Welcome to the Chapter 12 Homework--Colony Collapse Phenomenon!
This is a topic that is very important and affects the diversity of foods available to humans. Instructions:
Complete all 3 parts to receive full credit!
Honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder
Over the past 10-15 years, an interesting and disturbing phenomenon has been observed regarding the health of honey bees. Due to lack of a sufficient explanation, this phenomenon was named honeybee colony collapse disorder. Starting in 2006, bee farmers started to report huge losses in their honeybee colonies, sometimes as much as a 50 percent loss of worker bees (https://www.epa.gov/pollinator-protection/colony-collapse-disorder). The strange part of this loss, however, was that the bees were not found dead outside of the hive. Bee farmers simply reported the absence of worker bees, leaving the queen, young and food behind. The worker bees simply disappeared!
Several factors have been implicated in the years following the first reports of honeybee colony collapse disorder. These causes include mites, viruses and fungi that infect bees and habitat loss from human activities. However, bees have been evolving alongside these factors for thousands of years. The factor that has tipped the balance and caused the death of alarming number of bees is the overuse of pesticides, which are used by humans on an ongoing basis. These pesticides affect memory and learning in bees and seem to be stressing bees to the point that they are falling victim to the pressures associated with the mites, viruses and fungi. As the bees’ memories are affected, essentially the worker bees get lost and die separated from the colony.
If this phenomenon is not controlled, humans will be affected by honeybee colony collapse disorder in several ways. Many of our food crops, including grapes, apples, cherries, plums, peaches, lemons, walnut, cotton, hazelnut, and tomatoes are honeybee pollinated. Pollinators (bees, birds and bats) affect at least 35 percent of the world’s crop production (http://www.fao.org/biodiversity/components/pollinators/en/). True, some major crops, such as wheat, corn and rice are wind pollinated and would not be affected by the loss of bees. However, the diversity of our foods will be greatly reduced if we continue to experience such losses. Another detrimental impact to human health is the potential loss of bee pollinated plants that provide humans with a multitude of important human medications.
For more information, click the link to watch the video below. Then answer the questions.
The Death Of Bees Explained – Parasites, Poison and Humans
Questions