurses to take care of the immature bees. This newly discovered threat to bee populations caused widespread panic in the entomologist community and lead to a race to find the cause, and the relative cure. Though this new disorder was a danger, the real bane of the bees was a much more sinister, and domestic, threat.

According to the article, Honey Bee Heath and Colony Collapse Disorder, honey bees around the U.S are slowly and puzzlingly disappearing. This slow disappearance of the honey bee population is caused by a disorder known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD.) Colony Collapse Disorder causes adult honey bees to completely “vanish” leaving behind only the queen bee along with immature bees. Although this disease is receiving a lot of attention and research on CCD is taking place, the causes and treatments for Colony Collapse Disorder are still undefinable as well. Some may ask, “Who cares? Why is it important that bees are disappearing?” It is important because bees are the foundation to U.S agriculture and they are vital to worldwide economic stability which is why finding the cause and treatment for CCD is a top priority for scientists and researchers around the world.

From around the year 2006, many bee farmers in the U.S.A and some parts of Europe started reporting sharp declines in their bee stocks. The reason for this declining numbers was not known and therefore scientists named it colony collapse disorder (CCD). Colony collapse disorder (CCD) is a not a very old phenomena and it became popular when large number of bee colonies started disappearing. The disappearing was mysterious since no dead bees were found in or around the beehives after a colony’s number was reported to have gone down or vanished. This prompted a lot of study and investigations to uncover the mystery and to establish possible remedies. Among the many reasons for the causes of the CCD

You could start by planting more flowers, especially bright red ones that the bees will be more attracted to. You could limit how much pesticide you use. You could simply support your local honey farms where bees are kept. Finally, you could do the most important thing, which is to spread what you’ve learned. By telling others about what’s happening to the bees, more people are informed about the subject. The more people that are informed about the subject, the more people care about the subject. This could potentially cause a change in society to help us all become more bee

Colony Collapse Disorder not only affects honey bees, but they also affects wild bees. Richard Gerber quotes “Many people would be surprised to know that 90% of the feral (wild) bee population in the United States has died out” (Gerber). With 90 percent of wild bees extinct, this astounding number really makes you wonder if this goes above and beyond the issues researchers are looking into. Is there something else that researchers and scientist may be overlooking for there to be such a diminishing population of wild bees? Gerber says that since 2007, 22 states have reported tens of thousands of honey

This lead me to the question, Should the United States stabilize the diminishing bee population in reaction to Colony Collapse Disorder? And after my research, I have concluded that America should actually become involved and stabilize the bee population, keeping them from going extinct.

Bee decline is a significant sustainability issue of today’s environment. Bees are in decline due to multiple interacting causes. These causes are diseases and parasites, use of pesticides, monoculture and flowerless landscapes (Spivak, 2013). The diseases and parasites cause bees to become ill. This makes it harder for bees to access food, as they are required to travel large distances due to large monocultures and flowerless landscapes, since changes in farming practices after WWII, when cover crops of clover and alfalfa, which are nutritious for bees, were no longer used (Spivak, 2013). The increased use of pesticides also causes bee decline, due to bees consuming them, causing death, or not finding their way back to the hive due to intoxication.

Problem: Decreasing Bee population caused by Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) During the 1980s onwards, the population of the bees had decreased at an alarming rate. The cause of the decline was “due to Varroa and tracheal mites: The first Varroa mite infestation was reported in 1987; tracheal mites were first detected in 1984.” [8] These die-offs forced many bee-keepers out of employment. These die-offs during the past were called by various names: “spring dwindle disease, fall dwindle disease, autumn collapse, May disease and disappearing disease.”[3]

Honey bees, feared by the misinformed and admired by the intelligent, are dying. The interest in bees from many environmentalists is not for a sudden cause, as this issue is not new to the world. Honey bees as a population have been in decline for years but have yet to reach the endangered species list anywhere in the United States except for Hawaii. Many people kill bees that buzz around joyfully, simply because they are afraid of being stung by them; however, a vast majority of bees do not sting and the others do not care. This unfortunate commonality is not even one of the top causes of the worldwide epidemic of honey bees. Although bees are jokingly idolized on the internet in pictures and videos as a result of a popular children’s movie, their population decline is in fact quite serious. Honey bees and other pollinators like birds and insects ensure the pollination of flowering plants and crops all around the globe. Not only do honey bees pollinate plants that produce the foods that humans eat, but they also pollinate trees that produce clean oxygen for Earth. Without honey bees, the world as we know it could soon end, due to carbon dioxide pollution and lack of farmable foods. The population of honeybees and other important pollinator-bee species is dwindling due to a dilemma known to scientists as colony collapse disorder (CCD) because of the use of bee-killing pesticides, known as neonicotinoids, the decrease of flower meadows in the world, and the general increase