The mystery of America’s vanishing bees
The disappearance of millions of bees is worrying agriculturalists in 24 states across the USA. Honeybees are vanishing at an alarming rate across America. Their absence is beginning to threaten the production of crops and the livelihoods of farmers. It is a little-known fact that bees contribute around $14bn to the U.S. economy as they go about their business of pollinating flowers. The unexplained vanishing act is likely to affect the lucrative harvest of avocados, almonds and kiwi fruits, as well as numerous other fruits and vegetables. This will result in higher prices for consumers. In some states, over half of the bee populations have vanished without trace. Some beekeepers have reported losses of more than 70 per cent of their bee stocks. The phenomenon has baffled scientists, who are now as busy as bees to come up with an explanation.
One U.S. beekeeper is at a loss to explain what has happened to his bees. David Bradshaw, 50, from California, told the New York Times that he had never seen anything like it in all his years of beekeeping. He estimates that half of his 100 million bees have gone. He said he has known of bees to disappear before but that this is America’s first national bee crisis. Experts have put forward several theories including a cold snap felling swarms of bees, or bee viruses resulting in what scientists are calling a “colony collapse disorder”. A further possibility is that the bees are stressed out. With the factory-like, intensive farming methods used in the USA, bees are put to work much more often than nature intended. This may have lowered their immunity to viruses and harmed the ability of queen bees to produce eggs.
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