WEBVTT - Why Are Honey Bees Disappearing? 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:02.719 Hi, I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, host of the new house Stuff 0:00:02.720 --> 0:00:06.360 Works Now podcast. Every week, I'll be bringing you three 0:00:06.400 --> 0:00:09.559 stories from our team about the weird and wondrous developments 0:00:09.600 --> 0:00:13.040 we've seen in science, technology, and culture. Fresh episodes will 0:00:13.080 --> 0:00:16.720 be out every Monday on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, 0:00:16.840 --> 0:00:23.320 and everywhere else that fine podcasts are found. Welcome to 0:00:23.360 --> 0:00:30.400 brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. When you bring up 0:00:30.440 --> 0:00:34.360 bees in social conversations, do your friends inevitably start talking 0:00:34.400 --> 0:00:37.920 about killer bees and oh how scary they are? Do 0:00:38.000 --> 0:00:41.479 they make jokes about that awful Wickerman remake with Nicholas 0:00:41.520 --> 0:00:45.000 Cage being all like, not the bees? Next time? Tell 0:00:45.080 --> 0:00:47.839 them this. What we should really be worried about is 0:00:47.960 --> 0:00:51.560 where the hell all our bees are going? Since two 0:00:51.600 --> 0:00:55.360 thousand six, honey bees have been disappearing too quickly to 0:00:55.480 --> 0:00:59.520 guarantee their long term survival. That's right, honey bees may 0:00:59.560 --> 0:01:04.720 go extinct. Just in two thousand fifteens winter, twenty of 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:08.600 the honeybee population disappeared. Let me tell you why you 0:01:08.600 --> 0:01:12.160 should care. The United States alone relies on the domesticated 0:01:12.200 --> 0:01:16.160 European honeybee to pollinate one third of its food supply. 0:01:16.440 --> 0:01:22.640 We're talking apples, peaches, almonds, lettuce, broccoli, cranberries, squash, melons, 0:01:22.880 --> 0:01:27.640 and blueberries. Here, people, that's fifteen billion dollars in crops 0:01:27.800 --> 0:01:31.520 every year. Not only are bees crucial to our nutrition, 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:36.160 they're important to our agricultural economy. Our farm system relies 0:01:36.200 --> 0:01:40.840 on honey bees as part of its huge engineered production process. 0:01:41.240 --> 0:01:46.039 Unlike tractors or combines, honey bees are living creatures that 0:01:46.080 --> 0:01:52.160 are susceptible to biological vulnerabilities like parasites, viruses, and climate conditions. 0:01:52.440 --> 0:01:55.960 If this army of bees we've manufactured gets sick and 0:01:56.040 --> 0:01:59.480 dies off, what are we going to do? This record 0:01:59.560 --> 0:02:04.120 number of bee disappearances is referred to as colony collapse disorder. 0:02:04.360 --> 0:02:06.520 According to the U s d A. The losses were 0:02:06.560 --> 0:02:09.720 first reported by beekeepers in two thousand and six, with 0:02:09.919 --> 0:02:13.919 thirty ton of their hives being hit. It's also called 0:02:14.080 --> 0:02:18.960 disappearing disease because we're not finding bee corpses poof, They're 0:02:19.000 --> 0:02:23.520 just gone. Worker bees specifically are disappearing, leaving behind the 0:02:23.600 --> 0:02:27.000 queen and a few male drones. They're still honey in 0:02:27.040 --> 0:02:30.680 the hive, but without the worker bees, the colony eventually dies. 0:02:31.240 --> 0:02:33.880 Bees have disappeared like this in the past, but never 0:02:34.000 --> 0:02:38.200 this widespread. There's no evidence of predators eating these bees, 0:02:38.400 --> 0:02:41.600 and be diseases with creepy names like chalk brewed and 0:02:41.680 --> 0:02:44.960 foul brewed don't seem to be the culprit either. The 0:02:45.080 --> 0:02:48.840 bees come from different suppliers, and their keepers use different 0:02:48.880 --> 0:02:52.320 methods to both feed them and control pests like mites 0:02:52.400 --> 0:02:56.000 in their hives. However, moths and other bees are known 0:02:56.040 --> 0:03:00.360 to avoid affected empty hives for days. Aside mine that 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:04.800 the bees may have died from disease or chemical contamination. 