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Bee populations are dwindling across the globe, putting 1 in 3 meals crops like apples and almonds, which rely on pollination from bees, at critical risk.
In the US, beekeepers have reported annual losses of about 33 % of their hives each and every year, a level of loss that the Agricultural Study Solutions reports could threaten the financial viability of the bee pollination market if it continues (and some beekeepers report a lot larger losses than this at upwards of 70 or, in some instances, one hundred percent).
Regardless of the growing losses, the causes of the enormous bee die-offs have yet to be firmly defined, although accumulating study is pointing to a cocktail of agricultural chemical substances as a probably main culprit.
New Study: Fungicides Might Be Killing Bees
Systemic neonicotinoid pesticides have been increasingly blamed for bee deaths (and have been implicated in a recent mass bee die-off of 25,000 bumblebees along with millions of bee deaths in Canada), prompting the European Union (EU) to ban them for two years.
Now, it seems measures that target single classes of pesticides, even though a move in the appropriate path, may be falling quick. In a very first-of-its-kind study, researchers analyzed pollen from bee hives in seven main crops and found 35 various pesticides along with high fungicide loads. Each and every sample contained, on typical, nine diverse pesticides and fungicides, even though one contained 21 various chemicals.
Moreover, when the pollen was fed to wholesome bees, they had a important decline in the capability to resist infection with the Nosema ceranae parasite, which has been implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).