Bees are a critical part of our agricultural system.
They help pollinate flowering plants, including food crops.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service is teaching the public about
bees at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
Honeybees are needed in order to set the fruit on squash, cucumbers, apples, cherries, blueberries,
almonds, and a host of other crops in the U.S. ARS studies bees and threats to their
health, including mysterious bee disappearances.
For the last five or six years, beekeepers have been losing between twenty and thirty
percent of their bees each winter.
That is entire colonies die and that’s unsustainable.
It’s a phenomenon called colony collapse disorder, but we don’t know exactly what
is causing that.
Probably pesticides are involved; probably loss of bee forage and habitat is involved.
We know that some pathogens and pests and parasites are involved.
Smith says while bees are not going extinct, he adds that trouble for beekeepers can mean
trouble for farmers.
There’s about two and a half million honeybee colonies in the U.S., and probably over half
of them are owned by commercial beekeepers and they’re rented by growers of close to
a hundred crops all across the U.S. for pollination of those crops.
Researchers say people can help the bee population by supporting local beekeepers, decreasing
pesticide use and planting a diversity of flowers.
In Washington, D.C. for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, I’m Bob Ellison.