0:03:05.919 --> 0:03:09.720 The total effects of colony collapse disorder are staggering. We've 0:03:09.760 --> 0:03:12.960 gone from five million bee colonies in the nineteen forties 0:03:13.160 --> 0:03:15.640 to only two point five million today. Let me do 0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:19.440 the math for you. That's half our bees gone and vanished. 0:03:19.639 --> 0:03:23.480 With our modern agricultural needs, hives have to pollinate more 0:03:23.520 --> 0:03:26.960 than ever before. If losses continue at their current rate, 0:03:27.160 --> 0:03:30.760 it will threaten the economic viability of the entire bee 0:03:30.840 --> 0:03:35.720 pollination industry. The cost of honey, bees and honey will rise, 0:03:35.880 --> 0:03:39.880 increasing the cost of the foods they pollinate. We won't starve, 0:03:40.080 --> 0:03:43.080 but we'll probably get scurvy or some other kind of 0:03:43.200 --> 0:03:47.160 vitamin deficiency disorder. The scariest part is that we can't 0:03:47.320 --> 0:03:50.680 nail down a cause for all these disappearing bees. There 0:03:50.720 --> 0:03:54.000 are dozens of potential answers. Maybe the process of transporting 0:03:54.040 --> 0:03:57.760 bees long distances stressing them out, weakening their immune system, 0:03:57.800 --> 0:04:00.880 and exposing them to pathogens that are affect their ability 0:04:00.880 --> 0:04:04.760 to navigate. Veroa and tracheal mites are known to feed 0:04:04.800 --> 0:04:08.040 on bees by sucking out their vital fluids, and it's 0:04:08.080 --> 0:04:11.480 possible they're exposing them to an unknown virus. Or what 0:04:11.720 --> 0:04:16.240 if there isn't enough genetic diversity among honey bees, making 0:04:16.240 --> 0:04:20.279 them susceptible to a widespread disease we don't know about yet. 0:04:20.920 --> 0:04:25.200 Researchers are looking at everything from pesticides to particularly cold 0:04:25.240 --> 0:04:29.000 winters and a scarcity of clean water as contributors. It 0:04:29.040 --> 0:04:32.320 could also be a combination of causes. For instance, what 0:04:32.440 --> 0:04:37.000 if something makes colonies more susceptible the fungicides or pathogens. 0:04:37.400 --> 0:04:42.200 Scientists even investigated the possibility that the electromagnetic energy in 0:04:42.320 --> 0:04:46.920 cordless phones was causing colony collapse disorder, though this has 0:04:46.960 --> 0:04:52.200 since been widely discounted. On May nine, a new theory 0:04:52.320 --> 0:04:56.560 was proposed in the bulletin of Insectology Researchers from the 0:04:56.600 --> 0:04:59.799 Harvard School of Public Health found evidence that a class 0:04:59.839 --> 0:05:05.400 of insecticide called neo nicotinoids were significantly harming bee colonies 0:05:05.480 --> 0:05:10.359 during cold winters, possibly by impairing their neurological functions. The 0:05:10.520 --> 0:05:14.760 levels of pathogens and parasite levels were the same across 0:05:14.880 --> 0:05:19.520 the studies research and control groups, suggesting that the insecticides 0:05:19.560 --> 0:05:23.680 are not making the bees more susceptible to disease or mites. 0:05:24.120 --> 0:05:27.520 These neo nicotinoids are used to increase the stability of 0:05:27.600 --> 0:05:32.159 crops like corn. The European Union banned the most widely 0:05:32.279 --> 0:05:36.799 used of these in but they're still in use in America. 0:05:37.400 --> 0:05:42.520 Further research is required to pinpoint what exactly these insecticides 0:05:42.560 --> 0:05:49.799 are doing two bees check out the brain stuff channel 0:05:49.839 --> 0:05:51.960 on YouTube, and for more on this and thousands of 0:05:51.960 --> 0:06:08.120 other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.