Causes of mass death of bees. Death of bees

The honey will disappear. A product that humanity has been collecting for about 9 thousand years. It serves us not only for food, but also as a cosmetic and medical product. By losing bees, we will obviously be losing one of the healthiest and most versatile foods on the planet.

Many fruits and vegetables will stop growing. People who are far from farming have little idea how many plants bees pollinate. According to a UN report, about 100 plants represent 90% of the world's food diversity, and 70 of them are pollinated by bees. According to the BBC, without bees, at least half of the goods in grocery stores would disappear. Apples, avocados, grapes, peaches, watermelons... and worst of all, coffee.

People will have to pollinate the plants themselves. But only a few and with significantly less efficiency. This method is used in China, where there is a desperate shortage of bees. The pollen bucket and brush method may help offset bee decline slightly, but it is not a replacement.

Dairy products will disappear. Have you ever wondered what dairy cows eat? Their diet consists of more than just plain grass. Cows require alfalfa, a plant pollinated only by bees. Sheep and goats, too, by the way. Without it, you can forget about both milk and any derivative products.

The cotton will disappear. And along with it, over time, all the clothes made from it, which, to put it mildly, are quite a lot. Yes, we have learned to make a synthetic replacement, for example, polyester, but in a world without cotton, the price for it will increase significantly.

The variety of food will be reduced. Without bees, humanity will lose part of its usual diet, although some, of course, will remain. Pigs and chickens do not require feed produced from pollinated plants. Wheat, soybeans, corn and rice grow without pollination. Tomatoes, potatoes and carrots require very little. But another problem will arise...

The price of food will skyrocket. And this is not an unfounded assumption. In the winter of 2012 in Scotland, for example, a third of all beehives were destroyed, which led to a sharp increase in prices for scarce products. It's best not to imagine how much a cup of coffee would cost in a world without bees.

Malnutrition will become a real problem. Humans are complex organisms that require balanced nutrition. And in many ways, our vitamins come from foods pollinated by bees. A 2011 study found that bee plants provide us with calcium, fluoride, iron, and vitamins A, C, and E. Without them, our health would decline significantly.

World economy may collapse. At the very least, the blow to it will be monstrous. The cotton, milk and coffee industries, many food and medical enterprises. Losses would amount to hundreds of billions of dollars across the globe, and it would take a miracle to prevent catastrophe from occurring.

Famine will begin in many countries. Switching to low-pollination plants like soybeans and rice will take a lot of time, which some developing countries may not have. Such a problem will arise only if the bees die out tomorrow, but gradual extinction will also bring many troubles.

Do the consequences of the possible extinction of frogs seem scary to you? The situation with bees is not much better. Even if the bees disappear gradually and we have time to prepare, we will remain living in an extremely sad world - without wine, cheese, coffee and ice cream.

From the time of Kievan Rus and the formation of the Moscow state, honey and wax were the most important products of domestic and foreign trade countries. Ancient Chronicler Nestor said that in Asia and Europe they were highly valued and used in great demand bee products from Rus'. Foreigners paid for these goods in gold and silver.

Honey taxes replenished the treasury, and the rulers of Rus' gave great importance beekeeping It is known that the oldest legal monument of the Kyiv state - “Russkaya Pravda” - provided for the protection of property on boards. Large fines were applied for the destruction or theft of bees: from 3 to 12 hryvnia, and in the Principality of Lithuania - even the death penalty.

Huge profits from beekeeping at minimal cost

The vast expanses of our country, both before and now, allow the state to receive huge profits from beekeeping minimum costs. Today Russia produces an average of 70 thousand tons of honey per year and is one of the ten leading “honey powers”. But the existing potential allows us to increase this figure many times over. Unlike most developed countries, Russia fully meets its needs for honey through own production and is a net exporter of this product.

The herbs of Siberia, the flowering meadows of the Don region, Bashkiria, Altai - these are inexhaustible reserves of honey - a natural product beneficial to health, and in fact = the country's gold reserve. Its quality is incomparable to the counterfeit product that in recent years has been supplied in huge quantities to Russian markets and is strangling conscientious domestic honey producers.

