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Carly Otis

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Can urban beehives increase food production?





Closing Statement from Carly Otis


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  • May 22 2013: Dont know if anyone has posted this yet. National Geographic did an article about about a recent study in the Journal of Experimental Biology. In the study the researchers showed that an exposure to certain pesticides inhibited the bees memory and communication skills (waggle dance). Both memory and communication are crucial for pollination and the bees survival. If either is affected than pollination rates and bees ability to survive could be effected. Interesting read.

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      May 22 2013: The study you brought up is interesting and I hadn't heard of this phenomena before. This could potentially be a reason why bees aren't thriving as well in the U.S. It would be interesting to compare the effects of pesticides from different areas where bees are not doing well to places where they are thriving. This could show if our pesticides are a large contributing factor to the bees population collapse.
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      May 22 2013: I think pesticides really need to be looked into more, not just for bees but for other pollinators too. Pesticides are good in that they kill the pests that would normally harm or destroy crops. But pesticides can also kill the good organisms that crops benefit from.

      Unfortunately it seems as though there is not just one cause of CCD. TIME magazine posted an article online that says, along with pesticides, things that cause CCD are several viruses, a parasitic mite, and a bacterial disease. While hopefully the pesticides that do cause CCD will eventually not be used, viruses, mites and bacteria are much harder to treat in bees.

    • May 22 2013: In a Nat Geo article called "The Plight of the Honeybee", the author compares CCD in bees to HIV/AIDS in humans: AIDS isn't what kills you, it is the opportunistic ailments that take hold when your immune system is low. So what if CCD is similar? I think that it is extremely important to find out what causes the change in the honeybee colony that inevitably leads to its demise. Could it be pesticides altering behavior and physiology in the bees be that?

      The EU just recently banned the pesticide thought to be the major contributor to honeybee declines, neonicotinoids, for two years. Bees exposed to neonicotinoids have been found to have an increased amount of nosema, a gut parasite. If worker bees' lives are reduced - even by a couple of days - that can have a huge effect on colony production, potentially leading to the failure of it.


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