An environmental mystery continues, and it begins with a seemingly trivial detail that reveals a catastrophe of global proportions.
One day, you notice that the honey you put on your morning toast is more expensive.
Instead of jumping to conclusions, you should investigate the reason for the price increase.
What you find is shocking.
The number of domesticated bees in the United States is declining at an alarming rate.
The decline appears to be too large to be explained by the usual causes of bee death: disease, parasites or starvation.
A typical crime scene leaves almost no adult bees in the hive, except, perhaps, a solitary queen and a few other survivors.
It is full of untouched food stores and unborn larvae, suggesting that the adults have emptied without waiting for them to emerge. But what's particularly scary is that there are no stories of dead or dying bees nearby.
Either they've lost their way back to the hive, or they've disappeared altogether.
These mysterious disappearances are not new.
Humans have been collecting honey for centuries. But it wasn't until European settlers introduced a subspecies, Apis mellifera, in the 1600s that we kept bees.
Since the 19th century, beekeepers have occasionally reported mass disappearances, giving them mysterious names such as vanishing disease, spring decline disease, and autumn collapse.
But when such losses were found to affect more than half of all hives in the U.S. in 2006, the phenomenon got a new name: Colony Collapse Disorder.
The scariest part about this secret isn't that we have to use regular sugar in our tea.
We farm bees for their honey, but they also pollinate our crops on an industrial scale, producing 1/3 of America's food production. So, how can we find the culprit behind this disaster?
Here are three of the potential culprits. Exhibit A: Pests and Diseases.
The most infamous is the varroa mite, a tiny red insect that not only attacks colonies and eats bees, but also transmits pathogens that stunt bee growth and lifespan. reduce the Exhibit B: Genetics.
The queen is the center of a healthy hive. But today, the millions of queen bees distributed in commercial hives are bred from only a few original queens, raising concerns about a lack of genetic diversity that weakens bees' defenses against pathogens and pests. can do Exhibit C: Chemicals.
Pesticides used on commercial bees and agricultural crops to control parasites can leach into bee food and water. Researchers have even found that some pesticides harm bees' homing abilities.
So we have a file full of clues but no clear leads. In fact, scientists, the real detectives of the matter, are conflicted about what causes colony collapse disorder.
For now, we assume that several factors are the cause.
Bees aren't necessarily in danger of extinction, but fewer bees overall mean less pollination and higher food costs, so it's vital that scientists address the issue of bee disappearance.
do Because being low on honey can be a scare, but crop failure is something that really stings.
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