Presidential Decree inspires optimism Russian Federation dated May 7, 2018 No. 204 “On national goals and strategic objectives of the development of the Russian Federation for the period until 2024.” In this document, the President of the Russian Federation set before the government the task of significantly increasing the production and export of agricultural products. Russian honey is already present on the world market and has every chance to strengthen its position in this market. Consequently, the Presidential Decree directly concerns both domestic beekeeping and its products.

However, today beekeepers have to think more about survival than about expanding their apiaries. The work of a beekeeper is hard and sometimes hard labor, which not all enthusiasts can do. In addition, this is a risky business, since there is a possibility of losing the results of years of hard work overnight.

As a result of uncontrolled use in agriculture pesticides and other agrochemicals, a new problem has been added to the numerous problems of beekeeping - the growing scale of bee poisoning. Moreover, mass death of bees occurs in the most honey-bearing regions of Russia. Only in May-June 2018 in Volgograd region for this reason, more than 2,000 bee colonies died. There are more than 1,500 bee colonies in the Samara region. The geography of bee poisoning is extensive. This Rostov region, Krasnodar region, Kuban, Bashkiria, Altai. And this is far from full list. The season is just beginning.

Why are bees poisoned?

Bee poisoning occurs both due to the lack of proper control over the use of pesticides and the lack of dialogue between farmers and beekeepers. In the fight for high yields farmers place inflated expectations on chemicals, using them excessively and in violation of established rules.

Beekeepers are not notified of planned activities to treat crops with pesticides. Often, in violation of instructions for the prevention of bee poisoning by pesticides, they are carried out in a sanitary zone, within which such work is prohibited up to 5 km from the nearest apiary.

Currently, there is no single government agency in the country that would control safe use plant protection products. This function is distributed among several federal services, whose powers are limited to narrow specialization.

Until 2011, such control was entirely carried out by Rosselkhoznadzor. Later, its functions were transferred to other supervisory departments, but it is still not clear which of them should control what.

In most regions there are no laboratories where it is possible to study dead bees and determine the cause of their death. Due to the complexity and ignorance of the procedures, beekeepers prepare materials for filing lawsuits in court incorrectly. As a result of this, law enforcement and judicial authorities refuse to initiate cases against poisoners and satisfy the claims of beekeepers. Placing inflated hopes on chemicals in the fight for the harvest, farmers do not take into account or do not know that bees pollinating fields increase the yield by up to 30%, which brings net income to farmers, freeing them from additional expenses on equipment, fuel and mineral fertilizers.

In Russia, the work of bees in pollination is not appreciated. But by carrying pollen and fertilizing flowers, bees not only increase the yield of food and other agricultural crops, but also improve the quality of fruits and seeds. And this is already the basis for increasing the harvest for next year.

It is appropriate to recall that the protection of bees today is associated with global food security. It is estimated that bees account for 30% of the human food basket. Moreover, these are the most valuable products, rich in vitamins and minerals; fruits, vegetables, nuts. Bees also play an invaluable role in maintaining biological diversity on our planet. This fully applies to Russia as well.

Wild pollinators also take part in the pollination of flowering plants: bumblebees, butterflies, beetles and other types of insects. But they cannot replace honey bees. Honey bees have a significant advantage over wild pollinators. They live large families, collect a large number of pollen in reserve, for which they need to visit a huge number of flowers. Honey bees do 80-90% of the pollination work in fields, while wild insect pollinators do only 10-20%. But both of them are increasingly in need of protection.

In the USA and EU

Farmers in the US, EU and other countries have long appreciated the benefits of bee pollination. They enter into paid contracts with beekeepers, transport apiaries to close proximity to flowering fields, and thereby significantly increase productivity.

Mass death bees has already led to sad consequences. In many countries, there is an increasing shortage of bees to fully pollinate crops. This problem has become global in nature, and its solution already requires vigorous collective efforts. In December 2017, the UN General Assembly proclaimed May 20 as International Bee Day.

It’s time in Russia to think seriously about protecting bees and beekeeping. So far we have nothing to brag about here.

