In my random Netflix perusal, I came across a documentary about the striking loss of bee populations, The Vanishing of the Bees. I hadn’t realized this, but in industrial scale farming a large amount of pollinators are needed to
In my random Netflix perusal, I came across a documentary about the striking loss of bee populations, The Vanishing of the Bees. I hadn’t realized this, but in industrial scale farming a large amount of pollinators are needed to pollinate fields of crops, many more pollinators than live in the area normally. Bee farmers fill this role by cultivating large colonies of bees. They move these bees around the country in semi-trucks to farms where they are needed. These bees are experiencing “colony collapse disorder” where entire colonies of bees are wiped out. Without pollinators, many crops will be drastically affected. Fellow blogger Michele has posted artwork that tries to draw attention to the plight of the bees.
While the research into colony collapse disorder is very complex and implicates multiple factors including diseases and pesticides, the documentary focuses on the potential contribution of pesticide exposure to this disorder.
The documentary suggests that FDA testing of pesticides is inadequate testing. Pesticides levels that are not lethal to individual bees could have effects that are detrimental to colonies. At the time of the filming, there wasn’t much known about why exactly these colonies of bees were being wiped out.
Pesticide use has been an obvious area of research interest. In the last year, Science Magazine published a study from the UK that found bees exposed to levels of pesticide found in the pollen and nectar of crops grew more slowly and made many fewer queen bees. This could be a really big problem because the queen bees repopulate bee colonies after the winter. Science Magazine also published research from another group in France that found a large number bees exposed to low levels