Latest Pollinator decline Stories
WASHINGTON, April 19, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- With honey bees suffering a devastating decline as high as 90 percent as Earth Day approaches, national environmental groups, Beyond Pesticides and Center for Food Safety, launch a campaign called BEE Protective to support nationwide local action aimed at protecting honey bees and other pollinators from pesticides. Pollinators are a vital part of the environment, a barometer for healthy ecosystems, and critical to the nation's food...
Nature Conservancy scientist's work suggests that this Earth Day, keeping the picnic basket full may depend on wild bees. Arlington, VA (PRWEB) April 16, 2013 Two recently released studies co-authored by The Nature Conservancy’s Christina M. Kennedy underscore just how important wild bees are to global agricultural production. Bees may seem like uninvited guests at a picnic, but before they're shooed away from the fruit salad, people should consider the role they play in...
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The relationships among species change over time as shifts in an ecosystem begin to affect the organisms living in them. Climate change has placed a new emphasis on studying these shifting relationships and a team of biologists from the Midwest sifted through historical scientific logs to find that the plant-pollinator relationships in their area have been significantly altered over the past 120 years. Working out of Washington...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A United Nations-sponsored study has developed a new method to monitor global bee populations. The method, which will see regular bee counts over a five year period, should also serve as an early warning system alerting scientists to dangers threatening the world’s food and economic system. The work has been spearheaded by San Francisco State University Professor of Biology Gretchen LeBuhn. She and her colleagues, who published...
Most people are not aware of the fact that 84% of the European crops are partially or entirely dependent on insect pollination. While managed honeybees pollinate certain crops, wild bees, flies and wasps cover a very broad spectrum of plants, and thus are considered the most important pollinators in Europe. The serious decline in the number of managed honeybees and wild bees reported in Europe over the last few decades has the potential to cause yield decreases with threats to the...
Lee Rannals for RedOrbit.com As bee populations continue to decline, researchers are scurrying to try and find an answer as to why. A new study from Harvard School of Public Health has linked one of the most widely used pesticides, imidacloprid, as the bee's nemesis. The authors wrote in a paper being published in the Bulletin of Insectology that they have found "convincing evidence" of the link between imidacloprid and Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), in which adult bees abandon...
Over 1 million urge EPA to suspend use of pesticide harmful to bees, fix broken regulatory system WASHINGTON, March 21, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, commercial beekeepers and environmental organizations filed an emergency legal petition with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to suspend use of a pesticide that is linked to honey bee deaths, urging the agency to adopt safeguards. The legal petition, which specifies the pesticide clothianidin, is supported by over...
Wild bees are important pollinators and numerous studies dealing with pollination of wild plants and crops underline their vital role in ecosystems functioning. While honey bees can be easily transported to various location when needed, wild bees' presence is dependent on the availability of high quality semi-natural habitats. Some crops, such as apples and cherries, and many wild flowers are more effectively pollinated by wild bees and other insects rather than managed honey bees....
Commercial beekeepers and environmentalists shed light on honey bee losses and impact on future food prices LAS VEGAS, Jan. 10, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, beekeepers from across the country gathered at a national conference, with environmental organizations at their side, to draw attention to the growing plight facing their industry -the decline of honey bees - a problem that has far reaching implications for the U.S. economy. "Bees and other pollinators are the...
In an irony of nature, invasive species can become essential to the very ecosystems threatened by their presence, according to a recent discovery that could change how scientists and governments approach the restoration of natural spaces. Princeton University researchers report this month in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B evidence that destructive, non-native animals that have been deservedly maligned by conservationists the world over can take on important biological roles...