In connection with the current situation, the RPO "Society of Beekeepers of the Capital" calls on Russian beekeepers to unite to combat mass bee poisoning and intends to actively attract the attention of the general public and authorities to the problem of bee poisoning.

Please send your thoughts, comments and suggestions by email: [email protected]

Margarita Bukina, member of the board of the ROO "Society of Beekeepers of the Capital".

Over the past two years, scientists have been studying the causes of mass death or migration of bees. According to the results of a study conducted in the United States, the first proven cause of death of bees is agricultural drugs. A similar study was conducted in Turkey that confirmed this fact.

Last year in locality In Davutlar, Kusadasi County, Aydın District, about 350 million bees, occupying 9 thousand hives, died in one week in the spring. After the death of the bees The beekeepers left the area, and the county Department of Agriculture began an investigation into the cause of the incident. The results of tests carried out at the Bornova Veterinary Research Institute in Izmir found no traces of agricultural drugs in water sources and beehives. In a subsequent study of samples of dead bees, it was found that the cause of their death was carbonate group preparations used in agriculture. It is very interesting that bees died in both the USA and Turkey for the same reason. Behind Last year Mass death of bees has been observed in several regions of our country. The causes of these phenomena have not yet been established, but active research is underway.

The mass extinction of bee colonies is not only happening in Turkey; bee colonies, which play a huge role in agriculture, continue to disappear all over the world. According to a UN report on the issue, if bee deaths continue at the current rate, within ten years there will be no honeybees left in many parts of the world. Scientists are alarmed by the disappearance of bees, which represent one of the most important links in the food chain and are also of great importance in terms of agricultural production and environmental balance.

As we said earlier, in America they are rapidly disappearing honey bees, which are of great importance in the agricultural sector. Causes mysterious disappearance honey bees have not been definitively established. American farmers are struggling to keep bees alive. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the nation's bee population has declined by 50 to 90 percent. A similar situation is observed in Germany. The mass extinction of bees that began in the United States several years ago is also occurring in this country. Over the past 20 years, the number of honey bees in Germany has decreased by 50%. It is noted that the country faces the danger of extinction of all plant species. Ecologists claim that agricultural products are to blame for the mass death of bees, but so far studies conducted in Germany have not confirmed this hypothesis. As the German Ministry of Agriculture points out, in 1991 there were about one million beehives in the country; last year this figure dropped to 600-700 thousand. The Ministry believes that drugs used in agriculture pose a great danger to bees and other insects and some species of birds. When bees encounter chemicals, they become disorientated and lose their sense of smell and die as a result.

Pennsylvania State University recently published the results of a study on honey bees. Six different agricultural preparations were identified in samples of honey, honeycombs and dead bees. In some samples this figure reached 80. Many Scientific research on this issue, they suggest studying the effect of one drug on the body. Research regarding drug interactions is still very new. At the University of Pennsylvania and other laboratories in the United States, research is being carried out by combining various agricultural drugs and identifying their effects. A study by the University of Pelsinvana showed that bees die under the strong influence of viruses and bacteria. It is emphasized that there is sufficient confirmation that the only reason deaths of bees are agricultural preparations, not found. According to experts, the reason for the unexpected collapse of the colonies is the high incidence. According to another opinion, the death of bees is to some extent caused by insufficient nutrition. Bees living in fields where only one crop is grown are deprived of dietary diversity, which causes their death.

Dear friends, we have polluted the environment so much that it will take a lot of time to reverse this process. It may seem counterintuitive, but the future of humanity depends to a certain extent on bees. The world-famous scientist Einstein put forward the thesis according to which “if bees disappear from the face of the earth, humanity will disappear.” According to calculations carried out by British experts, 1/3 of the world's agricultural products are grown thanks to bee pollination, that is, 35% of the daily calorie requirement, we get most of the necessary minerals, vitamins and antioxidants thanks to bees. According to the UN Food Price Index, there is currently a rising trend in food prices. Scientists are trying their best to find the cause of the death of bees. There are fears that if bees fail to survive, the world will face an unprecedented food crisis.

