Have you ever wondered how important bees are? Bees are majorly important to humans and all life on Earth because they are responsible for 1/3 of our food! Lately, we’ve been seeing sudden losses of colonies due to Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD.
No one knows exactly how or why this happens, but researchers think it is a combination of pesticides, diseases, viruses, and mites (Varroa mites). Like the bees we see sudden declines in trees due to the tree island effect, in improper pruning, girdling roots, lack of mulch ring around the tree, and don’t stress this could be from combinations of these or one alone.
Pesticides are used excessively and this is harmful for bees. Bees fly an average of 3 miles from the hive so if you are within a 3 mile range of a beehive make sure you read the label and apply carefully. When bees are exposed to pesticide for a long period of time or exposed to heavily applied pesticides they are less effective when pollinating.
Varroa mites are the number one bee killer as they feed on bee blood and carry viruses such as deformed wing virus and acute bee paralysis. The Varroa mites go into a bee’s brood cell and feed on the developing bee. Then the mite lays one egg and one more every 30 hours. However, Nosema, a fungus, is extremely deadly to bees as it can kill an entire colony in just eight days.
As you can see bees are important to all living things on Earth and CCD is killing many colonies off, yet we don’t know what exactly is killing them.
