The secret to CCD seems to be as follows. the problem is not only the pesticides that the bees pick up on their daily hunts, but an abundance of stress brought on by the pesticides. The bees that pick up the peasticides become sluggish because the amount of poison in the poll on is not fatal. Because they become sluggish, the bees cannot keep up with their work in the hive. This creates more stress for the other healthy bees in the colony because they have to pick up the slack from the sick, pollo. collecting bees. As the stress grows, productivity decreases and and the health of the hive begins to deminish at faster rates. When bees leave the hive stressd out and with low health, they can become lost and cannot find their way back to their home. This explains the drastic number of missing bees, but no dead bodies found in the hive.
Honey bees and Bumble bees are some of the few animals that are considered eusocial. This includes the following:
- The presence of several generations in a single nest at the same time
- Cooperation by some members of the society in caring for offspring that are not their own
- Division of labor with queens that reproduce a lot and workers that reproduce very little if at all
The construction of a Hoeny bee hive is very intricate, with different jobs assigned to bees of different ages and gender.
Bees cannot just be classified as brainless insects that have to meaning. Clearly they feel the affects of sick and unhealthy members of their hive, respond only to one queen at a time, and work together to raise new members of the hive. Bees form a working community that can be easily destroyed if the members are out of sync. It is important to care for these bees and their communities. This is why I've decided to take up bee keeping.
I agree with the idea that our bees are extremely important to both our ecosystems and our food production in the United States, and pretty much everywhere else. Without bees, farmers and homeowners alike would have to pollinate their crops and flora by hand, a very tedious and time-consuming job. However, the bees have been dying in ridiculously high numbers, especially in the past couple years. As Olivia said CCD is the major culprit of the destruction of the bees, because when the bees stop returning home, the entire hive collapses. However, there are several theories as to what is causing CCD, including the results of a recent Harvard study.
ReplyDeleteThis past year, Harvard researchers studied 18 different bee colonies over the course of the year. 12 of these hives were regularly treated with doses of neonicotinoid pesticides, while 6 hives were left untreated. Of the 12 hives treated with the pesticides, 6 were entirely wiped out. Neonicotinoids insecticides are highly concentrated in the material exhaust during the planting season. Because it is part of the planting, the industry claims it is biodegradable and not a threat. Bees will unknowingly transfer this pesticide to their hives when they pollinate. They also carry it from flower to flower, so when bees from other hives visit those flowers, they too will spread it to both other plants and their own hives. Bees exposed to the chemical are twice as likely to die and only half as likely to be successful when searching for food. The study officially linked the increase in the use of these chemicals to the increased amount of bee death, along with a report that tells us that fields from Maine to Delaware contain between 9 and 21 different agricultural chemicals, including fungicides, herbicides, and insecticides. The United States honeybee population overall has recently decreased 30%, but many individual beekeepers have reported losing 90-100% of their beloved bees. However, the disappearance of bees is not a United States specific problem: Europe has also reported that they too have recorded the largest bee loss in history. In addition, the insecticide overuse has been connected to the disappearance of the Monarch Butterflies. If we carry on like this without cleaning up the mess we've made of our environment, it won't end with the bees. It could be the fish next, the rabbits after that, followed by the dogs, until we've wiped out everything living. We need to start finding solutions to the environmental problems we've caused, because continuing like nothing is wrong will only keep making it worse.