Chris D'Angelo - Bees, the earth’s most important pollinators, took another devastating hit last year
Bees, the earth’s most
important pollinators, took another devastating hit last year, despite increased
efforts to reverse the decline. U.S beekeepers lost 44 percent of their total colonies from April
2015 to March 2016, an increase of 3.5 percentage points over the previous
year, according to the findings of an annual survey released Tuesday.
Colony loss during
winter jumped to 28.1 percent, from 22.3 percent a year earlier. In
addition, beekeepers experienced a second straight year in which summer loss
rates rivaled those of the colder months, which typically are more extreme. The
summer losses, in particular, are “cause for serious concern,” according to
Dennis van Engelsdorp, an assistant professor of entomology at the
University of Maryland and project director for the Bee Informed Partnership, which
conducted the study with funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“Some winter losses are normal and expected,” van Engelsdorp
said in a statement. But 59 percent of responding beekeepers reported winter
colony losses, far exceeding the 17 percent rate considered acceptable. “The fact that
beekeepers are losing bees in the summer, when bees should be at their
healthiest, is quite alarming,” van Engelsdorp said.
It’s especially
critical because, in many ways, our survival depends on theirs. Tiffany Finck-Haynes,
food futures campaigner with Friends
of the Earth U.S., told The Huffington Post that bees are the “canary
in the coal mine for our food system.” The insects pollinate 75 percent of the fruits, nuts and
vegetables grown in the United States and add at
least $15 billion in economic value to the country’s agricultural
industry.
The longer we wait to
address the problem, Finck-Haynes said, the worse the situation will become. Already, the number of
managed honey bee colonies has plummeted
from 5 million in the 1940s to about 2.66 million today, according to
the USDA. Honey bees face an onslaught of threats. While the new survey notes that the
parasitic varroa mite (which a recent multi-year study found is “far more
abundant than previously thought) is a “clear culprit“ in colony collapse, malnutrition from
habitat loss and pesticides also are likely contributors.
The EPA, for example,
is currently reviewing neonicotinoids, a common insecticide, after a study
found the chemicals can impair bumblebees’ learning and memory, and blunt their ability to forage. “Everything falls apart if you take pollinators out of
the game,” van Engelsdorp told The Associated Press last month. “If we want
to say we can feed the world in 2050, pollinators are going to be part of
that.”
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