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Colony Collapse Disorder and Pesticides
From around the year 2006, many bee farmers in the U.S.A and some parts of Europe started reporting sharp declines in their bee stocks. The reason for this declining numbers was not known and therefore scientists named it colony collapse disorder (CCD). Colony collapse disorder (CCD) is a not a very old phenomena and it became popular when large number of bee colonies started disappearing. The disappearing was mysterious since no dead bees were found in or around the beehives after a colony’s number was reported to have gone down or vanished. This prompted a lot of study and investigations to uncover the mystery and to establish possible remedies. Among the many reasons for the causes of the CCD was the use of harmful and dangerous pesticides. Timbrell (2002) provides a solid foundation on the effects of toxins in the body of animals with an aim of providing a scientific solution towards the problem. This paper focuses its study on these pesticides with an aim of establishing the effects of the toxins found in the insecticides that could be affecting the bees.
In CCD, honey bee colonies lose their workers under unclear circumstances (Cox-Foster et al., 2007, p. 283). It is not unusual for bees to die or colonies to be lost, but the nature and extent reported in the year 2006 was alarming. Statistics gathered in the United States alone show that 50-90% of the bees have been lost so far, due to this scientific phenomenon (Cox-Foster et al., 2007, p. 284).
Honeybees play a very major role in the pollination of plants and therefore these huge losses have become a serious concern. There are many reasons that have been floated and acclaimed to be behind CCD and they include pesticides, para...
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...re many and interrelated although some contribute more towards the phenomena than others. The governments of the affected countries must set aside funds that will help in carrying out research to establish the causes of CCD. Countries not affected by this phenomenon must also take all the necessary precautions to prevent their stock of bees from declining in numbers. If necessary steps are not taken as early as now, then many nations risk losing millions of plants due to lack of pollination and eventually we could be a famine stricken world.
Works Cited
Cox-Foster, D. L., Conlan, S., Holmes, E. C., Palacios, G., Evans, J. D., Moran, N. A.,… Quan, P. (2007). A metagenomic survey of microbes in honey bee colony collapse disorder. Science, 81(5848), 283-287.
Timbrell, J. (2002). Introduction to toxicology (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.
Over time, many bees have been disappearing and their population has been decreasing drastically. These ubiquitous species are mostly known to produce honey, however they do much more than that. Bees are an essential part of the environment and play a huge role in agriculture. They pollinate flowers and about ⅓ of the food we eat depends on bee pollination. Not only humans depend on bees too, but animals do too,and we depend on most of those animals. The pesticides used on flowers and other factors that have contributed to the decrease in the population of bees need to be stopped before this problem goes too far out of reach. This decrease can only be described as Colony Collapse Disorder and it will have severe consequences if it is not controlled.
The disappearance of honey bees is baffling scientists everywhere. Although most people see bees as useless annoying insects, they play an important role in the eco-system. Without bees, agricultural business would cease to exist, so it is vital that bees are saved. Currently, about one-third of the honey bees on the United states have disappeared. It seems that within a few days of having a good, healthy colony of bees, most of the adult population disappears. They can't even find any bodies near the hive. Scientists nicknamed this as CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder). Bees have been disappearing all over the globe. Countries such as Portugal, Poland, Central America, and South America have all reported cases of the phenomenon. When bees get sick, they sacrifice themselves and leave the colony to die to lessen possibility of spreading the disease or affliction to the rest of the hive. What is unique about CCD though, is the sheer number of bees leaving the hive.
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A recent Harvard study suggest that Neonicotinoids and similar pesticides are one of the main causes for colony collapse disorder. Neonicotinoids kill or paralyze bees and other
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As indicated by new research distributed in the diary Science, many honey bee species started losing territory as ahead of schedule as the 1970s—well before neonicotinoids were as across the board as they are today. From that point forward, to a great extent as an aftereffect of an Earth-wide temperature boost, honey bees have lost almost 200 miles off the southern end of their notable wild range in both the US and in Europe, a pattern that is proceeding at a rate of around five miles
Bees play a crucial role in the ecosystem of the world and the food supply, but bees are dying more rapidly than ever before. There are many factors to why bees are dying off; however, one of the main reasons is neonicotinoids. In the U.S, crops are planted with over 143 million acres of seeds filled with clothianidin and imidacloprid each year (Bleifuss). These are two of the most popular types of neonics used today on farmland. But neonics do not just affect the bees, they affect their hives as well. In 2006, many hives started to become empty, with all the bees vanishing or dead. This was called colony collapse disorder, or CCD. In a study by experts at Harvard School of Public Health, in cases when bees abandoned their hives near the winter
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