Bee Colony Collapse

In the past decade it has become common to hear the buzz about how the bees are disappearing. This may not seem like huge news at first, but when you take a look at all the important work bees do, this becomes a much heavier topic. Bees are the main pollinator in the United States and their disappearance would have grave effects on our food industry. Since this issue has been brought to the light, there have been many different options researched for possible solutions. These range from doing nothing at all to intervening and taking personal care of the hives. The future of America’s agriculture industry relies heavily on what happens to the bees. Lorenzo Langstroth, also know as the Father of American Beekeeping and the Bee Man of Oxford,
However, Bee colony collapse disorder has contributed to an approximate loss of about 30% of pollinators each year for the last ten years. This is a big increase in the average loss of pollinators from the 1990s-mid 2000s which varied from 17%-20% per year (Johnson). While the numbers are not exact, there is a noticable trend of a decrease in bees. There are, unfortunately, no formal statistical evidence on the population of wild bees. Therefore, it is difficult to know how they are faring and how that would compare to the bees that are kept in beekeeper hives. Yet overall there is clear statistical evidence that supports the claim that the bees and dying in increasing
The first reports of “a mysterious phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)” appeared in October 2006 (Curley). CCD is when the majority of worker bees in a colony disappear, this can happen due to various reasons. This includes “pesticides, drought, habitat destruction, nutrition deficit, air pollution, global warming and more” (Save the Bees). Many of these causes are also interrelated. However, as previously stated, human are responsible for the creation and use of pesticides which is one of the most profound causes. Here, pesticides will be the primary focus. Insecticides were desired by farmers to kill pests that were farming their produce, however these highly toxic insecticides “were not very selective; their ubiquitous use and broadcast application techniques for crop protection meant that foraging honey bees entered the line of fire with frequent and fatal results” (Berenbaum). It took less than twenty years after the beginning uses of insecticides in order to obtain scientific evidence “that sprays on fruit trees to kill pest insects do, in fact, as a non-target effect, kill bees” (Berenbaum). Therefore, humans can be partially to blame for CCD and poisoning of