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Over the past half century, many countries in America, Asia and Europe have faced the problem of mass death of bees. Scientists began to talk about the threat of the death of humanity. Let's look at the reasons for the extinction of bees, and what consequences this may have?

Causes of death of bees

For the first time, the extinction of bees in numbers exceeding natural death was noticed in the twentieth century after the First World War. The process accelerated in the last decades of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The beginning of this process is associated with the massive use of pesticides and other pesticides in agriculture.

In the twenty-first century, the process of decreasing the number and types of worker bees is gaining alarming proportions. For example, in the United States, half of the bee colonies died in 2012 alone. In Russia in 2007-2008, the number of winged workers decreased by forty percent.

Among the reasons leading to their death, it is impossible to single out two or three that can be solved quickly and effectively. Let's consider the main factors influencing the life and reproduction of beneficial insects:

Why are bees dying out? As we see, there is no single reason for the rapid decline in the number of winged workers. In addition to death from diseases and chemicals, sudden disappearances of entire bee families, the so-called collapse, have been observed. In 2012, in America, due to the collapse, the number of bees decreased by fifty percent.

One of the reasons for leaving hives may be stress caused by transporting apiaries over long distances to pollinate agricultural land. After departure, the bee swarm is doomed to die within the next few days, because domestic bees cannot exist outside the hive.

In Russia, after wintering 2016-2017, a significant death of bee colonies was recorded. Typically, after wintering, mortality in apiaries ranges from ten to forty percent. Behind last winter In some areas, beekeepers lost all their bees.

In Estonia, during the winter of 2012-2013, the number of bees decreased by twenty-five percent, and in some apiaries the death rate was one hundred percent. The cause of such mass death could be: very coldy and late spring, as well as defeat by foulbrood.

Consequences of extinction of bee colonies

Humans need bees not only to get sweets. useful product. Workers fulfill their main mission by pollinating the lion's share of agricultural plants and gardens. Without bee pollination, not only will food availability decrease.

Many plants will not be able to reproduce without pollination, and are gradually disappearing from the surface of the Earth. First, there will be a reduction in the harvest of buckwheat and other crops. Gardens without pollination will no longer provide us with fruit. Famous interesting fact, that in China, in some provinces where there are no bees, gardens are pollinated by hand. But this method cannot replace pollination of gardens by bees.

What foods can disappear from our diet? Apart from honey, which people have enjoyed and been treated with for thousands of years, there will be no fruits, watermelons, grapes, and, surprisingly, coffee. Without some herbs, such as alfalfa, which is pollinated by bees, it is impossible good nutrition dairy livestock: cows, goats.

Following the bees, many animals that eat plant foods. The disappearance of elements of the food chain will lead to mass starvation. Many have heard the statement of the brilliant physicist Einstein that after the death of the last bee, humanity will not live more than four years and will die of starvation. The Bulgarian healer Vanga also predicted the death of bees and cultivated plants serving as food for people and animals.

How many people know that without bees we will lose such a natural product as cotton? After all, its pollination is impossible without bees, and not only will we not have clothes made of light cotton or cambric. But also on synthetic fabrics prices will rise significantly.

In addition, the decline of plants, flowers and grasses that require insect pollination for reproduction will accelerate. Some argue that pollination is carried out not only by bees, but also by wasps and other insects. But in terms of the number of plants pollinated, no one can compare with nectar collectors.

British scientists predict the complete disappearance of bees in the world by 2035. This is the most pessimistic forecast, because today many experts are looking for a way out of the current situation. Optimists say that wheat and rice, corn and soybeans will remain. Of the animals whose meat is used for food, pigs and chickens will survive. The yield of potatoes, tomatoes and carrots without pollination will decrease, but only slightly.

Due to the reduction in the number of products and their species diversity, humanity will begin to be attacked various diseases. After all maximum amount The human body receives beneficial vitamins and minerals from foods that cannot be grown without pollination.

Video: The extinction of bees threatens the death of all humanity.

What do scientists suggest?

Restricting the use of pesticides in agriculture and banning the use of antibiotics in the treatment of bees alone is not enough to restore populations.

