Last winter was a little kinder to America’s honeybees, but they are still in danger. Good food could help them, though.
After a survey of US beekeepers, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) found that , down from an average of 29 per cent over the past eight years. It’s an improvement, but it’s not enough.
The trouble is, it’s not clear why the bees are dying. “I think of it like cancer,” says of the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Beltsville, Maryland. “It can come from all kinds of exposures and problems.”
Advertisement
Nutrition is the key to healthy colonies, says of the University of Minnesota in St Paul. “All bees can survive winter if they have enough honey and if they have few mites and diseases.”
In an ongoing study, Spivak has found evidence that pollen is crucial. Artificial feeds won’t cut it. “They need real food,” she says. “Our practice is to get rid of flowers. The biggest help would be to put those flowers back.”
There is also more evidence that pesticides have played at least some role in the decline of bees. of the Harvard School of Public Health and his colleagues recently found that bees exposed to two neonicotinoid pesticides, clothianidin and imidacloprid, were less likely to survive the winter than bees that hadn’t been exposed to them. Half ofthe 12 colonies exposed to the pesticides did not make it through the winter ().
