Saving the Honeybees
By: Diana Cox-Foster and Dennis vanEngelsdorp
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- The mysterious ailment called colony collapse disorder has wiped out large numbers of the bees that pollinate a third of our crops
- Millions of beehives worldwide have emptied out as honeybees mysteriously disappear, putting at risk nearly 100 crops that require pollination
- Research is pointing to a complex disease in which combinations of factors, including farming practices, make bees vulnerable to viruses
- Taking extra care with hive hygiene seems to aid prevention. And research into antiviral drugs could lead to pharmaceutical solutions
- Many of the remaining colonies had lost large numbers of workers, and only the young workers and the queen remained and seemed healthy
- Spring of 2007 revealed that a fourth of U.S. bee keepers had suffered similar losses and that more than 30 percent of all colonies had died
- The bee loss has raised alarms because one third of the world’s agricultural production depends on the European honeybee
- Large, monoculture farms require intense pollination activity for short periods of the year, a role that other pollinators such as wild bees and bats cannot fill
- Ruled out many potential causes for CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder) and found many possible contributing factors
- Bees suffering from CCD tend to be infested with multiple pathogens, including a newly discovered virus, but these infections seem secondary or opportunistic—much the way pneumonia kills a patient with AIDS
- There may be no easy remedy to CCD. It may require taking better care of the
environment and making long-term changes to our beekeeping and agricultural practices - Even before colony collapse, honeybees had suffered from a number of ailments that reduced their populations
- Although CCD probably will not cause honey bees to go extinct, it could push many bee keepers out of business
- If beekeepers’ skills and know-how become a rarity as a result, then
even if CCD is eventually overcome, nearly 100 of our crops could be left without pollinators and large-scale production of certain crops could become impossible - We would still have corn, wheat, potatoes and rice. But many fruits and vegetables we consume routinely today such as apples, blueberries, broccoli and almonds—could become the food of kings
- Our first thought was varroa mites. These aggressive parasites were largely responsible for a 45 percent drop in the number of managed bee colonies worldwide between 1987 and 2006
- Mature varroa females feed on hemolymph, the bees’ blood. The mites also
carry viruses and actively inhibit the hosts’ immune responses - Found symptoms never observed before, such as scar tissue in the internal organs
- In the gut contents we found spores of nosema, single-celled fungal parasites that can cause
bee dysentery - The bees were all sick, but each colony seemed to suffer from a different combination
of diseases - We hypothesized that something had compromised the bees’ immune system, making them susceptible to any number of infections that healthy colonies would normally fend off
- One theory favored by many concerned citizens was that bees could have been poisoned by
pollen from genetically modified crops, specifically the so-called Bt crops - Bt crops contain a gene for an insecticidal toxin produced by the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis
- Another popular theory, and a more credible one, blamed synthetic poisons. The two main
suspects were acaricides chemicals beekeepers use to keep mites in check and pesticides, either in the environment or in the very field crops the bees were pollinating - This class of insecticides mimics the effects of nicotine a natural defense that tobacco plants deploy against leaf-eating pests and is more toxic to insects than it is to vertebrates
- Experts also suspected that the bees’ natural defenses might be undermined by
poor nutrition - Honeybees and wild pollinators, too no longer have the same number or variety of flowers available to them because we humans have tried to “neaten” our environments
- The diets of honeybees that pollinate large acreages of one crop may lack important nutrients, compared with those of pollinators that feed from multiple sources, as would be typical of the natural environment
- But one bee virus stood out, as it had never been identified in the U.S.: the Israeli acute paralysis virus, or IAPV
- From subsequent work on IAPV, we know that at least three different strains of the virus exist and that two of them infect bees in the U.S.
- One of the strains most likely arrived in colonies flown in from Australia in 2005 after the U.S. government lifted a ban on honeybee importation that had been in effect since 1922
- T he other strain probably showed up earlier and is quite different that may have gone through importation of royal jelly or a pollen supplement, or it may have hitchhiked into the
country on newly introduced pests of bees - The growing consensus among researchers is that multiple factors such as poor nutrition
and exposure to pesticides can interact to weaken colonies and make them susceptible to
a virus-mediated collapse - Unfortunately, vaccines will not work on honeybees, because
the invertebrate immune system does not generate the kind of protection against specific agents that vaccines induce in humans and other mammals - Meanwhile many beekeepers have had some success at preventing colony loss by redoubling
their efforts at improving their colonies’ diets, keeping infections and parasites in check and practicing good hygiene - Humankind needs to act quickly to ensure that the ancient pact between flowers and pollinators stays intact, to safeguard our food supply and to protect our environment for generations to come
Scientists and experts have long discovered trying to figure out the mysterious disappearance of bees. With bees out of the picture, a static shock has stunned peoples' reaction towards their ability to conduct crop productions. Knowing that they cannot do this process on their own without these important pollinators, its safe to say that they must be protected and handled well as many crops and other food sources we have may also be wiped out and so will the bees. Imagining life without fruits and vegetables that dependently grow from the bees pollination would be a tragic nightmare. Having food sources limited by a far margin will surely increase chances of starvation and other likely events. Researchers show that the reason for the rapid decline in population of bees are related to many factors such as CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder), viruses associated with IAPV (Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus), parasites like varroa mites that consume on bees' blood, and poor nutrition due to lack of flowers and other plants due to human contributions in trying to "neaten" the environment which leads in to a weakened immune system. However, measures have been made to reverse this trend. Unfortunately, the method of providing the bees with vaccines did not work because the invertebrate immune system is different from humans and other mammals. In the end, humans must do their part in supporting the bees and other pollinators to keep our food supply efficient and protecting the environment in means of sustaining the flowers and other plants so that future generations can be fulfilled with needs met.
The article suggests heavily on the alarming issues of bees and how we need to make haste in resolving them. We often take for granted in what we have, especially the food that we eat are often something we don't think about like where is the source that is providing this food. Not acting quickly enough would lead to some of our favorite delectables and meals to erase from existence as these precious bees are an extremely important species to be here on Earth. Without them, issues of food source being depleted and humankind would suffer in making its efforts to find other ways to grow their crops would normally be nearly impossible or not even possible at all. Our damaging acts that harms the environment by clearing the land composed of plants waiting to be grown by bees who pollinate them is a growing problem because bees require nutrients in order to carry out their duties by traveling distances from plant-to-plant and when pollinated it can supply us food. Its a whole systematic life cycle that needs to be preserved so that not only bees can live off longer and increasing its population but also for the human society where generations that come after us can still have what we have now.