Honeybees are the glue of agricultural crops. About 30% of everything we eat requires insect pollination, and the vast majority of it is produced by honey bees. Interestingly, bees arrived from the Old World with early European settlers. The American Indians called them "flies" white man" None of the species of New World bees - wasps, hornets, bumblebees, yellow flies - none of them can compete with honey bees in terms of productivity and commercial value of their work.

From the almond orchards of Central California, where billions of honey bees from all over America arrive each spring to pollinate, to the blueberry fields of Maine, these insects, with their invisible labor, enrich the American agricultural industry by $15 billion every year. In June 2013, Whole Foods in Rhode Island temporarily removed all products that relied on insects to raise awareness of the bee problem and emphasize their importance. Of the 453 positions, 237 disappeared, including apples, lemons, zucchini, and pumpkins.

Around 2006, professional American beekeepers noticed something strange and raised the alarm: their bees began to disappear in huge numbers. The honeycomb, wax and honey remained in the hives, but not the insects themselves. As the number of reports from concerned beekeepers grew, scientists even came up with a special term - “colony collapse syndrome.” Suddenly, bees found themselves in the media spotlight, with the public fascinated by the mystical mystery of their disappearance.

Meanwhile, by 2013, a third of all colonies in the United States did not survive the winter: the bees either died or abandoned their hives.

This is 42% more than the amount of insect losses that beekeepers are accustomed to - it previously amounted to 10-15% of the total amount.

What is reducing the bee population?

Deadly pesticide

Of course, agricultural pesticides were named as the “first suspect”. Most of the suspicion has fallen on systemic pesticides belonging to the group of neonicotinoids, which appear to affect insects even when used in so-called “safe doses”.

Chenshen Lu, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, published the results of his study on the effects of neonicotinoids on bees in 2014. Lu and his co-authors from the Worcester County Beekeepers Association studied the health of 18 bee colonies located in three different locations in central Massachusetts from October 2012 to April 2013. At each location, the researchers divided the six colonies into three groups: one that was supplemented with imidacloprid, one that was given clothianidin (both belong to the neonicotinoid group), and one that was left without pesticides.

While the 12 pesticide-treated colonies in the current study experienced a mortality rate of 50%, The scientists noted that in their earlier 2012 study, bees in pesticide-treated hives had a much higher mortality rate from “colony collapse syndrome,” at 94%. This mass bee die-off occurred during the particularly cold and long winter of 2010-2011 in central Massachusetts, leading the study authors to hypothesize that colder temperatures combined with neonicotinoids are leading to high rates mortality among insects.

Lu continued his research in this area and shared several of his findings at a seminar at the Institute of Public Health on August 14, 2014. According to the scientist, in the case of neonicotinoids, there is a chain of consequences. Beekeepers first introduce pesticides into bee colonies by feeding them corn syrup with high content fructose - this product is made from corn, which is treated with these pesticides. Neonicotinoids have generally gained great popularity among agriculturalists: all crops are sprayed with them and all the seeds of these crops are treated, so contact turns out to be dangerous at any stage of plant growth and development. As a result, bees poisoned by pesticides lose the ability to fly in a straight line (beeline), fly into other people's colonies, and leave the hives in winter period and demonstrate a number of other neurological abnormalities, which lead to their death or disappearance.

In the presence of a tick

Immediately after the 2006 crisis, when scientists diagnosed colony collapse disorder or CCD, the search for its root cause began.

The Israeli research company Beeologics believed that the mass extinction of bees is primarily due to acute viral paralysis, which varroa mites “reward” insects. This company proposed to induce RNA interference in bees - a kind of “intracellular police”, which will be encoded to attack the proteins of these mites. This way the varroa will be destroyed, but the bees themselves will not be harmed.

Monsanto, one of the world's largest pesticide producers, lists solving the problem of bee extinction as one of the company's top priorities on its official website. However, American farmers do not trust Monsanto and the results of their experiments on the introduction of RNA interference: they believe that the major players in the market of pesticides and GMOs are only hiding behind concern for environment. But in fact, Monsanto does not plan to preserve the bee population, but instead to create and introduce into use its own “robobees” that will be under their control and capable of performing all the same functions. In short, turn all the bees in the world into private property.

