{"id":26457,"date":"2013-03-11T12:00:29","date_gmt":"2013-03-11T12:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=26457"},"modified":"2013-03-22T00:31:19","modified_gmt":"2013-03-22T00:31:19","slug":"domesticated-and-wild-bees-are-both-in-trouble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2013\/03\/domesticated-and-wild-bees-are-both-in-trouble\/","title":{"rendered":"Domesticated and Wild Bees Are Both in Trouble"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s tough times for bees. Over the past few years, colony collapse disorder<\/a> has wiped out some entire beekeeping operations, and scientists don\u2019t understand or agree on the cause<\/a>. In Europe, respected scientists and agencies are declaring some popular pesticides too dangerous for bees<\/a>. Stateside, it\u2019s another story.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday [5 Mar 2013],\u00a0the U.S. EPA hosted a bee summit<\/a> to talk about the problem. \u201cThe EPA has been working aggressively to protect honey bees and other pollinators,\u201d the agency says. \u201cThe 2013 Pollinator Summit is part of the agency\u2019s ongoing collaboration with beekeepers, growers, pesticide manufacturers and federal and state agencies to manage potential pesticide risks to bees.\u201d<\/p>\n

The summit highlighted some sobering details on the scope of the problem, but it also gave a platform to Bayer<\/a>, Syngenta, DuPont, and Monsanto \u2014 companies that make the very kinds of pesticides that have been linked to bee deaths. This week,\u00a0Bayer also announced a \u201cbee care tour\u201d<\/a> and new efforts to \u201cminimize the impact\u201d of neonicotinoid pesticides that mess with bee brains.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, scientists say\u00a0domesticated\u00a0honeybees aren\u2019t the only ones having a terrible time lately. Wild bees are even more important for the pollination of certain crops, according to new research, and they\u2019re in trouble too.<\/p>\n

The Summit County Voice<\/i> reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The study, recently published in Science, focused on understanding whether the ongoing loss of wild insects impacts crop harvest. The researchers compared fields with abundant and diverse wild insects to those with degraded assemblages of wild insects across 600 fields at 41 crop systems on all continents with farmland. In areas where less wild insects visited crop flowers, the proportion of flowers setting seeds or fruits, was considerably lower, they concluded.<\/i><\/p>\n

The addition of beehives helps improve pollination, but not dramatically. Variation in honey bee abundance improved fruit set in only 14 percent of the crop systems they served.<\/i><\/p>\n

Wild insects pollinate crops more effectively because an increase in their visitation enhanced fruit set by twice as much as an equivalent increase in honey bee visitation. A high abundance of managed honey bees supplemented \u2014 but doesn\u2019t substitute [for] \u2014 pollination by wild insects.<\/i><\/p>\n

If I were a bee, I\u2019d be drinking pretty hard these days, too.<\/p>\n

______________________________<\/p>\n

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for Twitter<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 grist.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s tough times for bees. Over the past few years, colony collapse disorder has wiped out some entire beekeeping operations, and scientists don\u2019t understand or agree on the cause. In Europe, respected scientists and agencies are declaring some popular pesticides too dangerous for bees. Stateside, it\u2019s another story. On Tuesday [5 Mar 2013], the U.S. EPA hosted a bee summit to talk about the problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,140],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-organic-gmo-genetic-engineering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}