{"id":86671,"date":"2017-02-13T12:00:12","date_gmt":"2017-02-13T12:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=86671"},"modified":"2017-02-10T19:58:06","modified_gmt":"2017-02-10T19:58:06","slug":"to-bee-or-not-to-bee-will-bumblebees-become-extinct","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/02\/to-bee-or-not-to-bee-will-bumblebees-become-extinct\/","title":{"rendered":"To Bee, or Not To Bee: Will Bumblebees Become Extinct?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>

\u00a9 imagebroker\/Siegfried Kramer \/ www.globallookpress.com<\/p><\/div>\n

8 Feb 2017 – <\/em>Widely used pesticides and insecticides, climate change, and introduced species are factors for bumblebees as well as other species of bees being endangered, Mark Floegel, beekeeper & Greenpeace research director, told RT America\u2019s Anya Parampil.<\/p>\n

For the first time bumblebees are on the endangered species<\/a> list. Beekeepers have been complaining about bees dying en-mass. Why is this happening?\u00a0 Why is the bumblebee is so important and how significant it for human survival?<\/p>\n

Mark Floegel explains:<\/p>\n

\u201cBumblebees like all bees are pollinators. We need bees and other pollinators like butterflies and birds to get germplasm \u2013 allowing plants to have sex with each other, so male and female plants can cross pollinate… About a third of the fruits we eat in the US are pollinated by honeybees – the bees that are taken around by beekeepers who do that. But there are many other pollinators, as well, including bumblebees<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The researcher explains honey bees \u201cgive us honey and bees that some beekeepers bring around to pollinate crops \u2013 like oranges, almonds, blueberries.\u201d Bumblebees are wild; he told RT America\u2019s Anya Parampil.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are 20, 000 species of bees, but they are all endangered by very similar things. One is climate change. We\u2019re moving bees out of their range; we\u2019re making their seasons very irregular<\/em>,\u201d Floegel said.<\/p>\n

Another danger comes from introduced species \u201cthat have come into this country, the way that other species that come into this country the way other invasive species have come into this country<\/em>\u201d and they are attacking the American bees.<\/p>\n

Widely used pesticides and insecticides are making things worse.\u00a0 For instance, neonicotinoid \u2013 is an insecticide, so it does kill insects, including bees.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a pernicious insecticide, which we\u2019re trying to get EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] to ban for the health of bees and therefore for the help of our crops<\/em>,\u201d Floegel said.<\/p>\n

Commenting on whether this recently reported die-off is irreversible, the researcher suggested: \u201cwe need to increase good, healthy food for bees.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn fact, the bees that live in my neighborhood, that live in my backyard \u2013 all my neighbors contribute to helping out by planting bee-friendly plants in their yards. So my bees have plenty of good, healthy food because they don\u2019t use pesticides. I pay them back by giving them honey<\/em>,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=1VthV2V31Y4<\/p>\n

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

Widely used pesticides and insecticides, climate change, and introduced species are factors for bumblebees as well as other species of bees being endangered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86671","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=86671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86671\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}