...Systemic Pesticides and the Honeybee Population Beekeepers have been experiencing a large decline in their honeybee populations for the past decade at a startling rate. The disappearance of the honeybees has a much larger impact on daily life in the United States as well as around the world than many would believe, as they are cornerstones in a healthy and prosperous ecosystem. The extremely complex yet small honeybee is responsible for a large majority of the food we consume everyday. While there are multiple theories surrounding the disappearance of the bees, the use of systemic pesticides is leading the way as the culprit. The use of systemic pesticides needs to be banned in the United States due to the negative impact they are having on the honeybee population. As the population of the United States continues to grow exponentially annually, so does the need for an increased food supply. Monocultures have been the answer to this need due to the fact that they allow farmers to mass-produce a single item much cheaper and easier than traditional farming in which multiple crops are grown on a single plot of land. There are many possibilities for the types of plants that can be found in a monoculture but typically wheat, corn, and soy are the main monocultures crops in the United States due to the wide use of these plants in countless products on the grocery store shelves. These monocultures have caused the use of pesticides to reach levels never seen before by the agricultural...
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...Honey Bees are Disappearing The drastic decline of honey bees in the United States is a marvel that has many individuals making inquiries. A famous thinker, Albert Einstein, quoted, “If the bees disappear from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live.” Is this true? Need I remind us that these little creatures play an extremely important role in pollinating many, if not most of our food crops. Bees are a primary source for farming over two-thirds of our food by pollinating them, and they are the most important group in moderate climates (Palmer). Without the correct balance, humanity would slowly wane in population, as our food production and supply will decrease. As small as they may seem, they render a critically...
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...The Demise of the Honey Bees Honey bees and the other pollinators have been providing humans their invaluable pollinating services. These pollinators have helped produce approximately $19 billion worth of agricultural crops in the United States alone in 2010. (Arnold). The BeeBase, operated by the National Bee Unit (NBU) in England, has been operating since 1991 and was created to set out to protect and sustain the national bee stocks. A new initiative called, Healthy Bees Plan, encourages the 20,000 beekeepers in England and Wales to register and stay in close contact with the NBU. The database will play a key role in allocating the new funds allotted to honey bee protection. (National Bee Unit). Honey bee colonies are collapsing because of colony collapse disorder or CCD. There are many factors that cause CCD, such as parasites, viruses, chemicals, bacteria, and the environment, but many experts disagree on what combination of these factors actually cause CCD. Despite being considered a pest, nuisance, and some may say, dangerous, the bees are still a necessary part of agriculture. As humans, we should respond to their disappearance by helping re-populate the honey bees since many plants rely on them for pollination. Different ways to help re-populate the bees are by planting a diversity of plants around your home to lessen the potential contamination of plants, avoid the use of any pesticides, and lastly, take up bee keeping as a hobby. Without bees, cross pollination of plants...
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...The Colony Collapse Disorder is a mystery that involves bees abandoning their hives which causes hives to fail and therefore bees are dying at alarming rates. About one third of the population of bees gets affected by these diseases that occur. (Walsh) The bees that get infected are the reasons why the hives collapse and lower the population of honey bees. Once the bees are infected they die off and cannot maintain the colony. In some cases bees are experiencing memory loss from contaminates and therefore they can not return to their hives. (Morris)The memory loss is a neurological phenomenon and happens quickly so that the bees can not carry out basic functions. In other cases the bees have deformed wings for no apparent reason and therefore...
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...Saving the Honey Bees How common is it for certain specie to disappear without a trace? Could this be possible? Apparently it is. Since 2006 the Honey bees have become a great deal of worry not just in the US, but around the world. They have begun to disappear without leaving any trace behind, denominated, Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). This phenomenon that has been hunting many for a few years has not yet been understood. Honey Bees are an essential part of human survival. Thanks to them we are able to eat every day. Many of the plant’s survival depend on the honey bees since “one third of the world's agricultural production depends on the European honeybee”(Cox-Foster ). They are the ones that can pollinate a certain amount of plants much quicker and easily compared to other insects. There have been many hypotheses concerning the loss of bees in the past years. One suspect that caused the disappearance of honey bees was the vorroa mites. These are parasites greatly responsible for the loss of a large number of bee colonies between 1987 and 2006. However, as the bees were studied there was found many unknown symptoms. This is how a hypothesis was developed stating that something was making bees more fragile. Its immune system was becoming weaker making them suffer different types of infections. However, the numbers of the vorroa mites were not extremely significant as to be the ones killing the bees. Another suspect mentioned was parasites. Some of the bees that were found...
