Saturday, 16 November 2019
Honey bees are under extreme pressure. Beekeepers in the US have been losing and then replacing an average of 40 percent of their honey bee colonies every year since 2010, a rate that is probably unsustainable and would be unacceptable in other kinds of husbandry. The biggest contributor to this decline is viruses spread by a parasite, Varroa Destructor. But this isn’t a natural situation. The parasite is spread by beekeeping practices, including keeping the bees in conditions that are very different from their natural abode of tree hollows. A few years ago, I demonstrated that the heat losses in…
This story continues at The Next Web
