Bees Population Decline Essay

Bees are steadily declining in population because these insects are suffering from colony collapse disorder. Things like habitat destruction, increased stress, and infections or parasites are causing the bees to die off. Bees play an important role not only in our ecosystem, but our economy as well. Bees are responsible for over 15 billion dollars in crop value every year. Not only would the extinction of bees affect our economy, but bees, playing a very important role in our ecosystem, would affect many other organisms in the ecosystem upon their own extinction. Bees play a vital part in our ecosystem, spreading pollen and enabling life for many plant organisms. Without bees in our ecosystem, things would quickly fall apart, possibly endangering 80% of the plant foods that we consume. The death of bees would not only affect plant life, but animal life as well. Animals that that eat plants that are pollinated by bees, would be at risk if bees were to die off.
Parasites? Habitat destruction? Surprisingly, The leading cause of population decline in bee colonies is the behavior of bees themselves. Colony collapse disorder was first brought to the table in 2006 when bee colonies were observed to be spontaneously dying off. Thriving colonies of bees would stop functioning when suddenly the majority of the worker bees would abandon their queen, leaving the colony unfunctional and the worker bees without a home, eventually killing of the worker bees as well. From 2006 to 2011, approximately 30% of colonies in the U.S.A. suffered from colony collapse disorder. Colony collapse disorder, being a recently emerging problem, hasn't had a direct cause identified yet, but scientists are theorizing things like stress, pathogens and parasites to be the leading causes of