The Plight of the Honeybee- National Geographic Name: ____________________________ Reading Comprehension Questions Vocabulary 1)neonicotinoids 2) colony collapse disorder 3) pollinator 4) carrying capacity 5) parasite 6)immune suppressed 7)biofuel 1) Discuss how the 2012-2013 data cited in the article support the idea of dwindling bee populations. 2) Why are bees important to the food industry? 3) What is the link between disease and compromised immune systems? 4) How has a reduction in optimal environmental conditions affected bee populations? 5) How do pesticides negatively impact honeybees? 6) Do you feel that pesticide companies should disclose both active and inert ingredients? Why or why not? + 7) How does biofuel production impact bee survival? http://news.nationalgeographic.com The Plight of the Honeybee Billions of dollars—and a way of life—ride on saving pollinators Bees are back in the news this spring, if not back in fields pollinating this summer's crops. The European Union (EU)has announced that it will ban,for two years, the use of neonicotinoids, the much-maligned pesticide group often fingered in honeybee declines. The U.S. hasn't followed suit, though this year a group of beekeepersand environmental and consumer groups sued the EPA for not doing enough to protect bees from the pesticide onslaught. For the last several years scientists have fretted over the future of bees, and although research has shed much light on the crisis, those in the bee business—from hive keepers to commercial farmers—say the insects remain in deep trouble as their colonies continue to struggle. The current crisis arose during the fall of 2006 as beekeepers around the country reported massive losses—more than a third of hives on average and up to 90 percent in some cases. Bees were flying away and simply not coming back; keepers would find boxes empty of adult bees except for a live queen. No bee corpses remained to tell the tale. The losses were unprecedented and fast. Now it's five years later, and though colony collapse disorder (CCD)—the name given to the mysterious killer condition—has dwindled in the manner of cyclical diseases, bees are still battling for their lives and their colonies are weaker than ever. The latest data, from the 2012-2013 winter, indicate an average loss of 45.1 percent of hives across all U.S. beekeepers, up 78.2 percent from the previous winter, and a total loss of 31.1 percent of commercial hives, on par with the last six years. (Most keepers now consider a 15 percent loss "acceptable.") Unprecedented Pollinator Crisis Why keep worrying over the fate of a bunch of pesky stinging insects? Bees in their crucial role as pollinators are paramount. Western nations rely heavily on managed honeybees—the "moveable force" of bees that ride in trucks from farm to farm—to keep commercial agriculture productive. About a third of our foods (some 100 key crops) rely on these insects, in ...

1. The Plight of the Honeybee- National Geographic Name:
____________________________
Reading Comprehension Questions
Vocabulary
1)neonicotinoids
2) colony collapse disorder
3) pollinator
4) carrying capacity
5) parasite
6)immune suppressed
7)biofuel
1) Discuss how the 2012-2013 data cited in the article support
the idea of dwindling bee populations.
2) Why are bees important to the food industry?
3) What is the link between disease and compromised immune
systems?
4) How has a reduction in optimal environmental conditions
affected bee populations?

2. 5) How do pesticides negatively impact honeybees?
6) Do you feel that pesticide companies should disclose both
active and inert ingredients?
Why or why not?
+
7) How does biofuel production impact bee survival?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com
The Plight of the Honeybee
Billions of dollars—and a way of life—ride on saving
pollinators
Bees are back in the news this spring, if not back in fields
pollinating this summer's crops. The European Union (EU)has
announced that it will ban,for two years, the use of
neonicotinoids, the much-maligned pesticide group often

3. fingered in honeybee declines. The U.S. hasn't followed suit,
though this year a group of beekeepersand environmental and
consumer groups sued the EPA for not doing enough to protect
bees from the pesticide onslaught.
For the last several years scientists have fretted over the future
of bees, and although research has shed much light on the crisis,
those in the bee business—from hive keepers to commercial
farmers—say the insects remain in deep trouble as their
colonies continue to struggle.
The current crisis arose during the fall of 2006 as beekeepers
around the country reported massive losses—more than a third
of hives on average and up to 90 percent in some cases. Bees
were flying away and simply not coming back; keepers would
find boxes empty of adult bees except for a live queen. No bee
corpses remained to tell the tale. The losses were unprecedented
and fast.
Now it's five years later, and though colony collapse
disorder (CCD)—the name given to the mysterious killer
condition—has dwindled in the manner of cyclical diseases,
bees are still battling for their lives and their colonies are
weaker than ever. The latest data, from the 2012-2013 winter,
indicate an average loss of 45.1 percent of hives across all U.S.
beekeepers, up 78.2 percent from the previous winter, and a
total loss of 31.1 percent of commercial hives, on par with the
last six years. (Most keepers now consider a 15 percent loss
"acceptable.")
Unprecedented Pollinator Crisis
Why keep worrying over the fate of a bunch of pesky stinging
insects? Bees in their crucial role as pollinators are paramount.
Western nations rely heavily on managed honeybees—the
"moveable force" of bees that ride in trucks from farm to
farm—to keep commercial agriculture productive. About a third
of our foods (some 100 key crops) rely on these insects,
including apples, nuts, all the favorite summer fruits (like
blueberries and strawberries), alfalfa (which cows eat), and guar
bean (used in all kinds of products). In total, bees contribute

