About:

                    Bees are one of the myriad of other animals, including birds, bats and beetles, butterflies, called pollinators. Pollinators transfer pollen and seeds from one flower to another, fertilizing the plant so it can grow and produce food.

• Cross pollination helps at least 30% of the world’s crops and 90% of our wild plants to thrive. Without bees to spread seeds, many plants — including food crops would be die off.
• Bees are not summertime nuisance, they are small and hard working insects actually make it possible for many of your favorite foods to reach your table.
• Now, a condition known as Colony Collapse Disorder is causing the bee populations to plummet, which means these foods are also at risk.
• Colony Collapse Disorder is a new tagname presently being to a condition that is characterized by an unexplained rapid loss of a bee colony’s adult population.
• Sudden loss of a colony’s workers bee population with very few dead bees found near the colony. The queen and brood (young) remained, and the colonies had relatively abundant honey and pollen reserves. But hives can’t sustain themselves without worker bees and would eventually die. This combination of events resulting in the loss of a bee colony has been called colony collapse disorder.
• Reduction or loss of bee population has been seen in the history and known by the name such as disappearing disease, spring dwindle, may disease, autumn collapse and fall dwindle disease.

Symptoms:

• Contain no adult bees, with few to no dead bees around the colony.
• Contain capped brood.
• Contain food stores that are not robbed by neighboring bees or colony pest.
• Workers bees failed to return to colony from flight.

Causes:

The problem is that there doesn’t seem to be a single smoking gun behind CCD but a range of possible causes, including;

• Global warming: It causes flowers to bloom earlier or later than usual. When pollinators come out of hibernation, the flowers that provide the food they need to start to start the season has already bloomed.
• Varroa mite—parasites: European foulbrood (a bacterial disease that is increasingly being detected in U.S. bee colonies) microsporidian fungus nosema.
• Malnutrition: beekeepers collect bees honey so humans can consume it, they are taking away the insect’s food. They replace it with high fructose corn syrup, leaving the bees malnourished and weakening their immune systems. Researchers have identified some specific nutrients that bees need, get from honey, and don’t get from corn syrup.
• Metal pollution: bees absorbing metal pollution from flowers that absorbed it form the soil that absorbed it from modern machines and vehicles.
• Stress: the stress of shipping bees back and forth across the country, increasingly common in commercial beekeeping, may be amplifying the stress on the insects and leaving them more vulnerable to CCD.
• Habitat loss: it brought by development, abandoned farms, growing crops without leaving habitat for wildlife and growing gardens with flowers that are not friendly to farmers.

How can we protect bees?

• Policy makers must take action to protect the bees and other pollinators.
• Farmers must be rewarded for practices that help wild bee populations to thrive.
• Assistance should be provided to farmers who plan to support a wider variety of pollinators beyond just bees.
• Bee research must be strengthened and must also be broadened to include research on pollinators besides honey bees.
• Integrated pest management techniques should be used to minimize pesticide us and risk to bees.
• City dwellers can also practice IPM where they live, work and play to protect our health, water quality and pollinators.

And if CCD continues, the consequences for the agricultural economy — and even for our ability to feed ourselves could be dire.

“No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man”.

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