What's happening to our honey bees?
In recent years, the declining population of the honey bee in the U.S. has caused a trickle-down effect into other agricultural endeavors. For example, the apple industry relies almost entirely on honey bees to pollinate their orchards, and with the declining supply of honey bees comes the inevitable increased cost of bee colonies for sale to these apple growers.This trickle-down effect doesn't start with the decline of the bees themselves though. It starts from something known as Colony Collapse Disorder, which is a vanilla phrase for the fact that something is causing the entire bee colony to die off and no one really knows why exactly.
Penn State scientists analyzing pollen, wax, adult bees and brood (larvae) have discovered the presence of dozens of environmental chemicals, including pesticides used by agricultural producers to protect crops.
"This raises several complicated questions," said Maryann Frazier, senior extension associate in entomology. "Some of these compounds could react with each other to cause toxic effects or could combine with viruses or poor nutrition to weaken immunity and cause colony collapse. With the sheer number of compounds we're finding in hives, it's hard to believe that pesticides aren't contributing to the general decline in bee health."
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