4. more than $15 billion to U.S. crop production, hardly small
potatoes.
No, we wouldn't starve without their services—much of the
world lives without managed pollinators. But we'd lose an awful
lot of good, healthy food, from cherries and broccoli to onions
and almonds. Or we'd pay exorbitant costs for farmers to use
some other, less efficient pollination technique to supplement
the work that healthy natural pollinators could do. Plus, bee
health can tell us a lot about environmental health, and thus
about our own well-being.
Today's pollinator crisis, which has also hit Europe and now
parts of Asia, is unprecedented. But honeybees have done
disappearing acts on and off for more than a century, possibly
since humans began domesticating them 4,500 years ago in
Egypt. In the United States, unexplained colony declines in the
1880s, the 1920s, and the 1960s baffled farmers, and in 1995-
1996 Pennsylvania keepers lost more than half of their colonies
without a clear cause. The 1980s and 1990s saw various new
parasites that hit bees hard; Varroa and tracheal mites became
major killers, and they continue to plague hives and keep
beekeepers up at night.
When CCD appeared, the USDA's Agricultural Research Service
and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture joined forces
to study and fight the assailant, but a half-dozen years later they
still lack a smoking gun. Recent work reveals higher loads of
pathogens in the guts of bees from collapsed colonies versus
healthy ones—making viral infections a likely culprit.
But this isn't a case of one cause, one effect. Bee expert Dennis
vanEngelsdorp of the University of Maryland likens the
situation to HIV/AIDS in humans. "You don't die of AIDS; you
die of pneumonia or some other condition that hits when your
immunity is down," he says. Today's bee mortalities may be
behaving slightly differently. "But we're pretty sure in all these
cases, diseases are the tipping point" after bees' immune
systems are compromised.

5. So what makes bees vulnerable to those diseases, what's killing
their immunity, continues to be the $15-billion question.
Problems Piling Up
Zac Browning is a fourth-generation beekeeper based in North
Dakota. His mostly migratory commercial operation runs about
22,000 hives in three states—meaning he trucks his bees to
different locations at different times of year, renting out their
pollination services to big farms like those producing almonds
in California and canola in Idaho.
CCD devastated his hives a few years back, but "we've seen
losses more recently from everything imaginable," he says.
"Pests, parasites, pesticide exposure, starvation, queen failures,
you name it."
In addition to these problems piling up, "our inputs have gone
up one-and-a-half times in the last decade," he says. "We now
have to try to sustain bees [with extra food] when natural food
is scarce, dearth periods that didn't exist before."
Part of the problem is keepers have to boost hive numbers to
meet demand, "but the carrying capacity of the environment
hasn't changed." In fact, it's gone down. The amount of
undeveloped land with good bee forage just isn't enough to
sustain the masses, he says.
Meanwhile, studies have shown that colonies with access to the
best pollens (with more than 25 percent protein plus essential
amino acids), which occur in diverse plant habitats once
common across the landscape, are more robust and more
resistant to disease than those in pollen-poor environments.
The Threat From Pesticides
Another adversary in the bees' battle, as the EU reminds us, is
pesticides. Pesticides themselves aren't necessarily a death
sentence for bees—and debate rages over whether, when
properly applied, these chemicals can be used safely among
pollinators. But exposure to them seems to open the door to
other killers.
For example, bees exposed to sublethal doses of

