A Third of America's Bee Colonies Died Last Year and That's 'Good News'?


Source: Gizmodo



You know bees are having a rough time when a survey finds that professional beekeepers lost 33.2 percent of their colonies this year and that statistic is considered a significant improvement over the previous decade.
 
Bee populations around the world have been in decline for years due to a number of reasons that make it extremely difficult to fix the problem. Urban development, insecticides, fungicides, illness, climate change, and many other factors have been determined to be responsible for the decline in bee populations. This week, the nonprofit Bee Informed Partnership and the Apiary Inspectors of America published their annual survey of 4,963 beekeepers in the United States and it seems that we still have a problem. But it was a slightly better year for our vital pollinating friends.

The loss of a third of the nation’s honey bee colonies between April 2016 and March 2017 represented the second lowest rate of colony loss in the last seven years. On average, over the last decade, about 40 percent of colonies were lost each year. “It’s good news in that the numbers are down, but it’s certainly not a good picture,” survey director Dennis vanEngelsdorp, told CBS News. “It’s gone from horrible to bad.”




Cont’d.

LINK:
http://gizmodo.com/a-third-of-americas-bee-colonies-died-last-year-and-tha-1795609221