Imagine you are at a picnic on a nice sunny day. Several bees stop by buzzing around your food particularly intrigued by a bowl of fruit. Though bees may be a nuisance on this particular day, they serve an essential role in the production of much of the food we eat. They produce honey, beeswax and other products we enjoy. Bees are also crucial in pollination and without honey bees, we may not be able to enjoy fruits, nuts, and vegetables that we do today.
In the past decades, the honey bee population have declined rapidly. Between April 2015 and March 2016, beekeepers lost 44.1% of their colonies. This decline in the honey bee population could be due to many reasons including pesticides, parasites, and disease. More curiously, many colonies have fallen to colony collapse disorder (CCD), where adult worker bees die-off and surprisingly, no dead bees are found in or around the hives. The exact cause of CCD is not completely known thought many have attributed pesticides, pathogens, antibiotics, and climate change as the cause. (more…)