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The other farm workers we need to worry about: Bees [1]
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Date: 2025-07-21
For some years now there has been increasing concern that honeybees, the vital pollinators needed for many of our food crops, are in serious trouble. Beekeepers have had trouble maintaining healthy hives, and have been reporting increasing mortality. There has been a lot of speculation about what’s behind this (and concerns about wild bee populations as well). The Guardian had a July 8, 2025 report that seems to have reached some conclusions. It’s not good news.
Experts scrambling to understand losses in hives across the country are finally identifying the culprits. And the damage to farmed bees is a sign of trouble for wild bees too
Bret Adee is one of the largest beekeepers in the US, with 2 billion bees across 55,000 hives. The business has been in his family since the 1930s, and sends truckloads of bees across the country from South Dakota, pollinating crops such as almonds, onions, watermelons and cucumbers. Last December, his bees were wintering in California when the weather turned cold. Bees grouped on top of hives trying to keep warm. “Every time I went out to the beehive there were less and less,” says Adee. “Then a week later, there’d be more dead ones to pick up … every week there is attrition, just continually going down.” Adee went on to lose 75% of his bees. “It’s almost depressingly sad,” he says. “If we have a similar situation this year – I sure hope we don’t – then we’re in a death spiral.” It developed into the largest US honeybee die-off on record, with beekeepers losing on average 60% of their colonies, at a cost of $600m (£440m).
What scientists found is that bees have been succumbing to a viral disease transmitted by mites — and the mites have developed resistance to the last pesticide that was effective against them. Mite infestations have been surging. But there’s more as well.
Exposure to pesticides like neonicotinoids are suspected as a problem. Monocropping means there are fewer plants available with the pollen and nectar bees need for food. Climate change is also putting more stress on bees. Taken together, the stress from these factors may be what is making bees more vulnerable to viral infections. Beekeepers are now looking at losing 30% of their colonies every year. The question that’s harder to answer is how are wild populations faring, since that’s much harder to track.
While this would not be good news at any time, there’s an additional factor making things worse.
Due to government staffing cuts, the USDA team were unable to analyse pesticides in the hives and asked bee experts at Cornell University to carry out the research, with the results still to be published.
This is not a trivial matter. Bees are needed to pollinate over 100 commercial crops. The rising rate of colony losses may make the industry unsustainable. The link goes to a government website of agencies that have also been subjected to severe cuts. What would be a problem in prior times is being made far worse by deliberate choices from the people currently running our government in the U.S. who oppose science and government that actually serves people.
The American Veterinary Medicine Association had a report in May, 14, 2025 that detailed how large the die offs had been.
Commercial beekeepers across the United States earlier this year discovered their colonies of honey bees in near or total collapse without explanation in what the apiary industry is calling the worst bee die-off in U.S. history. More than half of the nation’s managed honey bee colonies appear to have experienced mass die-offs. These losses, combined with honey bee die-off events during other times of the year, mean many beekeepers have seen 70% to 100% of their colonies collapse over the past 12 months, according to a February 6 report by the honey bee research organization Project Apis m. “These losses are severe, broad, and may impact food security through inadequate pollination services,” the report states. Financial losses to the apiary industry are estimated to be well over $139 million, the report added.
The Guardian report appears to explain what happened. Now we have to worry about what happens going forward.
Bees aren’t the only ones facing a death spiral.
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