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bout 2 months ago, seven species of yellow-faced, wasp-like Hawaiian bees became the first bee to be placed on the endangered species list in the United States. While these bees are responsible for a certain degree of solitary pollination, they are not honeybees and not responsible for the mainstream pollination of the food that we eat. But don’t let that tidbit give you a false sense of security. The endangerment of these bees bringing to light the current dangers that face honeybees in America, which are quite alarming. The honeybees are going through a process called colony collapse disorder or CCD. CCD is the phenomenon where the majority of worker bees in a colony either die off or leave their queen behind and very few bees to care for the hive. John Swan, the current vice president of the Travis County Beekeeper’s Association and owner of Wicked Bee Apiary and Removal Services, says that a number of factors contribute to this effect; taking away the bees’ native food sources, spraying them with toxins and chemicals and introducing them to new parasites are among them. “The bees have so many hardships against them right now with the lack of food, all the pesticides and then the natural predators and bests and natural diseases, that they just can’t cope,” Swan said. Honeybees in the United States are
responsible for one third of the food we eat today. Almost all fruits and vegetables are primarily pollinated by honeybees and all nuts in the United States are as well. Beekeepers are hired to bring their bees to the fields of farmers and larger agricultural conglomerates for the purpose of pollinating their crops. 75 percent of all agriculture needs to be pollinated in some way, and the bees are the most productive way of doing it. “An almond orchard can produce five pounds of almonds per acre if they don’t have bees,” said Les Crowder, a world traveling beekeeping guru and author of “Topbar Beekeeping”. “They can produce 3500 pounds per acre if they do have bees.” That’s an immense difference, especially when it makes up one third of the food Americans eat. But the pesticides that the bees are being sprayed with are the primary issue that are causing the population of bees to decrease at concerning rates. The toxins act as a fertilizer would; their goal is to enable the bees to be as efficient as possible in pollinating crops. Neonicotinoids are one of these toxins. They negatively affect the neuro-transmitters in the bees’ brains, which affect their motor skills in that they can’t find their way back to their own hives and colonies and they can’t taste the nectar of that flowers produce. This means that they cannot figure out which flowers are producing the nectar needed for pollination purposes but also to feed them-
Nov. | Dec. 2016
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