Take a bite of food. Now take two more.
Chances are one of those bites depended on honeybees for its existence. Chances also are that food on your plate might be in jeopardy and pesticides may be part of the reason. more…
Bees Are Disappearing–Are Pesticides to Blame?
29 April 2008 by menuaustin
I’m an ex-beekeeper, but only kept them as a hobby. The comment that they stop mating is not correct – only the queen does the mating, and that is with drones, and it happens in the air, not in the hive. After the worker bees disappear, the queen and a few young workers are usually found in the hive. During the part of the year when bees are foraging for nectar, they have a very short lifespan – they actually wear their wings out within a few weeks.
The queen is replaced (or another queen is hatched) when the workers decide she is no longer effective. When there are two (or more) queens in the hive, part of the workers along with one of the queens will swarm.
With the advent of africanized bees (killer bees) it is sometimes found that they have taken over a hive. In this case it makes more sense for the beekeeper to simply replace that queen with a domestic queen. For this reason, queens should be marked and the beekeeper should frequently inspect his hives to make sure that only marked queens are there.
It is my belief that it’s a combination of factors that is causing the disappearance of bees – pesticides, the weakening of bees that result when they are treated for mites and diseases, and stress in general.
I worry that not enough is being done to find the answer(s), and the problem is not going to go away until more is done.