The Effect Of Neonicotinoids On Bees

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,

Now it is really turning into a desperate problem as beekeepers report bee losses of 50 - 60%. Some of the factors causing that loss are habitat loss and Varroa mites. Varroa mites are mites that inhabit a bee’s nest then lay eggs in those nest. When a bee wanders by the grown up mites to make honey in a honeycomb, the mites trap the bee in the honeycomb then eventually kill it. Bee also have other natural enemies like bears and other insects. On top of that, we have a lot of stuff against bees, mainly pesticides. Most of the pesticides we use on the crops are usually considered harmless but since the bee pollinates an astonishing number of flowers per day, the pesticides gets mixed together which can have a number of tragic

There are many things believed to be the cause of bee endangerment. Of the survey conducted, 18% believe the cause is from chemicals used on plants such as pesticides; 25% believe it is because people do not like bees and kill them; 13% believe it is from habitat destruction; 25 % believe it is from natural causes. Overall, the general population is correct with regard to why bees have become endangered. Lauren Bennett says the main cause of the rapid decline in bee populations is from natural causes such as global warming and colony collapse disorder, which is when bees abandon their hive and causes the hive to die as well. Marla Spivak, says it is from parasites. Henry Samuel says it is from neonicotinoids, which is a pesticide that is similar to nicotine.

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

Studies have shown that the percentage of the amount of bee deaths have majorly increased. During past years surveys were sent out to commercial and small-time bee farmers on their total annual loss of honey bee colonies. During the 2012 and 2013 time period the annual total loss of bee colonies was at a peak of 45% of all their colonies. The 2013 and 2014 time period dropped to 34%. Then the 2014 and 2015 time period took a 7% percent jump leaving it around 41%. The most recent and influential is the 2015 and 2016 time period, from the past year it took a 3.1% percent jump to 44.1%, and this is of 48 states. At this rate we could be losing tons of bees and that sweet honey. But why are these bees dying so quickly, some might blame it to the

Bees are important pollinators of many plants in the ecosystem (2). Recently, the decline in the number of bees in North America and Europe has shifted the research focus of many ecologists towards pesticide use (2). The impacts of pesticides on bees and other pollinators can have a major influence on honey production and biodiversity.

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

The main reason why all of the bees are dying is because of us. Our farmers spray a zika virus in the air and on their crops, causing bees to be terminated upon touch of these crops. Millions of bees are killed because of this spray, and sprays like it, but the bees that survive from these poisonous sprays come back to their hive and infect their fellow bees. Bees that were raised by humans are strong, slightly free, and hard workers were killed because, the farmer who used it did not follow the instructions to use it when the sun wasn’t out, because then the bees would be done from working and wouldn’t be killed or infected. Animals will be affected by this incident first, because if the extinction of bees were to happen, then the animals would die off.

The other problem is the impact of bee disease in growing health bee population. Honey bee diseases and bees is a serious threat to growing healthy populations of bees. Like the other animals, the application of intensive farming methods, global movements and increase in bee diseases has done a lot to diminish the population of bees. Bees are especially susceptible to the Varroa mite. This minute external parasite that plagues honey bees was discovered in 1904. It attacks by attaching itself on the bees, before sucking their blood. The after effect leaves the bees weaker and this significantly reduces their population. Besides the bees, the other pollinators are also facing many of the challenges the bees are facing. The only factor that makes the bees stand out is the fact that bees are the most important pollinator for most crop species around the world, especially those used by humans and animals.

With this being said, pesticides have a big role in the decline of bees, including the Neonicotinoids that are used to treat the seeds of many crops before sowing. On Spivaks ted talk, she stated “At the same time, we’ve started using pesticides and now every batch of pollen that a honey bee collects has at least six traces of pesticidesicides in it including neonicotinoids. These pesticides move trough plant tissue; parasites take a bite and die. But neonicotinoids make bees intoxicated and disoriented, and in high enough concentration it can kill them”(blog.ted). Neocotinoids are a new type of insecticide, increasingly used since the 1990s to control a variety of pest, such as greenfly, leaf feeding beetles and root feeding grubs (Wikipedia).

A massive decline in the honeybee population began in 2006 as a phenomenon known as “Colony Collapse Disorder” (CCD) spread across the United States and Europe. Caused by a variety of both natural and man-made threats to the eco-system of bees, CCD ultimately results in the total abandonment of a hive – the bees simply vanish. No dead bees surround the hive. And, there is no sign of a queen. The bees are nowhere to be found.

The use of neonicotinoids (neonics) are harming the bee population all around the world, especially in the United States. The crops the United States use as exports and for food are slowly dwindling with the lack of pollination from bees.

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