Civilizations have largely ignored the importance of bees to their economies, as well as their crucial importance in feeding their populations. Most plants are dependent on particular kinds of bees for their reproduction through pollination. According to National Geographic it is estimated that that through pollination bees are responsible for 15 to 30 percent of the food consumed in the U.S.

According to scientists during the last 50 years, the domesticated honey bee population has declined by 50 percent due mainly to diseases spread by mites and other parasites as well as the spraying of crops with pesticides.

One of the greatest sources of threat to bees has been the bloodsucking parasite known as the varroa mite that attacks young and adult honeybees by puncturing holes in their bodies and transmitting diseases and viruses. The result is that these attacked bees often having shortened life spans and deformed wings and abdomens. A varroa mite infestation can wipe out a bee colony within a few months.

The tracheal mite, also attacks by boring holes in the bodies of adult bees and clogging their breathing tubes, to suffocate the insects.

Coupled with these assaults on the bee population, a recent and mounting threat of killer bees will have drastic consequences for both the domesticated and wild honey bee populations. Researchers at Penn State University indicate that together, the combination of all these threats has destroyed up to 85 percent of the hives in certain portions of the U.S.

Although farmers are beginning to refrain from pesticide applications while their crops are blooming, decades of pesticide use has also taken its toll on honeybees. In this age of environmental concern about stability of the world's food supplies and the consequences of chemicals in our diet, farmers are increasingly faced with the difficult choice of using pesticides to protect their bees, or losing their crops and going out of business.

Honeybee shortages are not yet impacting commercial producers of crops, but that community farmers "are struggling to get bees for pollination. In the north-east U.S., farmers are beginning to notice a shortage of honey bees for their commercial pollination needs, and are being forced to import bees to shore up the dwindling bee population.

A strategy to protect existing bee stocks must be two-fold: enhancing existing bee stocks, as well as developing methods to protect the honey bee.

Efforts are focusing on augmenting the declining domesticated honeybee populations with wild bees. Scientists are searching for bees that are resistant to, or at least have a reduced susceptibility to mites for the purpose of isolating the genes responsible for their resistance to mites, and then breeding those genes into domestic honeybees.

As an alternative to pesticides, scientists are also looking at developing a fungus that attacks mites but not the bees. However, research has yet to find a way to effectively deliver this fungus to a bee colony.

Any strategy to protect honeybees must go hand-in-hand with the recognition of their importance economically, as well as from the ability to feed the world's population. At risk is every plant crop that depends on pollination for reproduction: one in three mouthfuls of the food people eat.

Countries must become vigilant in protecting honeybees whose importance is best summed up by Albert Einstein would stated that: "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."

Learn more about this author, George Berger.
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