Although widespread bee deaths have occurred before, the current sharp decline is different. This time some bees have simply vanished, abandoning their hives. The phenomenon, known as colony collapse disorder (CCD), has been attributed in part to the same viral and bacterial infections, pesticide poisonings, and mite infestations that devastated bees in the past.
The problem is hardly trivial. A third of the total human diet depends on plants pollinated by insects, predominantly honeybees. In North America honeybees pollinate more than 90 crops with an annual value totaling almost $15 billion. Indeed, that importance lies at the root of what went wrong. In trying to make bees more productive, apiarists have torn the insects from their natural habitats and the routines they mastered over millions of years. As a result, today's honeybees are sickly, enslaved, and mechanized. "We've looked at bees as robots that would keep on trucking no matter what," says Heather Mattila of Wellesley College, who studies honeybee behavior and genetics.
"They can't be pushed and pushed." Please read full at Discover
One of the most devastating pressures on the bees, according to Mattila's research, is the limit on what they can eat. "Vitamins, minerals, fats, proteins—all the same things we need to survive come from pollen," she explains. In the wild, honeybees get different nutrients from different types of plants, but industrial agriculture limits bees to monoculture crops. "Once nutritionally stressed, honeybees burn through their body's reserves; then they shut down brood rearing," Mattila adds. "It's all tied together."
Slowly, beekeepers...are trying to ease bees away from their troubled state, allowing them to drift back toward a healthier, more natural way of life. "Bees have been doing this for 80 million years," Comfort says. "All we have to do is get out of their way."
