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Honey bees are under threat – their numbers are dramatically dwindling and no one can figure out why. They’re on the way to extinction if nothing is done which could have a major effect on the environment as they’re the major way plants pollinate.
Researchers are embarking on a three-year study into how food supplies affect honey bees and their resistance to disease. The research at the Rothamsted Institute in Hertfordshire is being co-funded by the government and the bio-tech company Syngenta. It is hoped the research will devise new ways of keeping colonies healthy. Experts say honey bee colonies are dying off in unprecedented numbers.
There have been a variety of explanations put forward, such as the increased use of pesticides, the spread of parasites that feed on the bees themselves, or the loss of farmland flowers as agriculture has intensified.
For the first time researchers at Rothamsted will be looking at how nutrition is related to a hive’s ability to resist disease. The bees will be allowed limited foraging expeditions, and at the same time diseases in the hive will be monitored.
New theories however say that the honey bee is being wiped out by a new generation of pesticides. Chemicals routinely used on maize, oil seed rape and garden plants could be responsible for the mysterious decline, according to new documentary film Vanishing Of The Bees.
The new film suggests long-term exposure to a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids is partly to blame. Introduced in the 1990s because, unlike previous pesticides, they appear to be harmless to mammals, neonicotinoids are applied to seeds. Now American beekeeper Dave Hackenberg, who appears in the film, says pesticides are the prime suspect.
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