Unexplained high rates of bee colony deaths have been reported.
Honeybees have a direct impact on both human and environmental health. Bees are essential for the production of food because of their role as pollinators and the medical benefits of honey and other goods. The bulk of the food crops we rely on cannot be grown without bees and other pollinators.
According to ScienceAlert magazine, a new paper shows how the lifespan of the adult honeybee appears to have shrunk by nearly 50 percent in the past 50 years. The European Red List for Bees suggests nearly one in ten species of wild bees are facing extinction. Imagine how we would react if human lifespans were halved. The equivalent would be if the average woman in the UK lived to be 41 instead of 82 years old.
According to The Guardian, as the damaging effects of the climate crisis compound across the globe, bees have become one of the most afflicted insects. Between October 2018 and April 2019, 40% of the United States honeybee colonies died, the highest winter loss in more than a decade. As the world's primary pollinators, bees play a crucial role in the global food supply chain, and their loss could trigger a devastating collapse of Earth's many ecosystems.
Canada, Australia, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Finland, and Poland have all reported unusually high rates of bee colony fatalities. In the UK, 29 percent of honeybee colonies perished during the harsh winter of 2012-2013.