How neglecting bees could endanger humans

Wed, 01 May 2013 18:50:00 +0000

If you are an almond farmer in the Central Valley of California, where 80 percent of the world’s production is grown, you had a problem earlier this spring. Chances are there weren’t enough bees to pollinate your trees. That’s because untold thousands of colonies -- almost half of the 1.6 million commercial hives that almond growers depend on -- failed to survive the winter, making this the worst season for beekeepers in anyone’s memory. And that is saying a lot, because bees have been faring increasingly poorly for years now.

Much of this recent spike in bee mortality is attributed to Colony Collapse Disorder, a mysterious condition where all the worker bees in a colony simply fly off as a group and never make it back to the hive. Scientists have been studying this odd phenomenon for years and they still aren’t sure why it is happening.

Bees to EPA: Where’s your sting?

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 20:00:00 +0000

The list of fruits, vegetables and field crops that rely on honeybees for pollination is truly astonishing: apples, avocados, carrots, cotton seed, peaches, pumpkins, strawberries, sunflowers … it goes on and on. There’s stuff on the list that I’m not fond of, like onions, and things I couldn’t live without, like peanuts (well, peanut butter, anyway). The same is surely true for you. So it should frighten us all to learn how badly honeybees fared last year, as a mysterious malady kept right on killing them.

Salon.com > bees

How neglecting bees could endanger humans

Bees to EPA: Where’s your sting?