Disappearing bee colonies

Elina Manninen

For the past few years in many countries, bees, specifically honey bees have been disappearing.  Honey bees are native to Europe and other parts of the world, and were brought in to the US originally in the 17^th century to produce honey.  Since then they have been bred especially for agricultural purposes; in Europe alone, honey bees contribute over € 22 billion annually to agriculture by pollinating plants such as broccoli, apples, nuts, blueberries, cucumbers and many other crops important to our diet. Losing honey bees could therefore have catastrophic effects on the human race. Already in 2006, beekeepers and researchers in the US started to notice that worker bees were disappearing from their hives, leaving the queen and the young ones behind. Without the worker bees, the hives cannot sustain themselves and will die out. This event is called Colony Collapse Disorder. Researchers are currently studying what could make the worker bees disappear from the hives. One possibility is that different parasites, pests or diseases are drastically decreasing the bee numbers. Also pesticide poisoning, and habitat and nutrition loss are believed to be partly at fault in this case.

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Last year, the EU discussed banning a group of insecticides that have been linked to bee disappearance. These pesticides are called neonicotinoids. They are a relatively new type of insecticide and widely used all over the world. Unfortunately, their full effect on bees and other pollinators is still unknown. The problem with these pesticides is that they don’t just stay on the surface of the plant but travel through the tissue of the plant to the roots, leaves and even flowers. From the flower these pesticides could be transferred to the bees. What do the pesticides then do to the bees? It is possible that they could lower their immune level and allow parasites and diseases to spread more easily, but at the moment we don’t quite know the effects.

Human actions might carry a bigger weight than that of neonicotinoids. The combined effects of using many pesticides and insecticides, cutting down forests, destroying natural habitats and nesting areas thus removing natural sources of natural food such as flowers for the pollinators, could all be reasons why the bee populations are disappearing. We won’t know the exact problem unless we study all the possible factors carefully.

It has also been suggested that we might have bred bee populations that are more vulnerable to change and diseases. Losing honey bees could have catastrophic consequences and we could lose at least, if not more than, half of the food available now. Of course, other pollinators such as native bees in the US, bumble bees, moths and others could eventually take over. The problem is that we currently rely on honey bees to pollinate and hence other pollinators have been more or less forgotten.  I do think it would be a challenge, at least in the short term, to sustain the amount of people currently living on this earth if we were to suddenly lose all of our honey bees.