I was not alone to see the bees of my garden die this winter – now we have a new idea why
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IIf you walk in my community garden, passing through prolific greenery, hidden in a shaded corner, right next to the batteries of hives, you will find an altar decorated with a jar of honey and a piece of comb. It serves as a reminder which gives to think that, like many hives in the United States, our bees suddenly perished during the winter.
Although bee colonies have been decreasing for about two decades, which was in March, the deaths of honeys had suddenly reached record heights in American commercial beekeepers said that the loss of more than 60% of their colonies in winter, increasing at an estimated cost of $ 600 million. The massive wave of deaths among commercially critical pollinators this winter caused urgent investigations.
Many culprits could be the cause of this phenomenon, including excessive use of pesticides. Now, the researchers have found solid evidence for a possible explanation – the viruses disseminated by parasitic mites that invade hives, according to new research from the United States Department of Agriculture which have not yet received from peers. All the mites studied have shown resistance to Friendtraz, a chemical which is often used to control their populations and has been strongly applied to hives for several decades.
The bees that buzz around the gardens and farms these days are not from the United States – they were brought here from the 17th century by European colonists. But today, they are treated like livestock, shipped across the country as our main commercial pollinator. More than 100 cultures cultivated in the United States depend on them, and pollinate $ 15 billion in cultures per year.
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My garden does not take advantage of bees: we have offered our small bee populations native flowers arranged with love like Asclepia, bee balm and Goldenod, to supply pollen and nectar meals. In turn, they provided us with a modest amount of honey each year, and a little mead too. When we learned that they were dead, it was like losing members of our garden community – openness that occasionally bite you. When I discovered that we were not alone in this loss, it was strangely comforting. But that also lit a more important problem.
Like us, dependence on bees, is managed by humans, their decline is also largely linked to our activity: the increase in temperatures due to anthropone climate change stimulates the growth of parasitic mites and the chemicals used in agriculture also contribute to shelters. Scientists noted that the bees introduced are in competition with native bees, which last it on pollen and nectar treats.
This is still another reason to preserve native flowers, whether in your community garden, your courtyard or in a saucepan on the steps, which is a fairly abundant floral buffet for bees that have evolved here to take advantage of them too.
Image of lead: Vera Larina / Shutterstock
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