Vanishing Act Research Paper

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 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.

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

As the Belgian writer Maurice Maeterlinck once said: ‘‘If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.’’ The abovementioned quote that was used by the famous astrophysicist Albert Einstein many years later proves that the importance of honeybees in our ecosystems is a known fact since the beginning of the 20th Century. It has been 15 years that the worldwide bee population’s decline, the colony collapse disorder (CCD), is at an alarming rate, which concerns the whole scientific domain. Many companies, environmentalist groups and

Bees are very important to humanity and the world we live in because they provide the most efficient way to pollinate plants. Without them, wildlife would be greatly impacted in negative ways. The purpose of this research paper is to bring awareness and insight into the declining population of bees, how detrimental it is,the way it affects humans and nature as a whole. If drastic measures are not taken in a timely manner it will not be beneficial for our society. In the world, there are about 25,000 different types of bee species with about 4,000 in North America which can be then subdivided into nine families of bees(One Green Planet, n.d.). Bees help contribute roughly two hundred and sixty-four billion dollars to the global economy.

“Neonicotinoids are a class of pesticides that are known to have acute and chronic effects on honey bees and other pollinator species, and are considered a major factor in overall population declines. Twenty-nine independent scientists conducted a global review of 1,121 independent studies and found overwhelming evidence of pesticides linked to bee declines.”

The human population is exploding and demands more food to sustain itself. With the demand for more food we have used vast amounts of land for agriculture to grow everything we need. All of the crops we rely on require pollination from the single greatest pollinator, the honey bee. Honey bees are used all over the world to pollinate just about everything from orchids to almonds. Unfortunately honey bees are under siege and their numbers are dwindling quickly.

Decline of the honey bee population is an undoubtedly urgent problem that requires a swift and effective solution. The survival of our species and many others are very reliant on the success and fecundity of the honey bee populations. A large portion of the earth’s biodiversity is rather dependent on the service that honey bees provide, their pollination allows plants to flourish and therefore provide sustenance for the surrounding species. Unfortunately there are numerous and increasing negative impacts on the honey bee species ability to complete this vastly important natural service.

Biologists Antonina Rişcu and Marian Bura stand by the theory that pesticides play a large role in the endangerment of bee species in their article “The Impact Of Pesticides On Honey Bees And Hence On Humans.” The article includes other possible causes for the endangerment of bees, including parasites, disease, climate, and pesticides. However, the authors focus on the idea that beekeepers themselves could be poisoning the bees with the inappropriate use of pesticide products (Rişcu, 2013; Bura, 2013).

Pesticides harm the ability of bees to collect food and are as well as killing them (“The Harmful Effect of Pesticides on Honey Bees”: hiveandhoneyapiary.com,). Since pesticides are utilized broadly in cropping systems with a final goal to eradicate herbivorous insects, one is left to consider the potential for non-target compound impacts on foraging honey bees. Additionally being presented to poisons while scavenging, honey bees likewise may experience poisons by drinking water tainted with chemical runoff, experiencing different chemicals (family unit, business, and so forth.) through contact outside of the hive. (“Pollinator Protection” Colony Collapse Disorder: epa.gov, April 18, 2017). Neonicotinoids are “any of a class of broad-spectrum insecticides having a chemical structure similar to that of nicotine and acting on the central nervous system of insects by selectively binding to nicotinic acetylcholine receptors” (“Merriam Webster” Neonicotinoids: merriam-webster.com, June 15, 2017) “In October of 2012, the Harvard team setup 18 hives at three different locations in

Over the past decade bee populations have been dropping drastically. A 40% loss of honeybees happened in the U.S. and U.K. lose 45% of its commercial honeybee since 2010. This is a phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in which worker bees from a beehive abruptly disappear in a short time. These data are definitely

United States beekeepers have reported that 33 percent of bee colonies have been lost since 2006 (Palmer). Honeybees are important to the environment. These bees help pollinate many different plants and the loss of bees will have a great impact on the environment. There is no proven reason why bee population is declining, but there are a few causes that could be the reasons why this is happening. The population of different species of bees are declining, but this can be stopped by a few solutions.

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

Several theories have been suggested for the decline, including some more bizarre than others. Examples of these ideas include mobile phones interrupting the bee's ability to navigate, and even suggesting the cause to be a plot by Al-Qaida to destroy agriculture in the USA [Benjamin. A, 2009]. Pesticide use has always been in contention as the root of the various declines. In the USA, most colony losses were resultant to pesticide exposure [Johnson. R.M, 2010]. In 1994, a 40% decline of colonies was seen in France. During the investigation, multiple sources came up with the same explanation; a new pesticide was being used [Benjamin. A, 2009]. Bee deaths as a result of pesticide poisoning have become all too common, dating back to the use of synthetic pesticides after the second