The Worldwide Affect of the Decreasing Honeybee Population

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The death of honeybees in the world should certainly be a cause of concern for governments, scientists, ecologists, and consumers of honey. The extinction of honeybees might have serious negative effects on the livelihoods of populations that depend on honey cultivation for food and income. Moreover, honey has healing properties, especially for cold and flu, and, therefore, a reduction in its supply could be detrimental to people's health. The death of honeybees will cause an imbalance in the ecosystem because flowering plants depend on the bees for pollination (Quarles, 2008, p.1). In particular, honey bees pollinate one-third of flowering crops (ibid). David Hackenberg was one of the first beekeepers, who noticed such mysterious extinction of honey bees and, moreover, he lost more than 2500 of his hives (Stokstad, pp. 970-972). Scientists called this mysterious phenomenon colony collapse disorder (CCD) (Quarles, 2008, p. 3). Such mysterious vanishing of honey bees was noticed in a number of states in America and some European countries such as Poland, Italy, Germany, Switzerland (Schacker, 2008, pp. 11-18). For example, in 2006 75% of bee’s colonies disappeared in Pennsylvania (Quarles, 2008, p. 3). Therefore, given the potential harm that the extinction of honeybees could cause, it is vital to identify the reasons why bees are dying in large numbers in order to take appropriate measures. Thus, this paper will evaluate two problems, which negatively affect honey bees and conclude that none of them were the main reasons for colony collapse disorder.

According to Stokstad (2007, pp. 970-972), one of the possible reasons of CCD is the varroa mites, which have been the main problem for beekeepers the last 20 years. Before...

... middle of paper ...

... and diseases. Scientific and Technical Review of the Office International des

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Neumann, P. and Carreck, N.L. (2010). Honey bee colony losses. Journal of Apicultural

Research, 49(1), 1-6.

Quarles, W. (2008). Pesticides and honey bee colony collapse disorder. The IPM

Practioner, 30(9-10), 1-16.

Schacker, M. (2008). A spring without bees: how colony collapse disorder has endangered

our food supply.1sted. New York, the USA: The Lyons Press.

Sharma, V.P. and Kumar, N.R. (2010, May 25). Changes in honeybee behavior and biology

under the influence of cellphone radiations. Current Science, 98(10), 1376-1378.

Stokstad, E. (2007, May 18). The case of empty hives. Science, 316(5827), 970-972.

Retrieved May 19, 2007, from www.sciencemag.org

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