Zweiback 1

Brandon Zweiback

Ms. Johnson

English 015: Research Project

10 November 2015

Decreasing Numbers of Honeybees

The decreasing numbers of honeybee colonies has accelerated since 2005 and reached

staggering numbers in 2013. “Bees have been dying in record numbers since 2005…As much as

70 percent of the honeybees in colder parts of the country did not survive the harsh winter in

2013” (Dodrill). Despite numerous studies and careful observation, researches know that the

bees suffer from CCD, Colony Collapse Disorder, but don’t know exactly why. Their best

speculations include management stressors, environmental stressors, parasites, and pathogens.

Bees are such small creatures, with very few tasks. Why care about the decreasing amount of

honeybees? Does the reduction lead to negative effects in the environment and possibly affects

humans directly? Unfortunately, the answer to the latter is yes. Honeybees are a crucial part of

the ecosystem and the products from our environment. Less honeybees means less cross-

pollination. Without cross-pollination, we would have extreme difficulty producing a large

amount of different foods. The decrease in honeybees is very problematic and according to Dr.

Greg Hunt, “We’ve been seeing about 30% loss in an average winter” (Heid).

“Bee pollination is responsible for more than $15 billion in increased crop value each

year.” says Kim Kaplan of the United States Department of Agriculture. She expands on her

point by writing that “About one mouthful in three in our diet directly or indirectly benefits from

honey bee pollination.” Many fruits and vegetables, berries, and nuts would not be available for

human consumption without honeybee pollination. Unfortunately, these foods help provide us

Zweiback 2

with nutrition, flavor, and diversity in our diets and the loss of honeybees only creates a great

stress and increases concerns. Whole Foods is an important market for human consumption and

they attempted to bring the importance of pollinators to our attention. To give an idea about how

many food items would no longer exist without the hard work of our pollinators, Whole Foods

“pulled 237 of 453 products from their store aisle to illustrate how many food items would no

longer exist without bee pollination” (Dodrill). Not only would our simple small foods disappear,

but we would start losing the foods needed for livestock grazing. With years of working hard to

provide meat to our families and even doing the wrong like cutting down forests to create

agriculture ground, imagine all of that effort going to waste.

Digressing from the point, deforestation for animal agriculture is the leading cause of

global warming. Most of the lands are being plowed for livestock and food for the livestock.

Why even bring up this point? Honeybees need space for developing and nutritious food like all

organisms. According to Martin Larsson, “Scientists have found that the amount of natural

"meadow" land full of wildflowers and indigenous plants for bees to pollinate is also vanishing,

being replaced by plowed land with mostly soybeans and corn. Just like humans, it is not very

nutritious for a honeybee to eat soybean and corn all of the time.”

Besides human intervention what else would harm these important creatures? The most

common reason for the “destruction” of the bee colonies is know as the Varroa mite, ironically

named Varroa destructor. The Varroa attaches to the body and sucks the blood of one honeybee,

which would kill it and spread the disease to others. The mite can jump from one colony to

another, eradicating whole populations of honeybees. According to Markham Heid, “There are

treatments that combat the Varroa. But many small-scale beekeepers don’t use them.” Dr. Dennis

Zweiback 3

vanEngelsdorp, an entomologist from University of Maryland, says that’s bad because “they can

spread mites to neighboring colonies.”

Clearly the decrease in honeybee population worsens and it has a negative effect on the

environment and our survival. The decrease most likely occurs due to human error or neglect.

The decrease of bees will only become a greater problem if we don’t change our agriculture

systems soon and will only hurt us more in the long run. We should help right away by merely

raising a couple queen bees at home. Let’s get started.

Zweiback 4