6. neonicotinoids—the type the EU is banning and that are used
routinely in the U.S. on wheat, corn, soy, and cotton crops—
become more easily infected by the gut parasite Nosema.
Meanwhile, last year a French study indicated that this same
class of chemicals can fog honeybee brains and alter behavior.
And a British study on bumblebees, a natural pollinator in
decline in many places, reported neonicotinoids keep bees from
supplying their hives with enough food for queen production.
Honeybees are complex," says Browning. "If you reduce their
lives by even just a few days, the colony itself never thrives,
never reaches its maximum potential. Sublethal effects that
don't kill adults outright may still render hives weak and
lethargic. And those hives might not survive the winter."
What takes down the individual bee doesn't necessarily wipe out
the colony, vanEngelsdorp explains. And pesticides, like other
factors, do their worst when combined with other chemicals or
stressors, not necessarily all by themselves. "It's synergism," he
says. "One plus one may equal 10 with the right two products or
insults together." (Samples of bee-collected pollen typically
contain residue from numerous pesticides.) In the end, then, an
immune-suppressed colony faces a downward spiral, unable to
cope with stressors that weren't a problem during healthier
years.
The chemicals of modern agriculture have long been vilified,
and they certainly represent a vital and active line of inquiry:
The number registered for use in the U.S. exceeds 1,200 active
ingredients distributed among some 18,000 products, and state
pesticide use records are mostly unavailable, leaving a lot of
question marks. No one knows much about how low-level
exposure to various chemicals over time or how various
combinations affect the insects. Meanwhile, migratory colonies
likely have very different chemical exposure than those who
stay put. The landscape is messy.
A New Concern
In newly worrisome findings, a study from a team at Penn
State has revealed that "inert" ingredients (adjuvants) used

7. regularly to boost the effectiveness of pesticides do as much or
more harm than the active "toxic" ingredients. In one study
adjuvants were shown to impair adult bees' smelling and
navigation abilities, and in a separate study they killed bee
larvae outright.
The formulas for these other ingredients "are often proprietary
information and not disclosed by the companies," says Penn
State'sMaryann Frazier, who wasn't an author on the study, "so
they cannot be independently tested and assessed for toxicity.
When [the] EPA screens pesticides for registration, they only
consider the active ingredient," she says.
In addition, "there are no requirements by [the] EPA for
companies to test the impacts of pesticides on immature stages
of pollinators," she says, "only adults."
The EPA participated in a stakeholder conference last year to
discuss honeybee health (a report is just out from that event).
An EPA spokesperson declined to comment on the pending
lawsuit but noted that the agency has been working to speed up
its review of research related to neonicotinoids and their effect
on honeybees. It is also tweaking existing regulatory practices
to address various concerns including pesticide dust drift,
product label warnings, and enforcement of bee-kill
investigations.
Barrage of Stressors
So in addition to a changing climate and bizarre local weather
systems, bees are threatened by chemical exposure in untested
and unregulated combinations, disappearing foraging habitat
with increasing monoculture that requires trucking bees from
place to place, and fungal and viral intruders, plus the dreaded
Varroa mite.
Meanwhile, nature is not sitting still. The diseases that are
taking out immune-suppressed bees are quick to evolve
resistance to farmers' attempts to protect their bees. "Based on
our management surveys last year, not one commercial product
against Varroa worked consistently," says vanEngelsdorp, citing
numerous examples.

8. With the barrage of stressors bees face, perhaps we shouldn't be
surprised that they're no longer as resilient as they once were.
And honeybees, vanEngelsdorp points out, are among the most
robust pollinators. The native insects, such as bumblebees,
stingless bees, and flies, may be in worse shape, though their
plights—and role in the ecosystem—are far less well known.
Meanwhile, the lawsuit against the EPA is just revving up (the
first hearing was March 15), and scientists continue to push
hard to get more information on the unregulated ingredients in
agrochemicals that are proving harmful. "Unless we can get at
what's actually being used on fields, we can't analyze their
effects," says toxicologist Chris Mullin, a co-author of the Penn
State adjuvant study. And some products, he says, "are nearly
100 percent adjuvant. Illogically, they are considered safe until
proven otherwise."
Other voices have risen strongly against current land use
practices. "Honeybees need habitat," Browning says. "That's
any floral source with good nutrition. And that's not wheat,
corn, or soy, crops that take up well over 60 percent of U.S.
farmland." We've traded bee needs for biofuel, he laments, and
we're paying the price.
"We also need good cooperation from [the] EPA—and from
farmers and pesticide applicators—to implement and enforce
best management practices," he says. Also on his wish list: a
better battery of tools to effectively combat the Varroa mite, the
bane of all beekeepers.
"Bee culture has adapted to fit monoculture, and that's not
healthy," says Browning. "If we can instead invest in good
sustainable practices in agriculture, we can still thrive."
But his confidence in the future, along with that of many of his
fellow beekeepers, is declining with his hives. "We're just about
tapped out," he says. "Without some real action we'll see this
industry dwindle away." And as the industry goes, so go the
little yellow insects that put so much good food on our plates.
Jennifer S. Holland, a contributing writer toNational
Geographic,wrote aboutpollinatorsin the March 2011 issue

9. ofNational Geographic.