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posted by chromas on Thursday June 20 2019, @10:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the Bzzzzt!-Bzzzzt! dept.

More Bad Buzz for Bees: Record Number of Honeybee Colonies Died Last Winter:

Bee colony death continues to rise. According to the Bee Informed Partnership's latest survey, released this week, U.S. beekeepers lost nearly 40% of their honeybee colonies last winter — the greatest reported winter hive loss since the partnership started its surveys 13 years ago. The total annual loss was slightly above average.

The survey included responses from nearly 4,700 beekeepers managing almost 320,000 hives, making up about 12% of total managed honey-producing colonies in the United States.

Bee decline has many causes, including decreasing crop diversity, poor beekeeping practices and loss of habitat. Pesticides weaken bees' immune systems and can kill them. Varroa mites (full, ominous species name: Varroa destructor) latch onto honeybees and suck their "fat body" tissue[pdf], stunting and weakening them and potentially causing entire colonies to collapse.

"Beekeepers are trying their best to keep [mites] in check, but it's really an arms race," says Nathalie Steinhauer, science coordinator for the Bee Informed Partnership and co-author of the report ([Dennis] vanEngelsdorp is also an author). "That's concerning, because we know arms races don't usually end well."

Steinhauer says Varroa mites are the "number one concern" around wintertime. They've become harder to control, she says, because some of the tools that beekeepers have been using — chemical strips that attract and kill mites, essential oils and organic acids — are losing their efficacy.

Pollinators are responsible for one of every three bites of food we take, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department. Most of these pollinators are domesticated honeybees. They have become essential for many flowering crops, including blueberries, almonds and cherries. Wild insects can't be relied on to pollinate hundreds of acres of these crops, so fruit and nut producers call in commercial honeybee colonies instead.

[*] Bee Informed Partnership.


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 20 2019, @10:51PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday June 20 2019, @10:51PM (#858283)

    An older beekeeper paid us for a "Bee lease" on our land for awhile. His answer (in the US) to the mites problem was to order some chemical treatment from Australia via the internet, couldn't get it through normal retail/wholesale channels due to it being banned in the US, but customs on international packages is a joke so he never had a problem. Anyway, soak a piece of rag in this stuff, drop it in the hive and the workers will tear it to bits and remove it, in the process getting the chemical all soaked into their fuzz and killing the mites.

    Yes, this is in the same hives where they collect the honey. Yes, he sells (well, he sold, but others sell) this honey to all kinds of customers from bakeries through boutique designer honey stands. Retail, online, you name it. The more scrupulous beekeepers won't sell their honey as organic when they use chemicals like that, but... when nobody is testing the honey and organic sells for a significantly higher margin, you do the math.

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