Study: US Lost 31.1 Percent of Entire Bee Population This Year

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Matt Agorist
Real Farmacy

Tough talk: ‘Basically, we’re taking a product that would be sold at A study done by Apiary Inspectors of America (AIA) illustrates the true threat that honey bee colonies face. The bee losses for the 2011/2012 winter were 22 percent. This year, 2012/2013 saw a near 10 percent increase in total losses of managed honey bees nationwide.

The survey, which covered from October 2012 through April 2013, was conducted by University of Maryland research scientist Dennis vanEngelsdorp, who is also director of the Bee Informed Partnership, in collaboration with Jeff Pettis, research leader of the USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Md., and others. More information about the Bee Informed Partnership is available online at http://beeinformed.org/

According to the study, more than two-thirds of responding beekeepers (70 percent) reported losses greater than 14 percent, the level of loss that beekeepers stated as allowing them to remain economically viable as a business.

Unlike previous years in which the majority of bee losses were attributed to Colony Collapse Disorder, this year colonies were observed “dwindling away.” Beekeepers did not report CCD as a major cause of colony loss this past winter, which follows the previous year’s trend.

As REALfarmacy.com has pointed out, studies have shown that neonicotinoid pesticide use is impacting honeybees on a genetic level, causing a decrease in the ability of bee larva to survive to adulthood.

There are an abundance of reasons why bee populations are suffering yet researchers have shown a direct correlation with neonicotinoid pesticides and they continue to be the most widely use pesticides in the country. While the EU has placed a temporary, 2 year ban on two neonicotinoids, clothianidin and thiamethoxam, the evidence shows that levels can remain in soil for longer than this period which hardly makes this ban effective. Also neonicotinoids will still be widely used on cereals which will continue the broad impact. The EPA in the United States recently approved Bayer’s clothianidin and thiamethoxam despite the myriad of evidence that ties neonicotinoids to bee deaths.

Source: Real Farmacy