It's been a few years now that beekeepers, honey producers and scientists have noticed a rapid decline in the population of bees. The case of the vanishing bees, dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder, has effected the business of honey making and more drastically, food production in general. Fully one-third of the world's food crops depend on bee pollination.
Well it seems that scientists may finally have some answers.
Click here to read the whole article in Scientific American.
It seems a confluence of factors is the culprit - overuse of herbicides and poor nutrition create unstable immune systems that then become susceptible to virus. The hope is that in the coming years the population can be rebuilt and the systems put into place to prevent the spread of viruses throughout the colony.
Simple fixes like maintaining cleaner hives and better nutrition can lead to stronger bees. And another bit of advice from the scientists is a further incentive to break up huge farms of single crops, called monocultures - simply breaking these farms up with a few new crops can allow for nature to better do its job in regulating the flow of healthy nutrients to the bees.
