So during the last summer when I was outside I noticed that there weren’t very many bees out like the year before and I remember hearing something about honeybees on the news when I was watching TV. So I decide to do some research on honeybees and found out that the honeybee population is disappearing fairly quickly. One of the articles I recently read said that beekeepers are losing up to 60 percent of their hive! When in the early 2000’s they only lost up to 10-15 percent of their hives.
Many people believe the cause of all the dead hives are because of neonicotinoid which farmers all over the world use to keep harmful insects away from their crops. The neonicontinoids targets the nervous system of insects resulting in paralysis and death. This leads people to believe that this could be a possible thing that could be killing the honeybee hives. There have been many people who have tested to see if this is true and found out it does slowly kill off the hive. It slowly weakens the honeybees and makes it harder for them to find its way back to the hive.
There have been many scientists looking for another type of bee that could replace the honeybee if the honeybees completely disappear. They found a blue orchard bee which also pollenates many of the same things as the honeybee. The only problem with the blue orchard bee replacing the honeybees would be that the blue orchard bees can’t reproduce as fast as the honeybees can. They also don’t produce honey and the blue orchard bees prefer to live alone insisted of living in hives. They rarely sting and don’t swarm. These blue orchard bees are seen by scientists as a good replacement for honeybees but there are many other types of bees that also could replace the honeybee as well.
The honeybees are responsible for pollination of many crops on the earth and if we lose them it could cause a significant decrease in how many seed-bearing crops that would be available for us to eat. When the honeybees fly from different flowers it spreads pollen and fertilizes plants. Many beekeepers sell queen bees to other bee keepers who’s hives are dying off and they sell to farms that make standard fare of honey. There are a lot of beekeepers that are working together to breed a bee that is resistant to disease and parasites that will do the same thing as the honeybees.
The bees are dying because of the use of pesticide such as neonicotinoid on crops all over the world. It slowly kills the bee each time it is exposed to it and it will die eventually after a while. If we keep using the pesticides that are killing the honeybees off we won’t be able to eat many of the things we eat now. There are many types of different kinds of bees out there that could replace the honeybee. What kind of bee would be the best replacement of the honeybees? Is there something else that farmers could use to protect their crops that won’t harm or kill the honeybees? Have scientists breed a new kind of bee that is immune to the pesticide that farmers use and does the same thing as the honeybees?
I really took a liking to this blog because I am deathly afraid of bees of any kind, stinging or not. So it made me happy to see that they were coming extinct. It also made me sad though because I am an animal lover and don’t like to see any animal die off. I wanted to further research into why the honey bees were becoming extinct. In an article I read it does agree with that honey bees are in fact becoming extinct. This could cause problems because one third of our food depends on pollination of flowering plants. When reading this article they quoted Einstein and he said, “If the bees disappear, mankind would have only 4 more years of life.” Over 3 million colonies of bees have died in the USA since 2006, which is a significant about of bees. So in conclusion we need to save the bees!
http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2012/03/12/are-honey-bees-headed-towards-extinction/
This is a really eye opening blog, i never would have thought honeybees would be on the road to extinction. i couldn’t imagine living without honey, that will a sad day. It is truely hard to believe that farmers are contributing to this so much. Is there an alturnative for them?
http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2012/03/12/are-honey-bees-headed-towards-extinction/
This atricle is very interesting because i for one have never been stung by any kind of bee or anything. I’ve also noticed that there has not been very many bee’s during the summer last year. I have also done a little more research of my own on the topic and I have also found that the population of the bee’s have been decreasing dramitcally. One of the websites i was looking at explains in a lot of detail in why the population is decreasing. Very well done, this article made me keep reading and got my attention. Nice job!
http://www.globalresearch.ca/death-of-the-bees-genetically-modified-crops-and-the-decline-of-bee-colonies-in-north-america/25950
There are many types of different kinds of bees out there that could replace the honeybee.
**many can complement honey bees, but so far none can replace Apis mellifera yet, due to their large population, transportable, and of course, we know their biology and can manage them well.
What kind of bee would be the best replacement of the honeybees?
** it might depend on a crop. for greenhouses, bumble bees can be much better than honey bees.
Is there something else that farmers could use to protect their crops that won’t harm or kill the honeybees?
**most of insecticide will kill honey bees, unless it is Bt which is highly specific.
Have scientists breed a new kind of bee that is immune to the pesticide that farmers use and does the same thing as the honeybees?
**no, one cannot breed such a thing (immune to pesticides)…even if they could increase the resistance of honey bees to pesticides, it might not be good for humans — we might have toxic honey that do not kill bees, but will harm us.
Zachary Huang, http://bees.msu.edu
Nicely done blog! You’ve clearly done quite a bit of research on the topic. While people are working hard to develop the Blue Orchard Bee (we call it BOB) for use in agriculture, another solitary bee is used even more. The alfalfa leafcutting bee is used for several crops in the U.S. Like BOB, this bee is solitary, and it doesn’t sting (although it can bite pretty hard). Farmers use A LOT of these bees in the U.S. They are usually sold by the gallon (1 gallon has about 10,000 bees), and in an average year, American farmers use over 430,000 gallons of these bees (with a value of around $36 million!). We fly some here in Fargo… it’s kind of fun to watch them work.