• Question: What is killing the bees? Is it anything to do with infection?

    Asked by to Bethany, Hannah, Keith, Peter on 24 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Bethany Dearlove

      Bethany Dearlove answered on 24 Jun 2014:

      This is a great question. I know about the bee decline, but I, like you, didn’t know the reason why, so I looked it up. It seems that three main factors were thought to be the cause: habitat loss, disease and pesticides. A recent study from Harvard seems to suggest that a class of insecticides called neonicotinoids are behind the colony loss. You can read The Guardian article I found here: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/09/honeybees-dying-insecticide-harvard-study.

    • Photo: Peter Elliott

      Peter Elliott answered on 24 Jun 2014:

      One parasite that is thought to be important to bee decline is the Varroa mite. It lives and feeds on bees and often carries one of two virus that can cause bee wing deformation and acute paralysis. Both of these diseases can lead to colony collapse disorder.

      As Bethany says neonicotinoids are also thought to affect bees. That is why they have been banned in Europe. However, at the moment it has only been put in place for 2 years and science has shown that neonicotinoids last longer than that in the wild. So we wont actually be able to accurately see if the removal of this pesticide means that more bees survive. The ban time needs to be increased.

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