Saturday, April 18, 2009

Update On Die-Off Of Honeybees

Nature's number one pollinating machine appears to be breaking down and no one knows for sure why. But it's not just pretty gardens that are at stake; one third of the average diet relies on honeybees.

Upcoming laboratory and field tests, coupled with a survey of beekeepers this spring, may help provide the key to scientists' search for the cause of widespread die-offs among honeybee colonies in the United States.

The problem, says one expert in the field, may be a combination of pesticides and pathogens. "We don't have our smoking gun. ... [but] we're getting closer," said Dewey Caron, an entomologist who recently retired from the University of Delaware.

While hives may lose 10 percent of their population during an ordinary winter, in recent years those losses have shot above 30 percent.

In the U.K., government finally accepted there's a problem, however, are still not ready for any real recognition that pesticides could be a contributory factor. At The Co-operative, a private business, there are more than three million members and they hope to educate and empower them to be ambassadors for a project called Plan Bee.

1 comment:

Erik said...

It is possible they found the reason. See the article in this link for a hopeful solution. We'll see how this plays out over the comings weeks.

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