By Claire Bernish, The Anti-Media
In the worst colony die-off in nine years, American beekeepers lost 42.1% of their hives since April 2014, with the heaviest loss occurring in summer — a fact that has alarmed entomologists. As part of an annual survey in partnership with the US Dept of Agriculture, beekeepers reported that over two in five of their colonies had died, and now the task of bringing numbers back, means they will have to divide the surviving hives.
According to study co-author Keith Delaplane, “What we’re seeing with this bee problem is just a loud signal that there’s some bad things happening with our agro-ecosystems. We just happen to notice it with the honeybee because they are so easy to count.”
Extremely heavy losses were seen in Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, where 60% of the bees were wiped out.
And though these figures are startlingly high, what really has entomologists’ attention, is that more loss occurred in summer than winter — for the first time. In the summer of the previous year’s survey, beekeepers lost 19.8% of their bees, but that number rose to 27.4% this time around. Jeff Pettis, a scientist with the USDA, who studies bees, said the unusual summertime deaths also featured heavy queen loss concentrated in more mobile colonies, in itself a noteworthy characteristic.
Scientists who worked on the survey believe poor nutrition, mites, and pesticides are the likely culprits. Dick Rogers, chief beekeeper for Bayer — the pesticide manufacturer — downplayed the die-off as “not unusual at all”, adding that hives increased from 2.64 million for the survey period to 2.74 million in 2015.
Though a statistical improvement, this increase doesn’t indicate the overall health of the population. According to Delaplane, dividing the remaining hives to force population growth means the bees are pushed to their limit.
One of the possible culprits for such a decline has been gaining some attention — nicotine-derived, neonicotinoid pesticides, the vast majority of which are manufactured by Bayer. Neonics, as they’re known, are coated onto various crop seeds, so once planted, the crop grows with a built-in insecticide — but there is heated debate over whether neonics offer any benefit to crops at all, and their overuse appears to coincide with declining bee populations.
The European Union recognizes the connection and has placed restrictions on the use of neonics. In one study, the European Commission found indications that the pesticide could potentially be acting as a neurotoxin in humans. Bayer, of course, vehemently denies any connection to either the colony die-off or negative effects in humans.
Many campaigns seek to educate the public about bee health and why this is such an important issue. For more information, visit the #SaveOurBess Campaign or Friends of the Earth Bee Action Campaign and a petition and information is available from Save-Bees.org.
This article (Since April 2014, Bee Population Has Declined 40% – 60%) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author andTheAntiMedia.org.
Mites
Sad
Very sad
When the bees die we die Monsanto needs to stop pesticide use
Monsanto is acting with the support and endorsement of the govt. the govt could stop the poisoning but they are not
The govt is paid by Monsanto and Obama is buddies with them
Interesting, since the article clearly states that the pesticide in question is owned by Bayer.
here as well out in the scrub jungles ..crazy
Se acabo el bizzne.no money ? no honey .? sad but true.
Gmos pollen is killing everything. ..
Look into emfs which screws up the sense of direction and the on purpose destruction of our food system by those elite who want to depopulate us. This is now life and death.
?
Genetic modified plants,flowers, everything! And of course poisoning. Very Soon 100%
Sad news
All the pesticides to stop things like mosquitos. There has to be another solution to getting rid of them. There used to be so many dragonflies where I live and now you don’t see any. They were around since the time of the dinosaurs and now they’re disappearing. They may not be as important as bees for the environment, but we are losing another majestic and beneficial insect to these chemicals.
I use to go to a place up north that would import dragon flies to eat Mosquitos that is the natural way
Yes, but the method of spraying pesticides into bodies of water to kill mosquito larvae also kills the dragonfly larvae because they lay eggs in the water as well.
?
yo yo
yo yo
yo yo
Ask Monsanto
Joe Kotze
? so sad
Not. Good
People wake up! When are you going to realize that big farma is behind this? Their goal is for GMO’s to take over as our food supply. No bees to pollinate = no compition from nature! Stand up against this and Monsanto pesticides before it’s too late.
That isn’t good.
Probaly our technolgy
Relax and let any good solutions flow
We allow them to do these things to us. By not coming together as one and saying enough is enough it will never end!
Just wondering if we will hit bottom soon enough to have a chance to recover.
no accident was all part of their plan.!!!!..
Tragic. Someone better do something. This is a very bad thing.
Cameroon, Sri Lanka, Colombia and Netherlands have banned Roundup mad by Monsanto
pesticide not only kill mosquitos.they kill us.!!!…..
Its all by design. If they kill all the bees then we wont have enough real food to support the population. Thats when Monsanto will stsp in to appear as the hero and suggest all food be gmo. Then they truly have us by the balls. The human race will die off on that fake garbage in a matter of a few decades.
I agree
But then the Monsanto people will also die right? Do you think it’s a syicide mission ?
Suicide
My guess is they have their own organic farms with a self-sustained eco-system. They wont kill themselves.
Meli Mele ?
Has anyone done any research on the
Wild honey bee population?
That seems to be a bit of information that’s lacking. All of this ccd is reported by apiarists.
I haven’t heard of any wild bees having this problem.
Only in the apiaries.
The wild bee honey production on my property continues as it always has. We believe this is because: 1 – We’re Organic growers and the hives are a good distance away; 2 – The hives are in our forest and are never disturbed; 3 – The bee colony was not artifically created and, as a self-sustaining group is self-regulated as well.
Bees have been acting so weird where I live. Idk what’s up,but I’m glad to have already seen more than last year!
NOOOOOHHHH ….STOP THIS….i love my honey !!
I had a tiny bee swarming me the other day I was so happy, and I also saw a lady bug, a red one!
The lady bugs I was seeing were an orange color.
so sad……. friend ……https://www.facebook.com/Paintingsofjane/
Because its the busiest time for chem trails and herbicides and pesticides, acid rain…;-)…is my opinion
Tnx u Kris, hello how r U n ze kids??
????
I’ve been a beekeeper most of my adult life but not right now. The honey bee is not native to N. America. It is normal for introduced species to collapse after a period of time. Bees do not naturally occur in close proximity, as in a apiary. Transporting bees in trucks is incredibly stressful for them. It is normal in a given year to sometimes loose a large percentage of bee colonies. Nosema protozoa is still the number one killer of bee colonies, and has been for as long as I know. Every article I read including this one does not get the whole picture or convey the complexity of keeping bees. Accuracy is important to me, but not to those that write articles on science related subjects.
THIS IS NO GOOD, PEOPLE!!! NO BEES, NO FOOD….WE DIE!!!!
Jason :-/
scary stuff
Jason yep.
they have already ascended to the 5th dimension!
last summer, 2015, was not a good harvest for honey. As a person who relies heavily on bee products for food and external use, this is…alarming!!
This is sad & we all need to help! ?
A number of factors leading to hive collapse are at play, including the tendency of introduced species to collapse over time. Pesticides, poisons, and chemicals are playing their part – just as they are playing a part in the destruction, albeit more slowly, of the human race. I was surprised to learn many of the U.S. crops that depend on honey bees for pollination have been imported since about 1780; that honey bees did not naturally cross the Rocky Mountains but were transported by pioneers. What we have, at the bottom of it all, is a forced system of crop and plant pollination which – for any number of reasons – we can not entirely control and which isn’t possible to sustain indefinitely. I offer that the number of individuals observed to be inhabiting the wild hives in my forest has been stable and unchanged for 20 years.