The Honeybee Dilemma

Honeybee on opening yellow flowers
Originally uploaded by Martin LaBar

Since so many of you seem very into bees (i.e. they backyard beekeeper here, the actual beekeeper here, and the bee lovers here, here, and here to name a few) I figured I would post the latest discoveries pertaining to CCD or Colony Collapse Disorder. This is what is causing the bees to disappear. We didn't know what was going on with the bees because there were no bodies to study.

At Penn State, the head apiarist (fancy science talk for bee genius) started doing research on these bees in greenhouses. Many theories had been tossed around as to what may have caused this. What it seemed to be, however, was something that not many people thought of as an option: A virus known as IAPV was to blame.

News of this spread quickly in the scientific community. Researchers stated that not enough work had been done to say for sure and then we forgot about those findings.

Then earlier this year a scientists finds that there are highly toxic levels of chemicals inside some of these bee bodies. In fact, they were able to find traces of pesticides in the wax and honey of these bees as well. Bees will go as far as they have to in order to reach food and if the food is covered in pesticides this can be transferred to the rest of the hive and product. Because of this, many beekeepers are asking farmers what, if any, pesticides they use before they rent out their bees.

What does this mean??? We have to protect the few bee colonies we have.

Photo: Honeybee on opening yellow flowers
Originally uploaded by Martin LaBar

Source article: here.