Honeybees

If you didn’t know, honeybees are dying rapidly, and it is more serious than you might think. The decline of the honeybee is fairly complicated, as we cannot simply target one cause for the honeybee’s decreasing numbers. The combination of factors includes parasitic mites, Colony Collapse Disorder, harmful pesticides, poor nutrition, and habitat loss, all of which have contributed to the loss of droves of honeybees. This issue much more important than what the attention it is getting implies, as honeybees are an essential part to the agricultural society, and the human race in general. Not only are bees responsible for making honey, but also for pollinating a large portion of crops grown around the world. If we did allow honeybees to disappear,

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").

Bees are disappearing because people are using harmful fertilizers. 25% of the managed bee population has dropped since 1990. The use of these harmful pesticides can cause a hive of bees to collapse. This is known as colony collapse disorder (CCD).

This paper reviews the phenomenon of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), or the disappearance of large swathes of the bee population in the US and elsewhere. It reviews the potential causes of CCD, including pathogens, pesticides, and other environmental factors that could contribute to bee deaths. Although many have linked the widespread use of pesticides to the phenomenon, there is no 'smoking gun' that is clearly implicated in causing CCD. The phenomenon can likely be attributed to a wide variety of factors, rather than a singular cause.

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

Colony Collapse Disorder happens when the working honey bees disappear and abandon the queen, plenty of foods, and the few nurse honey bee alone to take care of the queen. This can cause many colonies of honey bees could not survive through the winter because lack of healthy honey bees in the hive. This has happened in the past eight years. The huge number of the death of honey bees cause the decreases of the U.S. Agriculture profit since the honey bees are the best pollinators. The cause of the Colony Collapse Disorder probable because of parasites and pathogens, pollution and climate change, and genetically modified foods.

Scientists are alarmed and baffled by the decline in bee populations around the United States and other parts of the world. Since 2004 the population keeps decreasing at alarming rates. Bee researches dubbed this new phenomenon Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

According to Johns Hopkins Magazine, a magazine for a college in the US , the honey bee population is being killed by CCD. One quote that show this is “In late 2006, honey bees nationwide began disappearing in an ongoing syndrome dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD). Entire hives went empty as bees inexplicably abandoned their young and their honey” (Tregaskis 26) . This show how the issue is spreading and is important to keep it under control, also to bring awareness to the problem.

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

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

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]

This article gave me a lot of scientific background about bee and statistical information about their population changes, migration patterns, and specific seasonal behaviors. All of this key information about bees is being altered by outside factors. A major factor being climate changes and the warming of areas where bees live, work, and migrate. Because of so many bees dying, farmers may have to find ways to pollinate their crop themselves, which will cost a lot more money, take a lot more time, and be very difficult to do. Over the years, humans have forced the honeybees to adapt to certain things, but now the climates are changing so rapidly that the bees are not able to keep up any longer and have no evolved to accommodate for this. Too

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