It's Complicated

So, who is to blame for this situation? What kills bees - corporate pesticides or mites? Pesticides are cited as the most likely cause. It is believed that if pesticides are removed, the number of dying bee colonies will be much reduced. In 2014, the media massively picked up the results of the above-mentioned experiment by Chenshen Lu, the results of which also supposedly confirm the only correct version of this problem: it’s all about harmful influence neonicotinoids on bees. But the fact is that the scientist’s research was subject to a barrage of criticism from other entomologists and beekeepers.

What's the problem with Chenshen Lu's research?

To begin with, he was refused publication by a number of serious American publications, so Lu had to publish the study in the, to put it mildly, unpopular Italian journal The Bulletin of Insectology (the impact factor of this journal in 2015 was 1.075).

“We found that neonicotinoids are highly likely to be responsible for colony collapse syndrome,” Lu sums up his research.

Something needs to be cleared up. Neonicotinoids – relatively new class pesticides that are made from nicotine and actually affect nervous system insects These pesticides are usually used to treat the seeds of future plants. Neonicotinoids have become popular because they are much more effective than older insecticides and less toxic to humans - they are widely used in crops such as corn, soybeans and canola.

For his experiment, Chenshen Lu fed two-thirds of the bees corn syrup to which these pesticides had been added. The remaining third were the "control group" who were not given neonicotinoids. We know the results: 6 out of 12 colonies that took pesticides were destroyed. But at the same time, other entomologists aware of the experiment complained that Lu used too much pesticide, incomparable to the amount that bees can receive in real life. This is the number: 135 to a billion, while even Bayer, the pesticide manufacturer, recognizes the figure of 50 to a billion as deadly to the life of bees. And in wildlife, while collecting nectar from plants, bees can even encounter a pesticide value of 5 to a billion.

At the same time, there are, of course, falsifiers on the other side, who claim that pesticides are completely harmless - and this whole “bee apocalypse” is in fact a simple sensation inflated by the media and grant-eaters. For example, this side has Henry E. Miller, a renowned medical researcher and journalist who has written for Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. He regularly publishes texts on the topic “ bee apocalypse”, in which he mainly insists that this is all a myth, vanity unsupported by arguments, and so on. At the same time, already on the first page of Google, if you enter his name there, publications appear in the spirit of “Why you can’t trust Henry E. Miller,” where his previous achievements are consistently listed: the tobacco lobby, denial of serious climate change, protection of pesticides and the plastic industry .

Who to believe?

On the one hand we have Chenshen Lu, who feeds the bees inflated doses of pesticides, to prove their primary harm to insects. On the other hand, there are people like Henry E. Miller who urge people to stop panicking and not worry about the use of neonicotinoids at all.

The truth is, most likely, not on someone’s side, but, as usual, somewhere in the middle. There is research showing that exposure to certain fungicides and pesticides (including neonicotinoids) can make bees more susceptible to infection. Meanwhile, other studies show that even low doses of neonicotinoids can affect the performance of bees, making it difficult for them to return to their natal hives or become queen bees.

Against this background, it looks interesting, published in the journal Pest Management Science in 2012 by three leading honey bee researchers in France, Great Britain and the USA. Its authors note that the period of mass disappearance of bees (and the diagnosed “colony collapse syndrome”) is not necessarily associated with the use of pesticides.

For example, in California, bee colonies began to rapidly disappear in the mid-1990s, before widespread neonicotinoids.

And after the start of their use in this area, the decline in bees decreased. A similar example is Australia, where neonicotinoids are also widely used, but bee colonies are not subject to mass extinction. Perhaps because varroa mites are not common there.

In general, it is difficult to single out the only correct reason. Rather, a combination of factors plays a role here. The deadly varroa mite has likely killed many bees over the winter. Viral diversity is most directly related to colony collapse syndrome. An important reason is also poor nutrition of bees, which occurs due to the fact that open lands are transformed into sites cultivated by farmers where the crops they planted are grown. This deprives insects of a significant percentage of nutrition, and pesticides in new plants, of course, can only aggravate all these problems. In short, the problem is complex, with many sides.