Honeybees Mysteriously Disappearing in The United States of America

In my’ country Uganda, honeybees are still taken rather too much for granted. No body really sits down to gauge the unlikely scenario of a world without bees because there is this complacent feeling that bees are going no where and they will always make honey or pollinate crops for us.

In the developed countries like America however, people are very concerned about the welfare of bees so much that they track very consistently the health of honeybees across the country. The really bad news coming up is that over the last 4 years, honeybees are mysteriously disappearing. There has been the heaviest record of bee die offs this winter than at anytime in the recorded history of the United States of America and this is no small matter.

 In 2006, there was the phenomenon called the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) where adult bees would simply abandon their colonies only to go and die away. It was suspected that viruses and bacteria caused the disorder.

Whereas it is true that the severe winters this year have done serious damage to the honeybees, studies carried out in California on the honeybees’ pollens and hives suggest that contamination by pesticides is emerging as another angle of threat. Regulators from California and Canada are assessing the threat but they all seem to agree that pesticides used on orchards and other crop fields are the main reason bees are dying this year.

Scientists in America and Canada are very concerned about this apparent threat on bees because of the fundamental role bees play in the economies of these countries. Without the honeybees, we could have a world without food given that upto one third of all the food we eat comes from plants that depend entirely on bees for pollination.

There is need for the world to save bees from extinction because if we allow this to happen, then along with the honeybees we too shall perish. The use of harmful pesticides especially must not e allowed in the market. The US Environmental Protection Agency needs to do more to save the bees. Am relieved that there is a general concern in this direction and we hope people in the position to act rise up to this occasion.