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...introduce a surrogate in a cage. The cage prevents the colony from killing the foreign queen until the adapt to her scent. They also use insemination collected from male drones. They do this to select from certain traits. Another method is the practice of taking honey away from the hives and replacing it with sugar syrup. Organic beekeepers do not feed the bees sugar syrup they also are against the use of Miticides. 2. Discuss the various things that are thought to contribute to CCD. Of these, which is thought to be the most significant factor? What evidence is there to support this? Scientists turned to farming methods to explain the collapse of bees. They thought the use systemic pesticides, such as Gaucho an Poncho, were reasons why bees die. They found pesticides, but they did not know what they were doing to the bees. You would be able to see the dead bees around the hive. However, there were no dead bees in sight. 3. Why do the American Beekeepers have a difficult time selling honey? How can this contribute to the problem facing the bees? It is hard for American Beekeepers to sell honey because they are forced to go migratory because they cannot sell their honey and make a living, which forces them to go into factory farming. Once they are on the road they artificially feed them. If they are on the road and artificially feeding their bees and something goes wrong they lose about 10% of their queens and they are then forced to buy artificial queens. Once they are forced...
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...Effects of Pesticides on Commercial Honeybees and Wild Bees” Abstract: It is a well-known fact that the global population of bees is declining. This is a major concern because bees are the primary pollinators of the world’s crops. Commercial honeybees and wild bees both have significant impacts on the fate of the worlds produce. Without bees, produce would be an impossibility to get because there would be very little to none available. The reasons as to why this is happening have not been completely isolated yet, but scientists are testing multiple factors as to why this could be happening. One of the reasons could be pesticide and insecticide application to crops around the world. Pesticide and insecticide application could be a major contributing factor as to why the bee population is declining. This is very unfortunate because agriculture is expanding throughout the developing and the developed world. Between 1961 and 2006 global agriculture of pollinator dependent crops has increased by 16.7% in the developed world and by 9.4% in the developing world (Brittain & Potts, 2011). With commercial agriculture comes pesticide and insecticide application. Global pesticide application is expected to more than double to 10 million metric tons by 2050 (Brittain & Potts, 2011). This could be a major issue if in fact insecticides are a leading cause of global bee population decline. Neurotoxic insecticides may pose more of a direct threat to honeybees and wild bees than other...
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...For some people bees can be annoying and irritating. They buzz around sometimes stings people and always gets into your food and drinks when you try to eat or have a snack outside. Some even have allergic reactions to the stings. Well like it or not, if it weren’t for bees then we would all be dead. Since the 1900’s, beekeepers have watched the decline of bees. They have reported the dropping rate of the bees. Bee killing pesticides are one of the most biggest reason for this decline. Industrial agriculture, climate change and parasites are also the big reasons for the decline of the bees. Bees play a huge role in the ecosystems. A third of our global food supply is from bees. We depend on their pollination greatly. If we didn’t have the bees then wewould all die. We would have no one to pollinate all of the crops. If we they died we would have to hand pollinate everything, which takes a very long time, very expensive, and laborious. So technically it pays to have the bees naturally pollinate themselves. Since the end of World War II, the use of pesticides have increased greatly. Neonicotinoids have the biggest impact on the bees. Neonicotinoids are a very popular pesticide and are chemically speaking- similar to...
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...Should the use of high fructose corn syrup in food products be limited? Among cereals, sodas, and cookies, high fructose corn syrup is getting more and more common as an ingredient in our foods. High fructose corn syrup is a sweetener that is used as a common substitute for sugar. It is used in many substances due to the fact that it is steady in acidic foods (White 3). Although we may not notice the difference between sugar and high fructose corn syrup, it may not be suitable for our environment. High fructose corn syrup starts from the harvest of corn. Then, by milling, cornstarch is created. The starch includes glucose, an important carbohydrate in a human’s diet. Using an enzyme, the cornstarch is broken down, making glucose and regular corn syrup. To make the corn syrup into high fructose corn syrup, another enzyme is used to convert glucose into fructose (“How HFCS Is Made”). The enzymes used cause the corn syrup to become sweeter (“High fructose corn syrup”). This energy-intensive...
