File this under the heading, “Environmental Problems that I do Worry About. The collapse of honeybee colonies in Virginia this past winter was devastating. Reports the Daily Press:
Virginia lost 59.5 percent of its honeybee colonies last winter, nearly double the average rate for the past decade, according to the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
The rate of loss was about double the loss for managed colonies nationally. Scientists still aren’t sure what the cause is, although they have proffered various theories: pesticides; habitat loss; a cooler, wetter climate this year; diseases such as Varroa mites and nosema infections that shorten the life of worker bees; even the proliferation of electromagnetic fields from electric lines and cell towers that interfere with navigation or suppress the immune system.
Honeybees are a keystone species. As pollinators, they facilitate the reproduction and survival of hundreds (perhaps thousands) of species of plants and the organisms that depend upon those plants. They are dying in record numbers, not only in North America but Europe.
At this stage, our scientific knowledge is so patchy that it’s difficult to suggest meaningful public policy initiatives. Virginia Tech is conducting some bee-related research but the focus is narrow, deciphering how honeybee “waggles” communicate the whereabouts of food to other bees. There are dozens of other initiatives around the country. Given the critical role of bees in the environment, and commercial crops in particular, it strikes me that the federal government, the states and land-grant universities should reallocate research dollars to bees from less pressing priorities.
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