The Importancement Of The Honey Bee

Honey bees are very important to people in the world. Not only do honey bees produce honey, but they do much more to help people. According to Malcolm T Sanford, a professor at the University of Florida “the honey bee is credited with approximately 85% of the pollinating activity necessary to supply about one-third of the nation’s food supply” (Sanford 1). Over 50 crops rely on pollination of the honey bee. (Sanford 1). Without the pollination, the crops will not get what they need for them to grow and produce. With this result, a majority of crops may be lost. Justin Moyer, a reporter at the Washington post, stated in his article that “The USDA estimated that honeybees add more than $15 billion to the value of the country’s crops per year” (Moyer 1).The honey bee is listed as endangered right now. Yearly losses from April of 2014 to April of 2015 were approximately 42.1 percent (Kaplan 1). That’s about 8 percent higher than the losses in 2013-2014. These

CCD (colony collapse disorder) is a “syndrome defined as a dead colony with no adult bees or dead bee bodies but with a live queen and usually honey and immature bees still present” as said by the ARS (“Honey Bee Health and Colony Collapse Disorder” 1). In 2006, it was reported that bee keepers had lost anywhere from 30-90 percent of their hive just from CCD alone (“Honey Bee Health and Colony Collapse Disorder” 1). This problem of CCD needs to be solved. The ARS teamed up with the National Institute of Food and Agriculture in 2007 to call upon a group of scientists to come up with a plan to help with Colony Collapse Disorder (“Honey Bee Health and Colony Collapse Disorder”1). Scientists are starting to come up with some solutions to it. Some beekeepers, such as Roy Nettlebeck, are starting to raise their beehives in the mountains away from any agriculture and it has seemed to work well for them (Daniels-Zeller