Bee genocide: Nearly half of US honey hives collapsed in past 12 months
RT.com
12 May, 2016
The shocking, and seemingly irreversible, destruction of the US honeybee population took a huge hit in the past year, with 44 percent of all hives collapsing between April 2015 and April 2016.
This was the second worst year for colony losses since the “Beepocolypse” started a decade ago, according to The Bee Informed Partnership, the collaboration between the US Department of Agriculture, research labs, and universities that is tracking the alarming numbers.
Honeybee hives are generally inactive during the winter before being rejuvenated in the summer in a natural cycle, but this past season, colony collapses were three times higher than the “acceptable rate”.
The varroa mite, first introduced to the US via Florida in 1995, and pesticides are thought to be the main causes of the collapse, although shipping them in trucks across the country to pollinate monocropped farms is also thought to stress them out.
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