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...Preparation Outline Introduction » Bees have a place in our world that is important beyond our understanding. > The small little insect, that some may swat away at, works tirelessly around us to pollinate and present the possibility of further human development on earth. » Did you know that bees pollinate the majority of our fruits and vegetables? > Global Research of CA has found that just within the last five years, “30% of the national bee population has disappeared and nearly a third of all bee colonies in the U.S. have perished.” (Statistic, Global Research Of California) • Bees are going extinct at this high rate due to climate change, pesticides, diseases, and parasites. > Honeybees and the other pollinators have the invaluable job of pollinating that provides us with “approximately one-third of everything we eat!” according to OneGreenPlanet.org (Statistic, Tucker) • Yet we still take advantage and continue to let their population decline. » Today I will be talking about how pollination works, the benefits bees have on our world, and what people are doing to prevent the decline of the bee population any further. Transition: The most important thing that bees do is pollinate. Pollination is needed for plants to reproduce, and so many plants depend on bees as pollinators. (Explanation) Body #1 » When a bee comes to collect nectar and pollen from the flower of a plant, some pollen sticks to the hairs of their bodies. > When the bee travels to the next flower...
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...are using pesticides that affect the bees nervous systems. More than 100 big businesses send bills to the president to prevent killing bees. "Our businesses are deeply concerned about the continued and unstable loss of fees and other essential pollinator populations, and urged that significant action be taken now to address that that they face from pesticides and other stressors threatening their survival." This is a quote from the argument to get the president to try and band pesticides. Without these in our...
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...Why are Bees Dying? Tali Gosselin Mrs. Graham Bees are amazing creatures but how amazing are they really? What do they actually do for us? Are they really that helpful to our lives and why? Bees pollinate our worlds plants. Plants make oxygen for us to breath and in return we give then carbon. So why would bees dying really be an issue if all the plant needs is our carbon? Why would they be dying in the first place? And what will happen to humans when / if the bees die? All of these unanswered questions should be answered in the next few paragraphs. Bees are scientists helping the reproduction of plants. Just like when scientists help animals reproduce, bees do the same. Pollination is key to a plants growth. By moving pollen from one plant to another it helps the plant to reproduce seeds. With out seeds there's no more plants. With out the plants we have no oxygen. Bees pollinate around 100 plants that make up a third of our diet choice. The bees pollinate so much of our food, cow food is also made with the help of a few bees. Bees honey is also important to us. Honey is made when bees collect the...
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...a World without Bees The creatures that make it possible to feed millions of people are dying off at an alarming rate. Bees, one of the largest pollinators, are declining rapidly. They are keystone species and play a vital role to the planet’s entire ecosystem. University of Maryland Bee expert Dennis vanEngelsdorp warned in the Chattanooga Times Free Press that, “Everything falls apart if you take pollinators out of the game” (Borenstein). Many crops humans rely on depend on bees and other pollinators to reproduce. Honey bees in particular seem to be declining for a number of reasons, mainly man made. Bees could soon be nearing extinction; the human impact on their environment must be minimized to prevent an...
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...is to state accurate information and inform a reader about the unique creature, the honeybee. Honeybees are important to our wold. Not only are they one of the biggest pollinators, they also provide some people with food and a source of income. They live in large colonies called hives. In those hives there are millions of bees, called worker bees. Worker bees are female honeybees that are not sexually developed. It takes approximately twenty days for an egg to hatch. After the first three days of being birthed the egg turns into larvae. They older and mature worker bees take care of the larvae, feeding it royal jelly, pollen, and honey. Royal jelly is the leakage of the bees that provides the larvae with the nutrients they need. The worker bees tend to larvae and forage for food. They forage for three main types of food: honey, propolis, and nectar. Propolis is a sap type mixture that is used for sealing small holes in the honeycombs. They collect propolis form trees, the most common of which is the conifer. When the temperature is cold enough, the propolis becomes hard and brittle which makes it perfect for protecting the hive. Also, the worker bees feed and take care of the queen bee and the drones. Basically,...
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...Introduction Bees are essential organisms of almost all of the world’s terrestrial ecosystems. Bees are flying insects that are in the same class as the ants and wasps among others. These small insects are responsible for pollination and wax production and honey production. They inhabit every continent except for a continent known as Antarctica. Importance of bees The insects are known for its role in pollinating a large percentage of the flowering plants. They participate in sexual reproduction that ensures cross pollination. This process ensures genetic diversity in the food chain that ensures that there is flow of energy from the primary producers to higher levels of consumers. Since green plants are source of food for other organisms, the reduction of one of the primary pollination agents, or even their possible disappearance, is of concern. The bees are on the decline due to various reasons that will be considered later on. I believe the there more pros than cons that can be obtained from the bees. Factors for reduction of bees The disappearance of bees is a very frightening scenario that is subject to an explanation. There various reasons as to why there has been a reduction of bees. This are explained as follows: The sustainability of agriculture is a healthy function of ecosystem services ensures as that it intensifies to meeting growing demands for food production. Climate change, however, may have major influence on the main ecosystem functions...
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